Mobiles new trend in job search

From left: everjobs Sri Lanka MD and Country Manager Félix Lienau, everjobs Sri Lanka Head of Business Development Venkat Iyengar,  everjobs Asia Regional CEO Gijs Verheijke and everjobs Asia Regional Head of Marketing and PR Sara Marrón García - Pic by Daminda Harsha Perera 

By Uditha Jayasinghe 

As many as 35% of job seekers are using their mobiles to search for employment opportunities online, says everjobs.lk, pointing to increasing internet penetration driving popularity in tourism, financial services and IT sectors.   



Sri Lanka’s youth unemployment rate in the first quarter of 2015 was 21.7%, over four times the national unemployment rate of 4.7%. In such an environment young professionals are especially keen to keep track of potential employment opportunities with mobile adaptation expected to drive growth of the online job portal, which hopes to double its registered database of 35,000 job seekers this year. 

Tourism, financial services and IT remain the hot favourites for job seekers, with the sectors showing strong growth prospects for 2016. The website receives 300-400 new job registrations each day and handles as many as 1,000 applications daily. 

“The everjobs.lk site in Sri Lanka is the fastest growing market for us in the region. We have a strong presence in the main cities but we are very focused on expanding our coverage in the rest of the country. This will be our main objective this year,” said Business Development Head Venkat Iyengar. 

The everjobs.lk career survey recorded that, in July/August 2015, online recruitment hit an all-time high with a quarter-on-quarter growth improving consistently. This year is expected to deliver the returns of the various reforms proposed by the Government including increased internet penetration from Google’s Project Loon, which is expected to start operations in Sri Lanka in the next few months. 

The job portal also caters to startups with about 100 of its 2,500 employers using everjobs.lk as a more cost effective form of recruitment. Offline recruitment customarily costs about 10% more than its online counterpart. 

“It is heartening to see the robust growth of the startup ecosystem that’s urging individuals to explore new business avenues. With a greater role for the private sector job recruitment at hand, everjobs plans to expand job opportunities to smaller cities and towns across Sri Lanka, in a bid to further boost the medium and small scale sector,” he added. 

The everjobs job portal is currently operating in Sri Lanka, Bangladesh, Cambodia, Myanmar, Cameroon, Ethiopia, Ivory Coast, Senegal, Tanzania and Uganda. Launched in 2015, everjobs aims to become the leading job portal in fast-growing markets. 

Officials of the company also insisted it was essential to increase the transparency of the job market to encourage youth and women to see employment in the formal sector. The company is also working hard to get feedback from users and clients to ensure that the website disseminates the right information and is user friendly.

“We are active in some of the most interesting and emerging economies of the world. Our main goal is not only to grow in those markets but to be able to really have an impact on the countries’ development. By providing a simple and effective online career portal, we are changing the game for both employers and professionals, making it far easier for them to find each other than before,” said Chief Executive Officer for the Asia region Gijs Verheijke.