Job Description

Scope of Work (SOW) for job matching platform technology provider for matching government registered job seekers and employers in Addis Ababa

      I. Activity Information

•  Assignment: Digital Job Matching
• Supervisor: Mercy Corps Ethiopia
• Duration: Approximately two years
• Date of Start: November 2020
• Prior experience: has past relevant assignments in similar technical areas.

    II.  Background

Mercy Corps is an international, non-governmental humanitarian relief and development agency with headquarters in the UK and USA operating in over 44 countries. The agency exists to alleviate suffering, poverty and oppression by helping people build secure, productive and just communities. Mercy Corps’ work emphasizes community-led, market-driven interventions through public, private and civic sector partnerships.

Mercy Corps has been operating in Ethiopia since 2004, working in rural, peri-urban and urban areas in five regional states - Somali, Oromia, Afar, Southern Nations Nationalities and Peoples, Amhara - and the capital city of Addis Ababa. We engage in both development and humanitarian work, and seek to integrate approaches, programs and geographies as much as possible. Our partners include government, academic institutions, development and private sector actors, civil societies and participating public. Mercy Corps has a growing portfolio of programs in Ethiopia that focus on food security; agriculture and livestock market systems development; maternal and child health and nutrition; youth economic productivity; resilience and humanitarian response. In Ethiopia, some of our donors include USAID, SIDA, DFID, and WFP. The Livelihood Improvement for Women and Youth (LIWAY) program is one of the project that MC is implementing with other partners which is funded by Swedish International Development Agency-SIDA and in a consortium led by Netherlands Development Organization-SNV; it is a poverty reduction program through Market Systems Development that aims to improve the incomes of 200,000 women and youth in Addis Ababa and surrounding areas.

  III. Major Issue to be addressed by the Digital Job Matching platform :

 LI-WAY aims to address the constraints critically impeding in the labor sector from accessing employment opportunities and better paying jobs to women and youth in Addis Ababa. According to Central Statistics Agency 2018 Urban Unemployment survey, the unemployment rate in Addis Ababa for women is around 26.3%. On the other hand, the unemployment rate for urban youth in Ethiopia was 25.3%, while that of rural youth was 3.1% (CSA, 2018). The corresponding figure in in 2018 for the youth in Addis Ababa was 24.1%. This shows that the youth in Addis Ababa are highly affected by the incidence of unemployment as compared to the youth in other urban and rural areas of the country. The CSA 2018 Urban Employment Unemployment survey portrays that the overall youth unemployment rate was 20.2% of which female youth experience higher unemployment rate (26.3%) than males (14.1%). Meanwhile, the private sector is a big player in the labor market in Addis Ababa, employing 62.8% of all wage earners, while the public sector provides 12% of employment opportunity. One major challenge in employment, however, is inefficient match-making functions provided by different actors in the market which in turn lead to unfilled vacancies, and lower employment rate among women and youth. This has impact on both demand and supply side: on the demand side women and youth are not accessing jobs within their skill level and on the supply side employers are not getting the right candidates for the open posts they have. As a mandated organ, the Labor and Social Affairs Office at different levels registers job seekers, both for self and wage employment. At the project starts, there are 172,000 (one hundred seventy-two thousand) job seekers in Addis Ababa registered in the BOLSA registry. From the diagnosis made, Labor and Social Affairs conducts job matching based on demands from the employers and has challenges in pro-actively looking for job vacancies and filling them with registered job seekers. 

Therefore, one of the objectives of the LIWAY program is to facilitate the provision of Digital job matching platform for matching the job seekers registering by Bureau of Labor and Social Affairs (BoLSA) and employers who needs the labor force so that the labor demand and supply will align, job seekers will be visible to many more employers, and the time and effort for getting a job for job seekers will be reduced. The assignment will cover to identify what job matching services BoLSA has in place now and will capitalize and improve their existing services by introducing feasible, relevant and inclusive digital platforms. The digital platform shall serve both “blue and white” collar types of jobs given the limited education level of unemployed women and youth in Addis Ababa. The ultimate aim of this intervention is to enable more women and youth to access employment opportunities and hence lead to employers experiencing greater productivity and growth.

 IV. Objectives

 The objective of this tripartite partnership with Labor and Social Affairs (LSA), the technology provider and Mercy Corps is to determine the appropriate digital job matching services that would be appropriate and relevant in a sustainable and inclusive (for all kind of job seekers) way to meet the needs of women and youth from a broad range of education background, skills level and experience. The partnership will focus on both designing and implementing digital job matching services that are more gender sensitive, use appropriate channels of dissemination, take less time, and are secure and less costly. The job matching platform should be easily and efficiently accessible to the poor women (both young and adult), youth (from age 15 to 35), meet the needs of the hiring industries for improved productivity. This activity aims to ultimately enable poor women and youth in Addis Ababa to become more visible to potential employers/better paying jobs and increase their income.

