Souktel-Opening the Jobs Market with Cell Phone Technology

Souktel

Opening the Jobs Market with Cell Phone Technology

by Carol Erickson | Oct 12, 2010

Foundations in Social Innovation and Enterprise: Souktel-Opening the Jobs Market with Cell Phone Technology

Lana Hijazi and Jacob Korenblum have met many people in the Palestinian Territory whose job searches were hindered by a lack of access to information. While working in the region's international aid and telecommunications sectors, they discovered that the biggest barrier to finding a job in the West Bank of the Palestinian Territory is not always a lack of employment opportunities, but too little information about available jobs.

Job seekers also have to get past roadblocks and checkpoints that impede physical movement in the region. So Hijazi and Korenblum launched a citizen sector organization, Souktel, that surmounts these obstacles by using a new mobile phone technology to deliver job opportunities to men and women via text message on their cell phones.

Souktel's entry, Mobile Phone Employment Service, was a finalist in the Women | Tools | Technology competition

Their service promotes gender equality and provides a way for thousands of people across three continents to generate significant income. Souktel comes from Arabic word “Souk” for “market” or “marketplace,” where one goes for shopping and to get information. 

Newspapers in the region have mostly advertised only  executive-level positions. Some jobs have been advertised on the internet, but only one-third of Palestinians have internet access, largely through Internet cafes that are often dominated by men and off-limits to women.

Women’s job searches are often further hindered when traditional families don’t allow women to search for jobs in person, leaving female job-seekers with few resources for finding work, and a greater chance than men of remaining unemployed. Their unemployed status may lead them to enter into an unwanted early marriage.

While many Palestinians are able to get information about jobs through word-of-mouth or their own personal networks, unemployment remains staggeringly high. The Palestinian Central Bureau of Statistics estimates unemployment at 24.5 percent in 2009. Korenblum believes that the real figure is higher, noting that youth employment is particularly troubling, with about 40 percent of 18- to 25-year-olds unable to find work. 

The idea for Souktel came as Korenblum and Hijazi struggled to answer the question, “What can we do to help people get better access to employment information?” They knew that almost everyone had cell phones, and recognized that this would also give women a safe way to search for work from the comfort of their homes, or from anywhere they wish.

Korenblum and Hijazi tried a small scale JobMatch pilot to deliver information about jobs to a few people via text message, and found that the technology actually worked. They began to recruit employers to use their service by convincing them that newspaper advertisements were an inefficient way to find staff, and that mobile technology would give employers greater reach, costing them on average about US $10 per month.

The effort to recruit job seekers was fairly straightforward, because Korenblum and Hijazi knew that college campuses and technical training schools had no in-house counseling services to help graduating students find jobs. They began with a workshop at Berzeit University, one of the larger colleges in the Palestinian Territory, where half of the students are women. Job seekers can post a mini-curriculum vitae and search for job openings in the fields of their choice using their cell phone for a fee of US $1 per month.

To monitor its impact, Souktel tracks the number of people who call in to search for jobs, and contacts random samples of job seekers to see if they have had success. They also call all of the employers and ask if they hired a person through Souktel’s services.

Each month since 2005, Souktel has matched an average of 40-50 people in the Palestinian Territory with jobs. Souktel has been operating in Somaliland for a year and has matched about 330 young people with job opportunities. More than 8,000 people access Souktel services annually to find jobs or employees, generating an estimated US $9.6 million in income for these newly-employed workers.

Diaa’, a resident of the Palestinian refugee camp, Qalandia, is a typical Souktel user. She is in her twenties and studied computers but had no job prospects. Coming from a refugee camp, her family had no connections among local employers, her university had no tips for her, and the newspaper had no job ads for entry-level posts.  

Qalandia also has few places for women to use the internet, so this made web searching impossible. Like most young women her age, Diaa’ knew that if she failed to find a job, ultimately she would be forced to marry early, and her family would have wasted its investment in her education.

Diaa’ heard about Souktel from a friend, and signed up from her mobile phone. She stayed updated on job opportunities from inside her home, which was safer and made her family more comfortable. Soon after she signed up for Souktel’s service, she found a well-paying data entry job at a local company, earning her new respect in her community.

