Google unveils app to help Bangladeshis find jobs
Abrar Hussain: Google has unveiled a stealth app to help the people in Bangladesh in finding jobs, according to a report by Tech in Asia.
A team from Google’s Area 120 startup incubator announced that it has been working quietly behind the scenes on a new app called Kormo, which helps the people in Bangladesh find jobs.
“The team is now ready to come out of stealth mode,” said Bickey Russell, who leads the Kormo team.
Kormo, which means “work” in Bangla, went live about a year ago in Dhaka and has matched over 21,000 jobs to its users.
The app focuses on the ‘informal economy’, referring to the unregulated forms of employment. Contracts, fixed pay, and pensions, among others, are absent, and that opens up employees to many risks. “What you see in the informal economy is a lot of unemployment and a lot of underemployment,” Russell told Tech in Asia.
“We saw this problem firsthand in Bangladesh. People regularly struggle to find employment and are unaware of what to do, and employers complain about not being able to find talents or hire effectively,” the project head added.
Using Kormo, users can update their resumes, look and apply for jobs and even access content that helps them develop essential work skills like communication and interview prep. Kormo’s algorithm also recommends jobs to users based on their work experience and interests.
According to Russell, the app helps employers identify irresponsible workers by including performance ratings and references on the job seekers’ profile page.
“One big problem with the informal employment is that there is no clean way to track records or credentials. Building a reputation online is something we think is very important in employment across the board,” said Russell.
The app, which is still in the early stages of development, currently serves over 30 different job categories in the services sector including sales, ecommerce, and hospitality. Over 1,000 companies have been posting job ads on Kormo since its quiet launch.