Safaricom and shady recruiting methods?
A couple of months ago, I received a Safaricom recruiting email targeting “KTs” and promptly put it up on the blog. I never thought much about it after that.
Then today, I read Steve Ntwiga’s interesting post. It seems like Safaricom left a bad taste in at least one potential recruit’s mouth, and like Steve I’m curious to know whether this was an exception, or whether Safaricom’s M.O. is no different from the average Kenyan organization (let’s start with no response to emails).
Did any of you respond to the email? Know anyone who did? Please leave a comment on Steve’s blog and circulate the post to as many people as you can…might be a strong case for a viral campaign on how not to do recruiting 101.
Thanks for this highlight.
I will definately blog about it to spread the word around.
Have a nice weekend KP!
Hi saw this on ntwiga’s blog and I will be sharing it since I know we have very different readership so the wider the message gets, the better!
Hi, Kenyan Pundit,
I have put a link to your blog in my blogs:
i) drifting-words.blogspot.com (On Drifting, Wavy Words)
ii) ritch-african.blogspot.com (African Affairs)
Please put links to my blogs in your blog.
Cheers!
Sort of comfirms what I had thought. Saw the advertisements, but it was rather weak in what they were lookin for. It did not mention what the engineers would be, doing and the characteristics they wanted in an engineer. Basically they came across as jokers. Since growth of the network is dependent on technical manpower, maybe a comparision of hiring rates, and quality is positively correlated with actual profitablility. Maybe someone should come up with a “geek” index, an index that would determine the scalability of a mobile phone’s profitability.
I remember being tasked to put up this advert for http://www.mwalimu.com (see here -www.mwalimu.com/adverts/safaricomMgrEng_07_07_2006.html
)
I even communicated via email with the Njeri Kinyanjui and checked the safaricom website then to make sure the poster i was given was valid. I did also notice that during the same timeframe, the said advert appeared for several days on nationmedia website.Everything seemed all valid.
Probably the idea had merits
{Why USA/UK? I suppose:
-more kenyan engineers in USA/UK than any other country
Oops. Last part of the posts to read:
{Why USA/UK? I suppose:
-more kenyan engineers in USA/UK than any other country
-USA/UK to put safaricom on the bleeding edge of technology
-etc
}
but from what i hear, it was probably not executed correctly or ….whatever
Ory, some weirdo/spam comment has posted on your blog, better delete it fast!
Good looking out, that’s the third time he’s tried to put something up this week…not sure how he’s getting through my usually reliable spam killer.
Girl….you have a spam commentor on your blog.:sad:
I had the same experience of responding to a posting that they had and they (Safaricom) did not follow through. Apparently, based on my research while preparing for the so-called “interview”, I found out that Safaricom operates on a 114billion Kenya Shillings loan which raised question marks given the tech bubble burst. Secondly, last year 2006, they posted a12billion shilling profit which still leaves them in a hole worth 102billion Shillings. This justifies the statement posted earlier that they have to post profits otherwise the banks will move in.
Anyway, having visited Kenya from the US, I also discovered that Celtel now offers better rates and that Safaricom keeps on playing the catchup game with Celtel. Celtel still leads the Kenyan Tech market with Technology. This is just a little of what I can think offhead, but I have been doing a lot of research and more is yet to com…..
I attempted to make an argument like this once, but I did not get an especially uplifting response. I’m hoping your writing on this topic turns out better than mine did. Continue the sterling work.
[...] ent or politicians to a septic tank it kept popping up in my inbox. And then I read that Ory and Steve Ntwiga have had similar reservations about this little email, that looks like a colossal ga [...]