Wamly has made its one-way video interview software free to help SMEs curb unemployment.
- Unemployment is one of the biggest, growing threats to South Africa’s future.
- As the largest market of employers, SMEs are uniquely positioned to address and reduce unemployment.
- Wamly is a local company who built custom one-way video interview technology to help businesses find, review and recruit new employees more effectively with a significantly reduced ‘time-to-find’.
- The company hopes that, by giving this away to time-pressed owners and entrepreneurs for free, they can finally start filling vacant positions quickly, without jeopardising their existing business obligations.
Employment in South Africa, especially post-lockdown(s) is at a record low. As the largest employment force in the market, the onus is on the hundreds of our surviving small businesses to help ease the misery of joblessness - without going bankrupt in the process.
But which business owner, entrepreneur or SME manager has the time to deal with hours upon wasted hours of recruitment interviews, while still putting in 90-hour weeks just to make sure their existing employees will still have a job next month?
Growing SMEs may be the country’s solution, but recruiting is one of the SMEs’ biggest problems.
As entrepreneurs themselves, Wamly owners Marnus Broodryk (pictured) (of Shark Tank South Africa fame) and Francois de Wet, know exactly how laborious it can be to hire labour (ironically). That frustration birthed a digital product named ‘Wamly’ (a portmanteau of ‘work’ and ‘family’), which has successfully cut the traditionally lengthy recruitment process down to a fifth of what it was, while also improving decision-making.
Wamly lets users create question and task templates, which applicants then answer via recorded video. These video responses are then reviewed in the recruiters own time - skipped, filtered or flagged - as well as shared for comment with other members of the organisation.
“There are those interviews - most of them, actually - where you just know the person sitting across from you is the wrong fit for the role,” explains Marnus. “Now, you can just hit ‘skip’ and move onto the next, hopefully better application, rather than grinning and nodding through the rest of the interview.”
By giving Wamly away for free (no cost for up to 30 interviews per month), they hope the time-challenged SME recruiters will finally be able to bring the necessary new people on board, without them having to take as much focus away from their critical day-to-day roles. By making employing easier, they are making employment more likely, helping, in a small way, to reduce the looming cloud of unemployment.
“The level of time-saving is what we’re most proud of,” continues Francois, “and customers like Momentum tell us it’s saving them around 80% of their interview time. If this is the case, we can help employ thousands of people into organisations who just don’t have the time to dedicate to finding them. Companies get better work families, and South Africans can feed their own.”
“We hope this encourages businesses to start actively hiring again,” adds Marnus. “Few SMEs can justify any form of additional expense right now but, if we can help a few of them employ just a few extra people, then we’re helping to reduce the burden of unemployment, not just complaining about it.”
All small businesses can find Wamly’s free offer here and businesses that require more interviews or functionality, can get in touch with the Wamly team to discuss their unique needs or challenges.
