The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) is working on the development and launch of a mobile application to help Kyrgyzstan’s citizens receive a quick and convenient job search and assist employers in finding a skilled workforce in the Central Asian nation. 

The main beneficiaries of the app are set to be citizens who have lost their jobs, labour migrants forced to return home due to the closure of borders in coronavirus-hit 2020, along with local employers and businesses. According to the Socioeconomic and Vulnerability Impact Assessment and Policy Response prepared jointly with the Asian Development Bank (ADB), the UNDP and the Institute for Economic Policy Research under Kyrgyzstan’s Ministry of Economy, the country’s unemployment rate was projected to reach 21% by end-2020. The projection was based on widespread job cuts driven by the COVID-19 pandemic. 

“We aim to develop the mobile app to collect data on the best available vacancies in real-time. It will function to find relevant employers in short time, or to enable them to find you. We tried to ensure that users are able to find vacancies in different fields and optimize the search process as much as possible for better experience. For example, the application will suggest spelling options for a vacancy to find a match in the database, and advanced search will help narrow down the search area,” said Mirbek Okenov, director of ULUT Soft LLC, a company involved in the app’s development.

The mobile application was initially part of the “Skills for Reintegration” pilot measure of Germany’s Deutsche Gesellschaft für Internationale Zusammenarbeit (GIZ) in 2018 and was handed over to UNDP for further development.

“The mobile application contains a solid database of vacancies and provides a fairly convenient toolkit. Furthermore, search options can be applied to different regions of Kyrgyzstan, which may expand the range of offers and increase the likelihood of finding the largest number of suitable vacancies,” a project statement said. “Users can also choose to be notified of new vacancies that match their search criteria. The mobile application also features the online trainings and upskilling on various topics, so, while looking for a situation or waiting for an employer's response, users can improve their qualifications or attain new skills.”