The Cesspit That is Kenyan “Job Sites”

So, recently, a friend of mine who had struggled for a long time looking for an employee, decided to send the job details to one of the many Kenyan job sites out there. They had a notice on their homepage that if you sent job details to them via email, they would post the job to an audience of thousands. They were right.

Soon, my friend’s inbox was flooded with job applicants. He’s extremely happy and cannot thank the Kenyan job sites enough. He’s still sorting through them and is certain that he will get what he needs.

This intrigued me a little and I had a deeper look at what had happened. Not only had his little job advert appeared on the site he posted too, but it had “magically” spread through Kenyan web space like you would not believe. It was suddenly on all Kenyan job sites, it seems. Big sites, small sites – they did not seem to care.

What might interest you, though, is that his ad also ‘magically’ appeared on heavy-hitters N-soko (by nation Media), Dealfish and Brighter Monday. It seems that these large sits employ someone (or perhaps a bot) to go through the other, small sites, and copy their content (at least as far as job ads go). Worse, the ad that appeared on these “heavy-hitters” was absolutely worthless to a job seeker – they had removed the contact address before posting the job ad. Can you believe that?

How would akina Dealfish gain from posting a job ad that no one can apply to? Sad truth is that they don’t really care. All that these job sites, big or small, are after is eyeballs. They want to post as many job openings as possible in hopes of attracting as many job seekers as possible. I would wager that they dont care if these job seekers actually find jobs….. they only want them to click on their little adsense adverts. And that, my friends, is business.

Of course I am not saying that anyone is doing any wrong – in fact I think that the whole system put together serves job seekers very well. As my friend learnt, it is also extremely useful for employers. At the end of the day it is just business – only at the cost of endless copying and/or plagiarism to entice job seekers and hope that they click on some adverts. This must be one of the easiest “online businesses” to start in Kenya, right?

As they say, if you get a product/service for free then think again. You are the product.

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Comments

  1. Jaffar Mohamed says:

    The tragedy about most kenyan online ventures is that they are silly copy cats and most often survive on plagiarism. Even your friend (http://ittrainingkenya.com) purporting to offer IT training is shamelessly copying everything from udacity .com. The syllabus for Web Application Engineering listed on http://ittrainingkenya.com is a copy cat of the syllabus for the same course at udacity http://www.udacity.com/overview/Course/cs253/CourseRev/apr2012. The reason why some of these ventures survive is that the average Kenyan is at most ignorant. Why would i take courses at ittrainingkenya.com when i can get the real thing at udacity.com. Shame!!!!!

    • Hi. I am an employee at http://ittrainingkenya.com

      You are right, absolutely right!

      However, you may have noticed that Udacity.com has a Creative Commons licence covering their courses.

      What we plan to do, to put it plainly, is to set up a place with computers and an Internet connection where students can come and take the Udacity courses. They will register with Udacity.com directly – ot in some cases they can watch the Udacity.com videos which we shall have downloaded.

      We have not yet set this up – we’re planning on opening the first such centre in Voi because it is the home-town of one of our founders. We then plan to replicate this in several towns.

      EVERYTHING THAT WE DO WE WILL NOTIFY UDACITY AND SEEK THEIR APPROVAL. They have already approved a similar set up for some people in New York.

      We will not charge for the “course” but for the right to come to our little place and study as long and as hard as you want. Call it open source education as I see it as a similar model to how people like Red Hat make money (or used to). Of course we will charge as usual for other courses not yet offered at Udacity.com

      I think it is a noble thing to offer previously unattainable education in this manner. Do you not agree?

    • I am actually taking that VERY course over at Udacity.com :):)

    • I have updated our course descriptions and posted an update here: http://ittrainingkenya.com/re-inventing-the-wheel/

      This should clear the air.

      @Jaffar I hope that you now see us as something more than just a shameless copycat.

  2. This is interesting and absolutely correct . What these job sites are doing is unethical.

  3. Hi,
    Could you pliz inbox me the site that he posted the job advert?
    Gerald

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