Insidify: The Mission to Make Job Search in Nigeria Easier

Dr. Emmanuel Okeleji, Co-founder, Insidify.com talks to us on how small and medium-sized businesses can find their way around unstable government policies and what the global times mean for small businesses.   CN: What does the idea of starting up a new business require? Okeleji: I can probably write a book about that. There are a lot of things to say about starting up a business especially in Nigeria. It is quite a challenging playground here. But to give you a quick summary of what is required. First, a business owner must possess the will to see the business to the end. Secondly, you should make value delivery all your focus. What most people do is look at business primarily from the money/gain standpoint. The right thing, however, is to think of how your business can be useful to people, they will only pay for your services because what you are doing is useful to them, value will drive profit; not the other way round. You must have tangible value and keep it in focus when starting up a business because your real job is to give value to customers. The value you offer is your only claim to your customer’s money. The next most important thing you need to do is to invest in human resource; invest in yourself and the people who work with you so that you can build an institution that can deliver the all-important value you set out to create. It is people and culture that make up an institution. So, starting up a business in Nigeria is very challenging, but show me where it isn’t? CN: What part does government policies play in shaping small businesses? Okeleji: Unfortunately, many businesses take the need to have a lawyer for granted. They think it is an unnecessary encumbrance. Truth is, you cannot build a world class institution without getting the legal bit right from the start. You should let the professionals do their job. In my businesses, I have retainerships with law firms. I prefer relating with firms than with individual lawyers because aside the fact that it is good for your brand, you have a larger pool of talent to advice you, which usually means better legal guidance for your business. The way for businesses to live on the right side of the law is to have a good corporate legal advisory framework from day one. I don’t take any major business decision without carrying my lawyers along. If you want your company to be successful, you will need to take the legal aspect of your business seriously. CN: How has Insidify been able to work and separate itself from the pack of online job search companies? Okeleji: Insidify.com approaches the value chain from a totally different direction. Insidify.com is “Blue Ocean”. There are about 80 job sites in Nigeria alone; almost all of them doing/promising the same thing. Insidify.com however aggregates jobs from everywhere (job sites, company career pages, newspapers etc) into our search engine, just like Google does for the whole internet, so job seekers can have a unified search experience. The site is also a professional networking platform that helps job seekers find people on their Facebook, LinkedIn and email contacts who work in any of the companies that advertise the vacancies aggregated on the search engine. This means job seekers get to know when any job that fit their qualification is posted anywhere across the internet and persons within their network who might be able to help them get these jobs. There are presently about 200,000 new jobs aggregated on Insidify.com, by far the largest collection of job postings in Africa. On the employer side of things. The fact that all the jobs are here means all the job seekers will soon enough start their job search here and engage other job seekers and professionals in professional interaction, so doing leaving a ton of data that can help employers get more information about prospects. The Insidify technology helps employers to search through our huge database of professionals and find the exact fit, based on a linguistic algorithm. It means employers can sift through millions of resumes for that one single person that meets their criteria easily without even opening an account on Insidify.com CN: The times have changed. Ten years ago, starting up a business was different. What benefit does these global times hold for small businesses? Okeleji: We live in the best of times. I think this is the best time to be an entrepreneur. Why? The world is at its flattest now. We are all connected and can learn from people across borders. You can learn from people’s success stories and failures if you have the discipline to learn. The walls have collapsed and it is easy for you to reach out, collaborate and learn. Business competition is now global. This also means that what you produce or the services you offer must have a global world view to it. So the fact that the world is now ‘flat’ is a major difference for people starting up new businesses to consider. It is a good thing because standards are moving up. If you are a good learner, you won’t have to learn by your mistakes alone. In addition it is the best of times particularly for Nigeria. The challenges we have now hold the potential for massive profit. In 10 years’ time, many of these problems would have been solved and it will be more difficult to get in. These are the best of times. CN: In five years time, what would Insidify be known for? The brief we have given ourselves at Insidify.com is to continue to innovate. In five years, we will still be at the cutting edge, giving the best value to our customers. By God’s grace, we’ll be all over Africa and other emerging markets, by then.