Founder of Youth Village and Youth Jobs, Bruce Dube ‘s SA FM Talk Shop’s “Mover & Shaker of the week”Interview
SA fm: Good evening to you its Thursday the 5th of April 2012. My name is Karabo. It’s time for the “Mover and Shaker” feature and the focus today is on Youth Village and Youth Jobs. Today we will be joined by the Founder of both platforms Bruce Dube.
Which one did you start first Youth Village www.youthvillage.co.za or Youth Jobs www.youthjobs.co.za?
Bruce: I started YOUTH VILLAGE www.youthvillage.co.za last year in January and YOUTH JOBS www.youthjobs.co.za was launched this year January 2012.
SA fm: How do the portals operate?
Bruce: Youth Village is an online youth magazine which was created because i felt most young people are struggling to access information that could facilitate towards their development. The platform is more like an information hub and there is a wide variety of issues we tackle on the platform.
Youth Jobs is an online youth job portal. It is a portal dedicated to jobs that young people can apply to because most young people are struggling to access jobs that do not require too much working experience or too much academic qualifications. It’s simply a portal that aims at facilitating for better access to jobs among the youth, jobs that do not require too much work or academic qualifications.
SA fm: Why do you think the youth have been struggling to access information that could help further their development?
Bruce: The biggest challenge is that most companies and institutions focus and invest on people who are already out there, people who can probably afford to pay for certain services. There hasn’t been much focus on young people. If you look at the country at the moment there aren’t a lot of job portals that target young people and most of the job portals are portals that have jobs that require too much working experience and too much academic qualifications, at the same time distribution of information has not been very even. Most young people in some remote and urban communities cannot easily access information.
SA fm: Are you flying solo with these projects or are there people you are working with?
Bruce: I am flying solo on the project but I have people who work for me within the capacity of what I am doing.
SA fm: What kind of platforms do you use in terms of the website? Is it operating across various platforms that people can access? How do you make the digital side and the user experience as efficient as possible for different types of people who are using different models to access the internet?
Bruce: The one thing i focused on when i developed these platforms was taking into consideration the issue of accessibility. Most jobs portal require people to create user names and passwords and I felt that I wanted to eliminate that from all my projects because it prolongs the process. Most people do not have good access to the internet and they using mobile phones to access the internet. We have also invested so much energy to make it easily accessible, for instance on Youth Jobs most Jobs are listed in the most simplistic form.
SA fm: Are you on mxit?
We were on mxit but a lot of young people have moved to WhatsApp, so we are on Whatsapp, facebook and twitter
SA fm: How do you find the jobs that are available for the youth? Where do you find those positions and how do you link those positions with the youth?
Bruce: We approached a number of companies and informed them on what we are doing and most of the companies have shown interest, so some of the companies provide us with frequent posts that we put on the platform. We also do a lot of research on bursaries, internships and leaderships.
SA fm: How many jobs have you advertised, how many youth have responded and how many placements have happened as a result of your intervention as youth village and youth jobs?
Bruce: In terms of Youth Village we receive a lot of feedback because we are very active on the social networking platforms. On the Facebook page we get a lot of feedback from young people who thank us for the platform we have created and some have also attested to having gone to interviews. We have also gotten feedback from young people who have gotten jobs. We also receive a lot of emails from young people who thank us for the website we created because they have managed to apply for a bursary and have managed to get into the job market. In terms of the way we structured the platform we have tried to go further in availing employment tools like give information on how to write cv’s and how to prepare for an interview. We also use the platform to encourage young people to pursue entrepreneurship so they can play a role in job creation at local and national level.
SAFM: Does your portal provide information for young people who are already in a job market who also want to further their careers? Can they find information regarding the trends in terms of where the growth is happen?
Bruce: Part of our work in that context is that we have already identified professionals in different fields whom we are interviewing to speak about their work and how young people can get in the specific market and what measures young people should take to pursue a career in that field. In addition to that we will also be launching our magazine called YV Mag! next week which will be distributed to number of school, universities, colleges and information centres across the country. The content covered will be very developmental and we will be covering issues like education and employment.
SAFM: Is this a print magazine?
Bruce: It’s actually going to be print magazine. At the moment since I’m the only one who is funding both projects it’s been a challenge to get to print copies that will be distributed across the country but what we’re doing is that we’re going to print a limited edition and at the same time we got into partnerships with a lot schools and institutions that have showed interest in our publication. They will also print it and distribute it amongst the youth that they work with. We will also have a virtual magazine which young people can read online for free and people can also download the magazine from where they are. Much effort has been placed on the size of the downloadable pdf to make it as small as possible so that people won’t struggle to download the magazine. The aim behind all these strategies is to try maximize our distribution and reach. We want to reach as many young people as possible with this publication.
SAFM: How do find funding for the way you operate?
Bruce: I have a small company called iConcept Media (www.iconceptmedia.co.za) which is a web development and audio visual production company. My resources to fund my project come from that company
SAFM: You’re self funded?
Bruce: Yes Ma’m
SAFM: What happens if the project grows a bit too big for you to look after it yourself? , have you got advertisers who advertise on the website?
Bruce: Not as yet I think since we only got into the market for a year I thought it may be ideal to produce good quality content first and at the same time I felt we should work on the traffic, Since we launched it in January 2011 we managed to accomplish a million hits just in 2011. Our March hits are at close to 400 000 hits. Considering these stats I also felt that what we’re doing is quite effective I and with this growth i think we are in a space were we can get better value for the advertising , partnerships and sponsorships.
SAFM: Do you give young people information on what they should look at to protect themselves before signing contracts?
Bruce: If you go to our youth job portal which is www.youthjob.co.za you’ll realise we have tried to avail as much information as we can to prepare young people to get into the job market. We have tried to give them information about their rights as employees and the rights of their employers. In addition we have also availed information on the different types of contracts in the job market.
SAFM: Thank you very much Bruce Dube , you were the SA FM’s “Mover and Shaker of the week”
