Babajob connects low-income job seekers with opportunities relevant to them, and employers with the right candidates in the informal sector. By leveraging scalable, digital technologies, we have built the largest informal and entry-level formal jobs marketplace in India that is accessible to BoP job seekers through multiple online and offline channels. Job seekers can register, find and apply t...
SEE ALLBabajob connects low-income job seekers with opportunities relevant to them, and employers with the right candidates in the informal sector. By leveraging scalable, digital technologies, we have built the largest informal and entry-level formal jobs marketplace in India that is accessible to BoP job seekers through multiple online and offline channels. Job seekers can register, find and apply to jobs all for free through a mobile phone, regardless of if they have access to the internet.
How does your innovation work?
Babajob is a tech-based social enterprise that gives low-income job seekers access to better jobs across India. We were inspired by research from Duke University and the World Bank that found income diversification (i.e. changing jobs) is the primary path out of poverty. Despite this finding though, low-income job seekers were not always able to follow this path. Generally, workers in the bottom of the pyramid are forced to rely on their limited social networks to find new opportunities: who you know defines how much you can make. In addition, the job search process costs time and money. On the other side, employers faced a similar problem when trying to hire in the informal sector. They relied on referrals to find new employees, reducing the number and quality of possible candidates.
In order to address these problems, we built the largest informal and entry-level formal jobs marketplace in India, covering diverse job categories from maids, cooks, security guards, driver and delivery executives to call center employees, customer support and data entry. Now job seekers can find better opportunities regardless of who they know or what resources they have available to them, and employers can find qualified applicants. Babajob works to eliminate the information asymmetry in these sectors by connecting employers with the right candidates and low-income job seekers with relevant job opportunities.
To pursue our mission of “Better Jobs for Everyone”, we have developed a multi-platform system that allows job seekers to register, create profiles and apply to jobs both online and offline. If job seekers have access to the internet, they can build a profile through our Android app or our website, either on a desktop or a mobile phone. But since the majority of low-income job seekers either have limited access or none at all, we have built offline technologies that enable someone to create a profile and search for jobs without ever needing to go online. Our primary offline method of registration is our Interactive Voice Response system. Job seekers give a missed call to our number, then receive a call back and hear a series of questions about what type of job they want, where they want to work, what salary they expect, etc., which they respond to by pressing the number corresponding to their answer. Their profile is automatically created and accessible to employers on our site, and we begin to send alerts about job opportunities relevant to them based on their profiles via SMS for free. If a job appeals to them based on the alert, they can give a missed call to the number provided in the message, which will allow them to apply for the job by connecting them with employers after a set of job-specific screening questions. Employers can then conduct a short phone interview, often setting up a follow-up in-person interview with candidates they want to take forward. While this service is fairly new, we have already registered over 800,000 job seekers through IVR. The process works similarly across channels, allowing for adaptations depending on the medium of registration or application.
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