CodeLn

Recruiting Programmers is a hectic and time consuming process, it takes an average of 3 months to fill up key tech roles. Programmers on the other hand are either unemployed or underemployed in Africa. 

CodeLn helps recruiters to find their ideal dev and connects programmers to their dream job. We automate the entire tech recruitment reducing recruitment time from 3 months to 2 weeks.

It is our vision to become the global go-to marketplace for finding skilled tech talent in Africa. We are reducing the rate of unemployment of youths in Africa by connecting them to local and international job opportunities. 

It takes an average of 3 months to fill up a key tech role. Part of the challenges that recruiters face are:

• Where to find programmers

• Quality of programmers

• Long time-to-hire

The fact is, this is a global problem, recruiting Programmers is a hectic and time consuming process. According to Linkedin, there are over 440000 companies requiring software engineers in our target market (Nigeria & Ghana)  and the estimated spend of this market on this problem is $34million.

On the other hand, there are over 85000 Tech talent in Africa, most of them are either unemployed or underemployed. This discourages them from pursuing a career in tech thereby stifling innovation in Africa.

We help recruiters seamlessly find, test and, hire Programmers. Our solution automates the entire tech recruitment process end-to-end, thereby reducing the average time-to-hire from 3 months to 2 weeks. Programmers have easy access to jobs on the platform and they can pick and be matched with jobs. 

We have 3 key features on the platform.

• Marketplace: recruiters can easily find skilled talent

• Testing tool: recruiters can verify the coding skills of talent

• ATS: recruiters can seamlessly track applicants on the platform

The solution is a web application that was built using Django, Vue, Java and AI.

According to ISSER (Institute of Statistical, Social and Economic Research), the unemployment numbers for sub-Saharan Africa are expected to increase from 29.1 million to 31.3 million in 2019. It says unemployment among the youth; that is, remains much higher than among other cohorts of the labour force in most economies.

According to Linkedin, there are over 70,000 tech talent in Nigeria. This number is growing month on month because the government and non-profit organisations have formed several initiative to train youths on digital skills for free. But the missing bit is, they need to practice these skills in the real world unless the training will be irrelevant.

CodeLn's marketplace connects recruiters looking to hire tech talent to skilled African tech talent. We help our talent grow by assigning them workplace sample projects to build and add to their portfolio in order for them to have an attractive profile for recruiters. And for those that want to build a Startup, we help them through the process of building an innovative tech solution for local problems.

Unlike our competitors, our solution offers 3 unique values:

Vetting: Testing tool to verify the coding skills of programmers thereby reducing the risk of a bad hire by 70%. It also detects areas of skill improvement for software developers in order to help them improve on their skills.

Automation: The product automates the entire tech recruitment process from posting a job to testing candidates and presenting an offer. Thereby granting speed which reduces the time-to-hire from 3 months to 2 weeks, cutting down recruitment time by 80%. 

Optimisation: Optimising the entire recruitment process with a minimum  of  90% fill ratio for vacant positions. 

Our web application was built using Vue and Django while our An integrated development environment (IDE) for our testing platform was built using Java and Artificial Intelligence tools for cheat detection.

Web application: this comprises the job board, applicant tracking system and recommendation feature. Companies can easily post a job, receive recommendations based on skill matching feature, manage applicants, test applicants and present an offer.

Testing tool: candidates are tested using simulations of real world project. They are assigned a project similar to what they will be employed to build, they are given a monitored workspace (IDE) to build their project. This workspace is monitored using artificial intelligence for cheat detection.

Take a sneak peak into the testing bit. It is used to assess the coding skills of software engineers using real work projects.

During our initial market research, we contacted over 50 Programmers and over 50 prospective clients too. Their major challenges were:

Clients:

Where to find programmers

Quality of Programmers

Long time-to-hire

Programmers:

Access to qualifying jobs

Learning path

Skill improvement

Based on these feedback, we built CodeLn. We have a marketplace to help recruiters find programmers and expose programmers to qualifying jobs on the job board, we built a testing platform too measure quality of programmers and help them improve their coding skills, by automating the entire recruitment we reduce the time-to-hire by 80%, we have a designed learning path for Programmers. With all these, our solution addresses the problem identified.

Users: Clients( Recruiters & Programmers)

The current number of people we’re serving: 11016

The number we’ll be serving in one year: 20,000

The number we’ll be serving in five years: 50,000

Goal for 1 year:

In the next one year, we will help 500 Programmers get access to their dream jobs, fill up over 500 tech roles for Recruiters and we will help train over 1000 undergraduates on IT skills.

