Website Success Series: The Jobberman.com Story
Whether you're an employer or an employee, you've no doubt heard of or come across Jobberman.com. The no. 1 recruitment website in Nigeria and Ghana. Jobberman.com was an undergraduate's vision in 2009 and today it is a full fledged Human Resource agency raking in millions monthly! Jobberman.com has a multi-million dollar valuation. They have been featured in Forbes, on BBC and more.
According to the company’s CEO, Ayodeji Adewunmi in an interview with the Guardian, “Jobberman is Nigeria’s No.1 recruitment website with two million jobseekers and 45,000 employers nationwide.
Jobberman.com is building the best destination in Africa for jobseekers and employers and has a corporate mission to help people find their dream jobs and help employers find the right people they need to be successful.
The Beginnings
The idea behind this company was hatched out one day in 2009. Three young men in their 20s - Opeyemi Awoniyi (21), Olalekan Olude (25) and Ayodeji Adewunmi (25) came together to discuss the employment industry in Nigeria. They secured the domain name Jobberman.com and put up a first draft of the website. In their final year during an industrial strike they decided to get serious with their vision and thus Jobberman Limited was born.
From it's inception in 2009, Jobberman has grown in size, value and reach. In 2012 Jobberman started the Ghanian arm when some of it's clients needed to recruit staff in Ghana.
Their Services and Financial Figures
Although Jobberman started out as a job search website, they soon realised that other opportunities existed in being the No. 1 Job Search website and started offering a full range of Human Resource services - from Direct Recruitment on behalf of companies, to Candidate Testing and Career Training.
**The below are guesstimates - estimates based on guesswork and calculations using statistics gotten from Jobberman.com and other reliable online sources.**
Premium Job Posting by Employers and Advertisers
Jobberman charges organisations a fee to post their vacancies on it's website. The fee ranges from ₦1,500 to ₦7,500 per month depending on the number of vacancies the organization wants to post.
A banner on their website says "last week 122 companies advertised 1263 jobs!" 1263 jobs which is an average of 10 jobs per company, so we can assume the 122 companies took advantage of the ₦6,000 plan (10 job postings per month), ie about of ₦732,000 earned in a week!
SMS Job Alerts Subscription Services
Jobberman charges jobseekers between ₦5 a day to ₦50 per week for periodic SMS alerts. Although they go through the telecomms companies, we know that bulk sms of large volumes can fall well below ₦1 per SMS, so there's at least a ₦4 profit being made on each SMS. There are presently over 2 million users on the Jobberman platform. Let's say 5% of their 2,000,000 jobseekers opt for the ₦5 a day sms alert service, that's 100,000 sms daily...at least ₦400,000 a day!
CV Services
Jobberman offers free CV appraisal services, but they charge a fee to rewrite your CV professionally and cover letters so as to increase your chances of attracting the right job. Prices for this service range from ₦9,900 to ₦25,900.
CV Database Sourcing
Some companies prefer to purchase a whole database of CVs and go through them to get their required candidates. Recruitment agencies also buy CV databases as it makes their jobs easier. Jobberman charges between ₦10,000 to ₦40,000 depending on the size of the CV database being purchased. With over 45,000 employers using the Jobberman platform, let's assume 1,000 out of these 45,000 employers buy Jobberman's cheapest CV Database priced at ₦10,000, that would be ₦10,000 multiplied by 1,000 employers = ₦10,000,000. Yep! 10 Million. Jobberman has CV databases for various industries. All these CVs gathered via their website in the past 6 years and earning them some income
Banner Advertising
Jobberman also earns revenue from adverts placed on the pages of their website. Jobberman.com's website attracts over 8,000,000 visitors monthly with over 1,000,000 of them being unique visitors! This makes them a premium target for corporate advertisers. Their advertising rates range between ₦60,000 for search pages to ₦1,500,000 for full page ads per month. Their website has ads from GTBank and other organizations so revenue is certainly being generated from the banner adverts on the Jobberman.com website.
Quick Recruit (Hire in 4 days)
Jobberman.com offer quick recruitment services to organizations looking for staff urgently. They charge ₦25,000 per vacancy. With the employer strength they boast of (over 45,000 employers in Nigeria alone), let's very conservatively guesstimate that 500 of those 45,000 employers use this service monthly. That's 500 multiplied by ₦25,000 = ₦12,500,000. Yes, 12.5 Million Naira!
Jobberman Learning
Jobberman provides education and training. They with some partners offer a number of online and offline training priced between ₦5,000 to ₦68,000 and spanning between 1 to 30 days.
Workcenta for Blue collar jobs
Jobberman also does recruitment of blue-collar and domestic staff - drivers, cooks, labourers etc. Once they get a reliable staff for you, you pay them direct and they in turn pay the employee.
Jobberman Testing and Jobberman Consulting
Jobberman also carry offer testing services and consultancy services to employers.
Present Day
In April of 2015, Jobberman.com announced via their website's blog
"Nigeria’s No. 1 recruitment website – is pleased to announce that One Africa Media (OAM) group has acquired 100% stake in the company. SEEK – the world’s largest online employment marketplace by market capitalization – recently provided $10,000,000 in additional funding for an additional 6 per cent equity ownership in One Africa Media and a second representative on the OAM Board. SEEK now owns 30 per cent of OAM which is valued at $167,000,000 (167 Million Dollars). Companies in the OAM group include Jobberman, Cheki, Private Property, and more.
Following this development, Co-founders Ayodeji Adewunmi, Opeyemi Awoyemi and Olalekan Olude have become Shareholders and Directors in the group. While the trio still act in their current roles as CEO and Senior Vice Presidents respectively, they will now operate at the group level bringing their experience and expertise to bear in other OAM-owned businesses through a shares roll-up deal.
The Founders
Opeyemi Awoyemi, 21 when the company started in 2009, was a Computer Engineering student. He is Senior Vice President at Jobberman and also a Director/shareholder at One Africa Media.
Lekan Olude now 31 years old, was in the same Computer Engineering class as fellow co-founder - Opeyemi. He is Senior Vice President at Jobberman and a Director/shareholder at One Africa Media.
Deji Adewunmi now 31 years old was studying Medicine when he and his friends started Jobberman. He is the CEO of Jobberman and a Director/shareholder at OAM.
Summary:
- Good idea + Good Online Presence = Success! To say that money can be made from having a good idea + a formidable online presence (website and Social media) has proven to be 100% true in Jobberman.com's case.
- Partner with the right people - Failure arises when an Engineer is asked to do online marketing or a secretary is asked to build a website. Most businesses attempt to save money by trying to do everything by themselves or through relations and friends. Partner with proven professionals. If it's worth doing at all, then it's worth doing well
- Position yourself to be seen so opportunities can find you! - Only after they started and got online did investors approach Jobberman.com. Webexperts pay-off line is "Be Seen - Be Heard - Be Known". Our services are coordinated in such a way that you get the full benefits of having an online presence. We get you online where you can be seen, manage your online presence through your website and Social Media ensuring you're Heard, and provide Online Marketing and Publicity Services so you're known!
- Online presence trumps a physical store in reach and proximity! You're much closer to your customers when you're online. Jobberman didn't operate the old fashioned way ie through print like other recruitment agencies do, instead they moved with the times and went digital.
Three young men with a vision used a website to carry out that vision. Be Inspired! Get that idea of yours off the ground today.
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