When you’re tasked with a university assignment, you don’t expect it to become a reality. But for Fatema Abdulazziz and Fatema Ahmed, their app project is making waves.
Fatema Abdulazziz and Fatema Ahmed were just going about their computer science degree as normal. And as part of their course, like with any, they were given a term project. That project was to create an app using their knowledge and background acquired through their studies.
“We were told to pair up and think of a useful app,” says Fatema Abdulazziz. And in filling a gap in the market, the girls decided to go close to home. “I have two sisters who are unemployed, and they faced challenges when registering for vacancies at the Ministry of Labour, but I also have two sisters working there too. We wanted to serve the unemployed,” says Fatema Abdulazziz.
Employ Me, aptly named, is an app created to help job seekers find work at the tap of a finger. “We wanted to be a channel between the unemployed and the Ministry whereby the job seekers don’t physically need to go to the Ministry, but can source their interests via the app,” says Fatema Ahmed.
“Considering that most vacancies don’t match the candidate’s background. We want our app to filter through the field selection to tailor the candidate’s criteria,” she adds.
Although the app is a stand-alone service, the Ministry will be the main channel. The job seeker will register at the Ministry and through it, they will get a list of vacancies appropriate to their skill set.
This project was created in a hypothetical situation until VIVA Bahrain got involved. Once the girls had prepared their project, they presented it to a panel of judges – you see where this is going?
“We were fortunate enough to have won the best project in the department and now we have been adopted by VIVA Bahrain to make our app a reality,” says Fatema Abdulazziz.
Although the whole project had exhausted every avenue and was fully detailed, the girls are essentially starting from scratch again, but still keeping the concept intact, because the app is actually going to be launched now and not just done for the purpose of getting a good grade.
“We have real plans now, not like in university- we weren’t taken that seriously because we were students but now we are looking at launching the app in six months and we are coordinating with the Ministry at the moment,” says Fatema Ahmed.
So what’s going to be featured on the app? “When the job seeker logs in they will automatically see the available jobs that meet their qualifications and requirements. It will then go through history of applications – those approved, declined and set up for interviews. Notifications will be available throughout to keep you informed. The essential part is that a job seeker can do it from home rather than going to the Ministry in person – it’s far more productive this way,” she adds. As for the look of the app, the girls are going for simplicity. At the end of the day it has a professional intention and the design reflects that. “We feel a lot of colour and intense graphics would detract away from the purpose of the app,” Fatema Abdulazziz notes.
As the girls are currently in training at VIVA Bahrain, they couldn’t thank the company enough for providing an outlet to materialise their dream. “We need to give our special thanks to VIVA because it opened a gate for us to make this happen and of course the University of Bahrain because without it this really would never have happened…!
