What's up - you have a job for me?

About 850 WhatsApp groups nationally, each with thousands of members.

- Hein Kaiser

With nearly a third of the labour force in South Africa unemployed, many are turning to community-driven solutions.

With unemployment officially at 32.1% in the third quarter of last year, traditional methods of job searching like advertisement responses, career expos, recruitment agencies, and even LinkedIn are being supplemented by grassroots initiatives on WhatsApp.

The sustained rise of WhatsApp job groups may prove to be an effective recruitment tool for companies and job seekers alike. There are an estimated 850 of these groups nationally, each with thousands of members.

"Job groups like these bring opportunities directly to the people," said Karen Lloyd, an administrator of several WhatsApp and Telegram groups for job seekers in Johannesburg and surrounds.

These groups operate at a local level, connecting people to job listings within and outside of their communities, many times before positions are widely advertised or as the sole platform for recruiting applicants.

"The immediacy is what makes it work," Lloyd said. "We post jobs as they come in and members can apply straight away."

The rise of WhatsApp platforms may signal a shift in how recruitment is done, especially in areas where access to technology like laptops or data-heavy job portals is limited. WhatsApp is accessible, familiar, and direct.

Lloyd's groups alone have over 5,000 members, and she estimated hundreds of jobs have been filled through their postings in the past few years.