    V. Major Tasks of the organization/Partner

 Mercy Corps seeks to contract a job matching technology provider firm with extensive demonstrated experience relating to job matching, digital platforms and Human Resource.  Specific tasks include:

1. Revise the existing business model of digital job matching 

1. Understand the current job matching services availed within BoLSA and other actors in the market, and its challenges in meeting the needs of the young and adult women and youth;
2. Improve existing job matching services and adapt the new digital job platforms to increase access for the job seekers to employment opportunities;
3. Propose material and human resource needed, structure and recommend sustainable management of the business model for the digital job matching platform. The full business model to be developed should be accessible to both job seekers and employers. 
4. Clear indication of how registration of job seekers will efficiently captured and data will be managed centrally;
5. Find and adopt feasible ways to integrate datasets among similar/related platforms initiated by other government and non-government actors so that synergy can be created and maximum reach to target groups can be achieved;
6. The revised business model should also indicate the methodology on how actually all registered job seeker received the job alerts;
7. The service provider will be fully responsible for actual implementation of the new platform in close collaboration with BOLSA

Throughout the process, the digital job matching platform service provider will consult with Mercy Corps team for approval of strategic/major decisions.

N.B: MC strongly expect proposals that clearly indicate how digital job matching platform providers come up with a sustainable & impactful business model that the company will continue collaborating with BoLSA. This is not a onetime service provision, but an entry point for new business opportunity for the selected company! So, MC want to read the incentive package of the private firm (the applicant) involving in this assignment for all applying companies.

Job Requirements

 I.  Responsibilities of the partner

 Coordination

• During the agreement period, the incumbent company will coordinate and work closely with Mercy Corps focal person (s) and project team leader to share information and receive feedback on technical and programmatic issues and with Mercy corps Ethiopia’s Grants & Compliance focal person for financial performance & compliance issues.
• The incumbent company will also participate in a regular coordination/taskforce meeting with Mercy Corps and BOLSA focal persons to timely identify operational bottlenecks and provide enabling environment for the successful implementation of the intervention;

 Deliverables

• Update and revise deliverables based on comments from Mercy Corps management in light of recent developments in the business environment;
• Submit all final versions of deliverables on time and within budget.

    II. Time Frame & Location

A. Time Frame

The whole work will be completed within one year and six months, commencing In Beginning of November 2020 and will be finalized March 2022.

B. Location

The organization will work with Mercy Corps (LI-WAY) in Addis Ababa.

  III. Deliverables

1. Submit the work proposal document, including the timeline for assessing existing job matching services and proposed business model of newly digital job matching platform for approval to MC by Oct 31, 2020
2. If short listed based on the set criteria, presentation of proposed initial Business Model by Nov 15, 2020 for comments and feedback
3. If selected and requested as the candidate, incorporate feedback from MC and submit final proposal to Mercy Corps by Nov 20, 2020
4. Participate in the discussion/service provider work related meetings, sign MoU with BoLSA, facilitated by MC during the contract period.

IV.  Expected Outcome

The job matching platform will be easily and efficiently accessible to the poor women (both young and adult), youth (from age 15 to 35), meet the needs of the hiring industries for improved productivity. This activity aims to ultimately enable poor women and youth in Addis Ababa to become more visible to potential employers and increase their income

V. Competencies and Critical Success Factors

A two stage procedure shall be adopted in evaluating the proposal. The technical evaluation shall be carried out first, followed by the financial evaluation. The technical evaluation has 70% and the financial proposal weights 30%. The evaluation items, expectation and maximum score are presented in the table below. 

Evaluation Item:     

• Understanding of TOR, Proposed

Methodology and Product as well as

Approach while presenting for the LIWAY team

Expectation:

• Interpretation of what the assignment entails, prototype of the proposed business model and the key considerations that should be made to implement it successfully and sustainably.

 Max Score: 30

Evaluation Item: 

• Work-plan

Expectation:

• Clear sequencing of activities, time planning, 20 detail monitoring and evaluation plan

Max Score: 30

Evaluation Item:

• Prior Experience, Qualification, and capacity of the firm in terms of staff qualifications and experience

Expectation:

• A brief of past relevant assignments (in similar technical areas) and academic background and indicating scope, geographic coverage, staff involved, budget, and client (name and contacts) recommendation

 Max Score: 20

Evaluation Item:

Financial 30 Total 100

How to Apply

Interested and experienced service providers/consultants are required to send a brief proposal, an updated CV/profile of consultants that will actually engage in this task & references and all in English is required. Bidders should include full package of trade licenses and Tin Certificate. A complete budget breakdown for the mentioned work should be provided separately till 22^nd Oct.2020 5:00pm. The financial proposal should be detailed enough and should include any professional costs, Material costs and relevant administrative and logistic costs related to the work. It should also show the willingness and amount of cost share for the work.

Technical and financial proposal should be sent to tenders@mercycorps.org with reference “ LI-WAY Digital job matching platform”. Applications sent by other email account will not be considered.

• Please collect the Tender Package from www.mercycorps.org/tenders
• Mercy Corps reserves the right to cancel the bid

 Mercy Corps Ethiopia Tel: +251-11-110777 Fax: +251-11-110707