We got together with Kareerak founder and CEO for some insights on entrepreneurship and to see what he has been up to with Kareerak.com
1. Hello, can you please introduce yourself to Scoop Empire readers?
I am Hashem Aly, Founder and CEO of Kareerak.com. I graduated from The American University in Cairo in the summer of 2010 majoring in Economics.
2. So we’re here to talk about Kareerak, what is it exactly?
Kareerak is an online recruitment platform based in Egypt that simply connects job seekers to employers. The main objective of Kareerak.com is to make job searching easy, personalized and available to everyone.
3. Why did you decided to start Kareerak?
When I graduated from college I found that there was not one place to check out all jobs all together. I was also sick and tried of the traditional “referral” based recruitment “wasayet” as it isn’t that efficient and job seekers tend to compromise as to the job they end up taking. I thought why isn’t there a directory that shows all jobs in Egypt with great filters? This is what we aim to do here at Kareerak.com.
4. So let’s say I’m someone looking for a job, I go set up a profile on Kareerak, what happens next?
Basically you create a username and password, then you copy and paste your CV in the required section, fill in a couple of templates and within minutes you can start browsing the jobs on Kareerak and start applying. The CV is then automatically sent to the employers’ email inbox and the company then contacts the job seeker if they think they are suitable.
5. And on the employers’ side, how can they approach you?
Employers can set up their account for free and add their job posts. When they do so we contact them and subscribe them to either the 50LE package which is a per job post sort of payment or our Unlimited package which is unlimited job posts for 1, 3, or 6 months or a 1 year period.
6. What other services do you offer or plan to offer?
Kareerak is working to expand on other platforms such as mobile, which will make it easier for job seekers to browse jobs on the go. Also a couple of other interesting features for employers but you will have to wait and see as we prefer to keep our future releases confidential.
7. Is it easy for job searchers and employers to navigate your website?
At Kareerak.com we believe that ‘the simpler the better’. We look at design and user experience in great detail and it takes up a lot of our time to make the experience for the user as simple as possible. So we would like to believe that our care in that matter has paid off.
8. As a young entrepreneur, is it easy to run your own business?
It’s definitely not an easy thing and involves a lot of risk. The hardest part is that others around you have a more stable life at larger multinationals getting paid a lot more while an entrepreneur’s life may not be as sweet in the beginning. Also the entrepreneurship ecosystem is not yet well established in Egypt, although it is improving. But I think a great team is very important when starting up your own company and I would definitely not have made it this far without the great team around me be it designers, developers and mentors.
9. What is your day like? And how do you stop yourself from wasting the day just fooling around?
It’s very important to have a good picture of what you are going to do the week ahead of you, at least a basic idea. So for example you can say that for the first day I will work with the design team, Monday I’ll work on marketing. This makes it a lot easier and even if there are interruptions in the middle you will easily go back to what you were doing if you have that set in mind.
10. Any last words you’d like to leave us with?
I think that Egypt’s start up scene needs to grow a lot in this next period. So if anyone out there has an idea that’s tinkering in their heads why not start and take the risk. I’d like to end with a quote by Jim Rohn that goes “If you are not willing to risk the unusual, you will have to settle for the ordinary.” – Jim Rohn
WE SAID THIS: If you’re looking to get hired, or had enough of your bickering boss, head on over to Kareerak.com and check out what they have to offer.. You’ll find something that catches your eye!