GOOGLE'S KORMO

Kormo, a Google startup that has been in stealth mode for nearly a year, unveiled themselves to the public a couple months back. Targeting the newly anointed millennials who are joining the workforce every day, Kormo is unlike most other job portals.

Kormo claims to be a career assistant which helps you find informal (or grey collar if you may) jobs, pick up new skills, and assist you in creating a digital CV. To start off, all you need to do is download the app, register yourself and create your ow digital CV. Once finished, you will be matched with the jobs near your vicinity based on your experience and expertise.

The underlying concept of Kormo is unique — tapping into the long existing informal economy. The biggest issues with hiring for informal jobs are undocumented experience and credentials. However, when an applicant applies through Kormo, their track record becomes viewable to all potential employers. So, if an applicant consistently fails to turn up for interviews, then that lowers the applicants rating. Meaning you can't be neglectful of the jobs you apply for. Kormo helps to weed out the undeserving candidates and save time and resources of the employers.

When asked about choosing Dhaka as their initiation point, Jessica Bayern, a Googler who's managing the Business Development & Operations of Kormo, said, “Dhaka is an amazing city with a huge population under the age of 30. It's also a very mobile-first city. That's exactly the kind of market where you could find tremendous untapped potential in the informal jobs sector. Bicky Russel, who is leading the operation of Kormo, witnessed this phenomenon as well and thought that Dhaka should the first city to pilot the app.”

Although Kormo has only been operating in stealth-mode, the project has signed up more than 1000 employers and offered more than 21,000 jobs in just one year, with the assistance of its local partners. Their current clientele is varied, from startups to humongous superstores. E-commerce startup Chaldal.com, retail-chain store Meena Bazar and Shwapno have been an avid user of Kormo. They are using to hire at an unprecedented pace.

Many other startups and corporations have been using their services too.

If you are an employer then you can put up job posts just by enrolling in the Early Access Program (EAP). Once you have filled up the form, confirm your request to join Kormo as an employer. And that's it, all you have to do now is, wait for a day or two to get a call from Kormo. They will verify your profile and you should be able to post your job. Right now, you need to email them the job post and Kormo will curate it and upload the job post on the app for the applicants. Kormo doesn't have a job posting web-app for the employers as of now but it is planning to launch one in the near future. 

So, what's next for Kormo? According to Jessica, Kormo plans to expand its operations to other cities in Bangladesh and hopes to start piloting operations in African countries.

Although the app isn't perfect it's still been downloaded over 50,000 times, despite only operating in stealth-mode. And with that it's evident — Kormo has certainly been able to capture the attention of job seekers.