On 5 April 2007, the free "Job Search" mobile service of the State Employment Service was presented. The presentation was attended by Volodymyr Halytskyi, Director of the State Employment Service; Olena Sharaievska, Director of Social Sector Projects at Softline; and Liudmyla Fokas, Head of the Department for the Organisation of Special Services of the State Employment Service. |
The new service of the State Employment Service is based on mobile services: information on vacancies can now be obtained by sending a text message to 730, by calling the same number from a mobile phone to speak to an operator (voice service), or via the WAP portal of the State Employment Service (wap.dcz.gov.ua). The service works online, based on up-to-date vacancies from employers across the country. The mechanism is very simple: the user is registered automatically by sending a text message stating the city where they are looking for work and the desired position. In response to the request, vacancies are matched automatically and the search results are promptly sent out, stating the relevant vacancy, the salary and the employer's phone number. The subscriber will receive such text messages for 7 days. The "Job Search" mobile service was developed by Softline specialists and runs on Softline's content provider platform for interaction with mobile operators. The platform's operating system is Linux. The platform is built on J2EE technology. Informix is used as the DBMS. The platform is installed on the equipment of the State Employment Centre and integrated with the "Social Services and Fund" subsystem group of the Unified Information and Analytical System "State Employment Service of Ukraine". "The mobile service we offer is unique, since suitable jobs are selected from a single all-Ukrainian vacancy database; moreover, the service is completely free for the public," emphasised Olena Sharaievska, Director of Social Sector Projects at Softline. The platform is integrated with all mobile operators in Ukraine. Thus, subscribers of any mobile operator (Kyivstar GSM, UMC, Life, Beeline) can submit a job search request. In the first three months of this year, mobile operators sent some 800,000 promotional messages about the new service. As a result, 210,000 people registered to receive text messages with vacancies. About 600,000 text messages with vacancies have been sent to them. Residents of Donetsk, Zaporizhzhia, Dnipropetrovsk, Kyiv and Lviv are the most active job seekers. The most popular vacancies are for drivers, welders, fitters and electricians. Thanks to the introduction of modern, prompt and targeted ways of providing information to job seekers, in January–March 2007 the employment service reduced the time needed to fill vacancies from 13 to 11 days, and the time citizens spend looking for work fell by 3 days. Overall, this contributes to the main social mission of the State Employment Service: meeting the needs of job seekers and employers as quickly as possible. |