Souktel plans to launch a voice recognition mobile phone technology in 2011 that will allow illiterate job seekers to find work, giving them the ability to create a mini-resume and search for job through a series of touch-tone voice menus. This new technology will allow Souktel to increase its outreach to approximately 60,000 beneficiaries by 2012, making a significant impact on income generation and poverty alleviation in the Palestinian Territory, Somaliland, and Morocco, with plans for additional geographic expansion.

Souktel is a social enterprise that is non-profit in nature, covering almost all of its operating costs through corporate-style, fee-for-service revenue generation.  Any surplus revenue allows them to pay for research and development, and new market expansion. 

“This social enterprise model is both innovative and extremely successful,” Korenblum said. “Most nonprofits in our region rely on donations and grants, and  spend much of their resources trying to acquire more money to stay afloat. Souktel, by contrast, earns income to support our running costs by directly doing our core work -- matching people with jobs. This gives us regular, reliable income that will continue to flow in over time, unlike a grant that has a fixed end date.”

Souktel also connects aid agencies to people who need  help. Using AidLink, aid agencies that previously had to call thousands of people individually by telephone can now reach them all through the touch of a button, and send news about the arrival of food at distribution centers, or other emergency aid services. Souktel’s technology allows aid agencies,  including the United Nations World Food Program, World Vision, and the Red Cross, to upload community member phone numbers to a central database, and distribute information to certain geographies, women, or other specific groups in need. 

“We’d love to see this technology being used by more countries around the world,” Korenblum said. “Right now, we’re just small team of about ten people,  but we know that this technology has made a difference for an enormous number of people who have received important information on their cell phones because of our services.”

Souktel's participation in the Women | Tools | Technology competition helped them forge a new partnership with the Cherie Blair Foundation for Women (CBFW). Headed by the wife of former British Prime Minister Tony Blair, CBFW supports female entrepreneurs, with a specific focus on strengthening women-led businesses through mobile technology.

At the fall 2010 Annual Clinton Global Initiative, Cherie Blair and Mohammad Kilany of SoukTel participated on a panel and shared details of the new initiative, which, in partnership with the Palestinian nonprofit, Tomorrow's Youth, will work to distribute information to women involved in entrepreneurship programs.   Using the technology developed by Souktel, the women will receive business tips, financial management advice, and information related to women’s health, motherhood and personal development.

Once the women launch their businesses, the partners will help the women entrepreneurs develop their own distribution lists so that they can publicize their business and send potential clients promotions by text messages. SoukTel will also build a closed network of entrepreneurs and mentors from Tomorrow's Youth and its partners. Through this mobile phone network, the women will have real-time and low-cost access to information and advice by sending a text question to the entire group and receiving free replies on their mobile handsets.

Social entrepreneurs plays the role of change agents in the social sector by adopting a mission to create and sustain social value (Souktel creates a mobile job searching platform for college graduates, and continues to reinvest revenue to development and new market expansion); recognizing and relentlessly pursuing new opportunities to serve that mission (From a pilot project start, to now including text message for helping women launch their businesses, Souktel is always pursuing the mission of using a new mobile phone technology to deliver job opportunities to men and women via text message on their cell phones.) Besides the features that almost all social entrepreneurs possess, what is special about Lana Hijazi and Jacob Korenblum?

The success could more be attributed to their focus on the "BOP market", mentioned in article "The Next 4 Billion". The BOP in Palestine here refers to the job searching woman whose traditional families don’t allow them to search for jobs in person. Instead of the traditional approach which usually neglects the social value in job-searching woman in Palestine, Souktel identified the market value within the fundamental job searching market, delivered a sustainable solution (affordable text message) that makes markets more efficient so that woman in Palestine has more opportunity finding a job.

According to the "The Next 4 Billion", between 2000-2005 the number of mobile subscribers in developing countries grew more than fivefold-to nearly 1.4 billion. Traditional labelled "poor" mostly are willing to pay for mobile phone access to benefit from the increase opportunity to job, medical care and financial service etc. The model Souktel uses--that taking advantage of development of technology in BOP market expansion is now a growing profit-generating approach & a proven success in BOP market, 


But the future problem (my question as well) for start-up business like Souktel is: 

For future sustainability, how they compete with existing or potential big player in the market (eg. Celtel in Africa) as well as telecom tycoon (eg. Vodafone), who started to pay more attention on developing strategy in developing country (eg. Vodafone established "Vodafone Foundation" to invest and research on rural health & micro-franchise project, and working on expand signal coverage to more rural area in developing country)?