JOBJACK is a new Tech based company, that focuses on entry-level recruiting at scale and is based in South Africa. The company aims to make it easier for employers to find and hire entry-level talent, through improving Job fitness and improving the recruiting process for employers via a process of matching algorithms and assessments – and on the job seeker side, making the application process easier and free for job seekers, with an easy-to use platform that is zero-rated to use on most mobile networks.
Christiaan van den Berg is the co-founder and co-CEO of JOBJACK, a tech solution whose career began as a Chartered Accountant at PKF, before embarking on his journey into entrepreneurship alongside co-founder Heine Bellingan.
Business Tech Africa Asked him some questions about his innovative Placement business:
- What precipitated you founding of the company?
- Christiaan: When I was a CA, I identified the gap in the market to place for entry level employees at scale, by making the process simpler and providing better insights into the prospective hires.
- How many successful placements have you had?
- Over 3 million applicants and
- 30 000 placements in the last 4 years
- How does the placement process work?
- We have developed a propriety placement administration system that will take applicants through the application process digitally and will create a CV based on their input digitally.
- This is then linked to their in-house developed psychometric testing system that is focused on understanding specifics about the applicant in relation to entry level opportunities rather than broader personality testing. The goal is to understand how job fit an applicant is rather than using a process of box ticking basic requirements.
- The Job Jack test is the only psychometric test that has been created for the local African market rather than multinational tests that use data that is Americanized or European based making them too expensive for entry level placements and not necessarily a good fit for use in the local markets.
- What is your greatest challenge?
- Education of the market that there are more important things than 2 years of working experience in determining if a person will be a good fit for a job role.
- The JobJack approach is more about understanding if the applicant will be a longer term fit for the company and would be able to thrive and grow in a particular environment and this needs to be understood by the market. Entry level employment has not changed much in the last 100 years and there is a shift needed to look at creating careers rather than just filling posts, as this leads to better staff retention and performance
- Issues like trainability of a potential employee and potential work performance or problem solving abilities are much better marks of employee suitability than years of service and this is a mind-set shift for some companies.
- How does the business model function?
- JobJack is unique in that is does not charge per placement but uses a subscription model where largescale companies pay a set subscription rate for a fixed 12-month period and then have access to the system and the testing and the database of job applicants
- Clients can add additional services such as risk and credit checks and other assessments based on the companies specific hiring requirements.
- The advantages of their system is that it avoids high staff turnover and costly hires where clients are lost due to wrong hires and unsuitable placements and this longer term creates savings and stability in company operations.
- What have been the companies top successes?
- JobJack currently serves around 5000 employee sites from 60 companies – mostly larger enterprises such as McDonalds Pep Stores KFC and Woolworths giving credence to the effectiveness of their processes.
- A Retail Client saw a staff turnover decrease of 37% after using the Job Jack platform for hiring.
- Another client saw a 6% increase in sales turnover from the staff hired via Job Jack compared to other hires over a 3-month test period.
- Are there plans to take JobJack across Africa?
- Christiaan: Yes, we see great potential for our platform and job placement approach in the entry level market in Africa and beyond.
- We are looking to scale and for investment in our platform that will allow us to look at growing our footprint further than just South Africa as we believe the same challenges exist across a much broader market and we want to live out our vision to employ the world.
- We are planning to look at further African developments next year after having done a pilot test in Kenya that showed potential for our platform.
Christiaan’s passion is visibly contagious and his focus remains on driving the business’ vision to employ the world with its team of 50+ team members. Christiaan has unsurprisingly had a meaningful contribution to the South African business landscape and was recognised for this by being named in the Mail & Guardian’s 200 Young South Africans. Christiaan was also awarded the Influence Category Winner for SAICA’s Top 35 under 35 in 2022.
