How do you hire as a Small Business Owner? (In Bangladesh)

I am passionate about building digital solutions for low income countries. Currently, I am based in Washington, DC.

It might be easier to see the problem from the perspective of job-seekers! Sometimes the job requirements don’t match, salaries are too low, and getting your foot in the door to begin with is simply too difficult. When designing Kormo alongside issues faced by job-seekers, the team also cared to think of the small business owners that require a store attendant, receptionist, office assistant, and many others. They found that these end-clients do not have a solution for easy access to a pool of candidates for the different critical needs of their businesses.

The Kormo team spends a lot of time trying to understand the challenges faced by local businesses

To understand these roadblocks the Kormo team commissioned qualitative studies to understand the hiring process for those employers that do not have an HR team. In-fact these are the neighborhood groceries and retail stores that do not have access to computers but do use smartphones, pay in cash and typically employ fewer than 5 workers per year.

A flow chart depicting the hiring process for SMBs

Too often these employers are not able to match with the right candidates, or are inundated with a large number of CVs without any real way to sort through them. While running their store, these employers just cannot afford to spend time going through hundreds of CVs that mostly turn out to be a bad match. And in cases of employee turnover that may happen within a month of hiring and training, the grueling process starts again. This is not a sustainable hiring model.

As a result some of the conveniences these employers sought the most were:

• A way to standardize the process so it saves time and makes it easier to land on candidates with the correct credentials
• The ability to give and seek references
• The ability to track the process and gain insights such as how many applicants and who qualify

In the end these business owners wanted solutions that generates trust, and allows them access to a pool of dependable candidates so they can spend less time finding and hiring them. If you have been following Kormo and what it offers to job seekers and employers in its platform, you know that these conveniences are already there!