Meet 24-year-old entrepreneur providing 24,000 interns with internship placements

In a time where job hunting and unemployment is overwhelming youths and indeed the country, 24-yr-old corp member, Ayobami Oyaleke, has turned to a cult figure among his contemporaries in that instead of searching for jobs, he is helping undergraduates get a place of attachment, which has in turn provide jobs for some others.

Baffled by the ever growing rate of unemployment and cumbersome means of searching for place of attachments for students and graduates alike, Oyaleke, who is the CEO of placements.com.ng, stated that the bid to provide solution to make the whole process seamless and also crystallise all the potential values inherent in that sector for career development, enterprise development and job creation is the brain behind starting the platform.

The graduate of Federal University of Technology Akure (FUTA) hinted that the capture of global events by the magnet of technology has made it almost impossible to look past technology as a means of excelling in modern day business.

Oyaleke said: “I have decided to embrace these power of technology to reduce the stress, cost or risks involved in securing a place of internship by Nigerian undergraduates and not only providing these connections, but empowering graduates with powers and tools to make them employable in the labour market.”

In its 16 months of existence, which prides it as the first online organisation to offer an attachment platform for students and graduates, placements.com.ng has been a groundbreaker, offering simple solutions to difficult problem (employment) by connecting job seekers or interns and employers the easiest way possible.

“We have been able to serve over 24,000 interns nationwide, over 1000 employers, and a successful conversion of over 4000 and counting interns. We also record over 100, 000 page views monthly. We have attracted partnerships with global giant brands like Google, A-list banking industries in Nigeria etc. We also secured a recent partnership with ScholarX (to provide interns with scholarships, to have internship abroad); we have gotten recognition by major media brands in Nigeria. Over 300 Tertiary higher institutions in our database, we have what we do at heart,” Oyaleke enthused.

Interestingly, for Oyaleke, money is secondary to the passion and thirst for “creating impacts and value by being one of the solution providers to the issue of unemployment in Nigeria.”

He explained that “To help tackle this prominent (unemployment) problem, we need to build a great product and also increase our conversion rate in graduates and undergraduates getting employment in Nigeria and to be successful at this, we need to be sustainable/generate revenue to reach out to more employers and to get placements for interns.

“We operate a business to business strategy; we charge service fee on the side of the employer for making use of the premium part of our platform, but normally, any employer looking for interns will be able to use our portal to do this for free seamlessly.”

Like every other business with an objective to stand the test of time, placements.com.ng also has its short and long term goals.

“We are actively working to be an open platform to firms to become their major sourcing platform for the intelligent interns, thereby creating value for the firms and also helping interns connect with them. The implementation of all these will have a positive ripple effect on the economy and push Nigeria towards the realisation of the vision “2020”, which is to be among the 20 most developed nations in the world by the year 2020.

“Of course we have challenges too. One major concern we have been facing is the lack of support from the government and some other private organisations in terms of facilities and funding to help increase the rate to which we can achieve all these, but we are hopeful that in the nearest future, when we become a household name, which is pretty soon, we’d have scaled many hurdles,” Oyaleke said.