Placements.ng Launches To Connect Students With Internship Opportunities

The unemployment rate in Nigeria is on the high side. Hence, there is no gainsaying that there are very limited jobs available to accommodate the thousands of graduates churned out by Nigeria’s higher institutions. Since jobs are in short supply, it follows that internship opportunities will also be limited.

Unfortunately, when these internship and job opportunities are handy, it is difficult to find quality and qualified candidates to occupy these positions.

This and the loss of a contract because he could not find qualified interns prompted Oyaleke Ayobami to set up Placements.ng alongside Tayo Fagbohun, who is the Managing Director.

Speaking to Innovation Village about his startup-which he founded on February 3rd, 2016-Oyaleke said: “Placements.ng is a search platform for graduate and undergraduate Internship program in Africa, scaling from Nigeria. We are reducing the level of unemployment in Africa by equipping interns with necessary skills to make them employable in the labour market and connecting them with employers to work with.”

On how Placements.ng ensures quality control and prevent fake job ads on their platform, Oyaleke said: “Job portals have fake jobs on their website because they have left their primary responsibility for another thing, which is aggregation. Every Employer posting an opening on Placements.ng doesn’t have a direct access to make the posting live and visible to the public on our website. All controls toward publishing an opening lie in the hands of the administrators.”

The founder and CEO of Placement.ng lamented that the reason why many students do not get internship placement is because of their level of employability. He stressed: “There are always jobs for students that are employable. Most Nigerian students do not have much to offer than the certificate they have received in school and in which traditionally, every employer wants someone that has more skills and value to bring to the table.”

We all know that businesses have their challenges. For Placements.ng, the major challenge they are facing is basically consumer education. On how they are tackling this challenge, Oyaleke said that they have organised several internship orientations for students in Nigerian universities and they have indirectly worked with over 10 institutions across the country.

On the plans he has for Placements.ng, Oyaleke explained: “We are currently projecting a 3x year on year growth in revenue and resources. Ageing 20 Months officially and being a ground-breaker offering simple solutions to a difficult problem (Employment & Employability), we have been able to serve over 27,000 interns in Nigeria, over 2000 employers, and a successful conversion of over 4000 counting interns”, he concluded.