Selling sugarcane in Kangemi has not always been Alex Mudi's.
Indeed, Mudi is a trained accountant. But Covid-19 made nonsense of this training in March and all of a sudden Mudi was rendered jobless.
The Sh210 he makes daily from the sale of sugarcane is a far cry from the money he used to make as a city hotel before Covid-19.
Every afternoon, Mudi piles stalks of sugarcane on a wheelbarrow and heads to a market in Kangemi, where his contemporaries include grocery stockists and secondhand clothes sellers.
Customers are few and the days slow.
Mudi's daily take-home earnings can only buy unga and a few other essentials for his family.
“It has been tough and I just want to survive. I do not enjoy what I do. I want to work as an accountant. I have made applications online. The process is at times hectic and I end up giving up,” he says.
Mudi is among thousands of Kenyans who have lost jobs due to the coronavirus.
They are also the focus of online job aggregators, who have been forced to come up with new innovative advertising tools to attract job-seekers.
Brighter Monday is one such online job aggregator. It has developed a new sign up drive dubbed "Seize Your Next Opportunity" that provides value-addition tools to job-seekers.
Brighter Monday CEO Emmanuel Mutuma says the new tools are set to make the experience and journey to employment more interactive and informative amid the massive job losses occasioned by Covid-19.
The Kenya National Bureau of Statistics says approximately 1.7 million people have lost their jobs since March this year, mainly due to the economic and social impacts of the coronavirus pandemic.
“We have made the journey to employment an interactive and informative process, through tools such as job alerts, CV writing services, interview preparation templates as well as the BrighterMonday Career Centre where job-seekers receive consistent and insightful career tips on how to position themselves in the job market,” Mutuma said.
Hundreds of courses and free personality tests are available on the platform for jobseekers.
Currently, the platform has over a million job-seekers and 30,000 employers.
Some 30,000 job-seekers apply for entry level positions whenever a vacancy is advertised with a huge number also seeking middle and top level management opportunities, according to Mutuma.
“Up to 50 per cent career profile completion unlocks notifications about employers who have interacted with your profile, whereas 80 per cent completion allows the user to download a professionally done curriculum vitae,” he said.
At 100 per cent, users are able to boost their profiles, making them stand out to employers.
