From West Africa to Bangladesh: Technology Key to Emerging Market Challenges
I am a recent MBA graduate and management consultant passionate about building effective and scalable strategies. Currently, I am based in San Francisco, CA.
In July 2017, I began my MBA journey at Simon Business School in Rochester, NY. I spent the three years prior in Burkina Faso, West Africa as a Peace Corps Volunteer. Those three years had a tremendous impact on my life and there’s not a day that goes by when I don’t think of my friends and family back in my village. Therefore, when I was enrolled in my Advanced Competitive Strategy course and a Bangladeshi classmate asked me if I wanted to spend the semester learning about a new app that would help individuals in emerging markets get jobs, I gave an immediate “yes!”.
Three classmates and I spent the Spring semester analyzing Kormo’s business value proposition and recommending a long-term strategy. For those unfamiliar with the app, Kormo was launched out of Google’s in-house incubator, Google 120. The idea was born after founder Bickey Russell saw firsthand the consequences of the unstructured job hiring process in Bangladesh. Kormo’s services target job seekers and employers operating within Bangladesh’s informal, gig economy and aim to improve the speed, quality, and experience of applicant-employer matching.
My team and I spent a good portion of the semester familiarizing ourselves with the Bangladeshi job market. We kept our focus on the employers in Bangladesh and wanted to analyze the problems they currently face, hypothesized reasons for why these problems exist today, and identified what an ideal solution for hiring an applicant would look like. From here, we analyzed what Kormo is currently doing and made recommendations based on discrepancies between the two. After a semester-long research and analysis, we categorized the problems job-seekers in Bangladesh’s gig economy into the following three:
1. Small-and-medium businesses often have a limited applicant pool
2. Employees face uncertainty in applicants’ accountability
3. Risk of unreliable employee once hired
Here, I will take you through problem 2- the problem of uncertainty in applicant accountability. In doing our research, we discovered that a major problem employers face is that employees often don’t show up for interviews. My American teammates and I were in absolute shock to learn this. We couldn’t believe that interviewees in Dhaka (the capital of Bangladesh and where Kormo was initially launched) would land an interview then not show up! According to a Kaizen market research report, professionalism is a top quality employers look for in candidates so it seemed like identifying to root reason as to why applicants aren’t showing up to interviews would help improve the job-matching process. We identified the following three hypotheses as to why applicants may not be showing up for interviews: unenforceable attendance, limited contact capability, and poor planning by candidates.
Unenforceable Attendance: Our first hypothesized reason as to why candidates are not showing up to interviews is that candidates see attendance as unenforceable with no repercussions for not showing up. Applicants may perceive jobs within the informal job market as undifferentiated and thus have little motivation for showing up, especially if there is no substantial consequence for unexcused absences. Therefore, Kormo could track candidates interview attendance rate and provide a warning notification of consequences, such as downgrading resume priority for future gigs, if the candidate drops below a certain level. Additionally, Kormo could also temporarily freeze accounts for unexcused absences to interviews. These could help increase the interview attendance rate of candidates.
Limited Contact Capability: A second explanation as to why applicants aren’t showing up to interviews is that they may be limited in their capability of contacting their potential employer. If applicants are not provided with the employer’s direct contact information, then they may be at a loss when trying to cancel. Additionally, there may be unanticipated situations that may legitimately bar applicants from interviewing. For Kormo, this means that they could ensure in-app direct messaging capability between applicants and potential employers to prevent interview no-shows. By allowing instant messaging capability between candidates and employers and creating one-click functionality for 24+ hour cancellation without consequence could help decrease interview no-show rates.
Poor Planning by Candidates: A final explanation as to why applicants aren’t showing up to interviews is poor planning by the candidates. They may be neglecting to check their schedule for upcoming events and conflicts before accepting interviews. Or, candidates may by overlooking a means of transportation for the interview or accounting for traffic. Kormo can leverage Google apps to help if this is the root cause of why interviews are not showing up for interviews. First, Kormo can leverage Google calendars by sending event reminders for upcoming interviews. Finally, Google maps could be integrated within Kormo to provide push notifications about departure time given projected traffic conditions. Travel and nudge notifications would be a way to potentially decrease interview no-show rates if the core reason is poor planning by the candidates themselves.
We believe that improving the proportion of applicants who attend interviews would increase Kormo’s value. If you would like to see a more in-depth analysis of the aforementioned problems 1 and 3, please check out my classmate Shah Choudhury’s blog posts!
