Project Name: Job Seekers
Organisation: British Council India
Project Location & Coverage Area: Pan India
Project URL: www.britishcouncil.in
Area of intervention: Education

India has 356 million people living in between the age of 10-24 years. Keeping in view that India is one of the youngest nations worldwide; British Council launched a mobile based initiative, Jobseekers in October 2012 that is a resource kit for advancement of livelihood and employment opportunities for youngsters in India. Based on storytelling formula, JobSeekers a series of 90 animated videos, which follow the story of four characters in their search for jobs. Through JobSeekers, young people can improve their vocabulary, pronunciation and listening skills. Jobseekers follow 4 characters – Neha, Arun, Farah and Rohit, as they tackle job applications and interviews while presenting themselves in the best possible light to potential employers. It also assists its users in writing CVs and job applications and giving interviews . The app helps a job candidate prepare for different stages of recruitment, starting from writing a resume to what to wear to an interview. The content is mainly aimed at giving tips or generic information regarding the job-seeking process. The application gives information in four areas: first, useful vocabulary for the workplace; secondly, know-how of writing job applications and CVs; thirdly, how to be successful at job interviews; lastly, developing listening skills.
The language content is aimed at pre-intermediate level learners of English, however the input on employability skills will be relevant to all. It can also be downloaded onto any internet enabled phone or tablet as a set of videos via Airtel Classroom. To include the feature phone users, Jobseekers is also available in an IVR (interactive voice response) form. The IVR product is audio only and has bilingual support. So, the dialogue taken from the animated videos are available in both Hindi and English.Each lesson also has a corresponding SMS, which is pushed to the subscriber after the completion of the lesson. The content is in the form of short videos. This visual experience along with the clear audio and simple instructions supports learning at a range of levels.

Reach & Road Ahead

The business model of Jobseekers takes a so-called freemium approach to monetization. The application can be downloaded for free on the mobile. The first unit of six input videos and a quiz is offered for free; with a pack of 12 additional units each of six videos and one quiz costing 90 rupees; INR 600 for the full course of 13 Units with 90 Episodes. The IVR product is available at Rs.599 for 78 episodes. Till now, the Android app has been downloaded 13,112 times and for the desktop version, 554 licenses have been sold.
The app is compatible with all Android operating systems and can be accessed on mobiles as well as tablets. Presently there are 10,000 to 50,000 installations of the app with an average rating of four on Google play.