Goal for 5 years:

In the next 5 year, we will become the global go-to marketplace for finding skilled African Programmers. We will help 5000 Programmers get access to their dream jobs, fill up over 5000 tech roles for Recruiters and we will help train over 5000 undergraduates on IT skills.

Barriers for next one year:

For this year, the barrier is mostly centred around finances. We are working on scaling across Anglophone and Francophone Areas in Africa and expand our services to clients outside Africa but there is a limit to what can be achieved with limited funds. For our clients abroad, it is our aim to bring diversity into every tech company.

Barriers for next five year:

The barrier we foresee for the next 5 years is still financial. We hope to expand to more countries and increase the sales and engineering team size. This can be a challenge with limited funds.

We also foresee more demand for tech talent and less supply of talent in the market. This is because there is a huge gap between the skills fresh graduates have and what the job market needs.

We are working hard to grow our revenue, we are currently cash flow positive but our aim is to double that value monthly this year.

We are working on raising funds from friends and family, angel investors and VCs. This will sustain us for a longer timeline.

We partnered with IBM and Microsoft to train undergraduates on IT Skills that are relevant for the job market.

We are planning to expand across San Francisco, Berlin and France.

We did market research in Berlin in Q4 2019 and in Paris in Q1 2020, we were able to validate the market. We currently have clients in these regions. We have an on going market research in the US.

From our findings, we realised an interest in the African tech ecosystem and specifically an interest in African tech talent. These  regions are highly supportive of diversity and are already hiring from Africa, specifically from Nigeria, Ghana, Kenya and Ivory coast. Fortunately, these are areas where we have a good number of talent.

Our plan is to set up a sales team this year to get us clients in these two markets and outsource our talent to work for Companies remotely.

Full-time = 7

Part-time = 1

Contractors = 2

Elohor Thomas: she is native of Nigeria and the CEO of CodeLn. She has an MSc. degree in Systems Engineering (Artificial Intelligence Major) with vast experience in IT sales and recruitment. She has over 10 years experience working for top companies like Jumia, Africa's largest e-commerce platform.

Philisaiah Mwaluma: she is a native of Kenya and CTO of CodeLn. She has a degree in Software Engineering and she has gathered work experience working with Kenya's top Telco, Safaricom.

Dexter Ouattara: he is a native of Ivory Coast and the CPO of CodeLn. He has a degree in Software/Network Engineering and he has gathered work experience working with global firms like Epistrophe in Paris.

Dennis Nduta: he is a native of Kenya and COO of CodeLn. He has a degree in Cyber Security Engineering and he has gathered experience working in tech and entrepreneurship. 

We met at an accelerator program and we are all working on CodeLn full-time. Our experience in these various fields and our background in Engineering allows us empathise with both our users: recruiters and Programmers.

We have partnered with IBM and Microsoft to offer us tools and experts to train our Programmers.

Our solution is free to use for Programmers.

Clients pay us 12% - 15% of the Programmers annual gross salary.

We are pulling our strength towards growing our revenue, we are currently cash flow positive but our aim is to double that value monthly this year.

We are also fund raising for equity and grant.

I am applying to solve because I believe that the program has the right network and expert that will help me at this phase of my business. We are close to growth phase and we need expert guidance on how to scale our product and services. Solve is the perfect platform to help us grow. We also need partners in the areas listed below to help us scale our product and services.

CodeLn is a tech talent recruitment company, we partner with general recruitment agencies in order to be their hiring partner strictly for tech roles. The idea of the partnership is to help distribution of our services and use of our product in regions where we do not have a wide reach.

We also need legal and regulatory support and media exposure when we enter a new market.

The world is going digital hence the need to be digital inclusive. Covid 19 has opened the eyes of every employer to have an online process to handle operations incase of another pandemic. CodeLn comes to play here by helping companies own digital presence by granting them access to diverse teams of software engineers and supporting talent with the necessary software development skill to get their dream jobs or to build innovative tech solution that solves society's problems. 

Also, it will be a great privilege to meet with engineers from a unicorn like General Motors! Learning about solution scaling from them will definitely be the highlight.

CodeLn is a for-profit solution that addresses the SDG 8 goal by providing decent work for people of diversity. We are currently at the point of scaling our SAAS product hence the need to fundraise for our growth.