By Adedapo Adesanya
Jobberman, the largest job placement website in sub-Saharan Africa, has partnered with the National Youth Service Corps (NYSC) to train 120,000 corps members yearly.
The company, which announced this development in a statement, noted that the free soft skills training course would take place in the NYSC camps across the 36 states and the Federal Capital Territory (FCT).
It said the revered national institution, which focuses on bringing thousands of youth together from Nigeria, provided a pivotal step for Jobberman in tackling the enormity of unemployment and underemployment issues in the country.
Speaking on the partnership, The Chief Executive Officer of Jobberman, Nigeria, Mrs Rolake Rosiji, said: “NYSC resonates with all Nigerians and is a homegrown partnership that Jobberman is very proud to have established.”
Mrs Rosiji said the significance of the partnership would be transformational for the country’s youth and the economy.
“Aligning with an organisation such as NYSC, which has built a reputation of nurturing the development of young Nigerians to enhance the country, is in line with Jobberman’s mission to create a dynamic and skilled workforce to help it reach its full potential.
“The National Youth Service Corps’ annual one-year programme to steer youth capacity development, whilst also fostering cultural and social cohesion, is perfectly matched with Jobberman’s focus on upskilling five million young people and placing three million in dignified employment by 2025.
“This is part of the company’s mandate through the Young Nigeria Works project in partnership with MasterCard Foundation,’’ Mrs Rosiji said.
She said the technology-driven company advocated the importance of democratising the jobs market by placing 100 per cent of job opportunities online, as well as creating a transparent labour market to drastically improve workplace productivity.
Mrs Rosiji said with over 60,000 employers on the platform to be connected with, the beneficiaries would be trained in areas such as emotional intelligence, personal effectiveness and presentation skills.
She said this would, in turn, present employable candidates to some of Nigeria’s most reputable companies, adding that in February 2021, Jobberman successfully piloted the programme and trained 35 NYSC schedule officers at the Lagos camp.
Mr Rasak Salawu, the Director of CDS and Special Projects at the NYSC, said that Jobberman’s partnership would drive youth employment across states through hybrid and digitally-enabled training.
“This will be an opportunity provided to graduates of different schools and backgrounds in Nigeria and abroad.
“The Jobberman soft skills training programme has so far upskilled over 100,000 young people since inauguration in May 2020, at the height of the pandemic.
“It has also placed 60 per cent of those that have completed the course in dignified employment,” Mr Salawu said.
