By Kerryn Le Cordeur

Luckysters.com is a search engine and aggregation site for job seekers, founded by Themba Sikhosana in September 2009. I recently had the opportunity to ask Sikhosana a few questions about this initiative; how he feels it benefits job seekers; and his plans to develop it in the future.

While Luckysters.com originally focused on profiling competitions and giveaways, Sikhosana soon realised that there was not enough content of this nature to keep the website current on a daily basis. He commented that: “Fortunately the internet is very dynamic – it can change instantly – and it was therefore easy to shift our focus to the job market to help job hunters find employment quickly and conveniently.” As a result, the site now aggregates career opportunities and vacancies which are sourced from employer career web pages, as well as from government websites. Sikhosana explained that the Luckysters.com team does not source content from recruitment agencies and other free job sites, because he feels it is important to “advocate quality instead of quantity.”

This mindset is also what sparked the idea for Luckysters.com, as Sikhosana experienced firsthand the tedium involved in searching for a job online and saw that there was a gap in the South African market for a website that pooled the vacancies from various companies onto one browser in the same way that Digg aggregates news. He explained that: “The decision to start the website was really a way of providing a solution to the problem I had identified, instead of complaining [about it].”

So, with these vacancies pooled and ready to be searched, who does Sikhosana feel is the site’s target market? He mentioned that the content is directed at job seekers of all levels, including high school students seeking bursaries and learnerships; tertiary students wanting bursaries and internships; and experienced professionals seeking job opportunities. The decision to include content for students came about because: “They are our future target market as job hunters for the future. If we catch them now, that will allow us to develop a long-term relationship with them. The cherry on top is that students generally have free access to the internet on campus, so there was no way we’d not serve this market.”

In terms of promoting Luckysters.com to its target market, Sikhosana said that it is promoted through word-of-mouth; social networking sites like Facebook and Twitter; as well as via email newsletters. He added that he makes use of a unique marketing strategy called ‘Puff ‘n Pass’, whereby users are encouraged to forward the email newsletters to their friends who are also on the look-out for employment. And because of the positive feedback the website receives, it makes sense to rely on the users themselves to spread the word.

However, the success and positive feedback isn’t enough to satisfy Sikhosana, who is developing an improved version of the website due for launch in June. He said that: “Users can look forward to a sleeker website with better functionality and an improved search engine,” ultimately paving the way for Luckysters.com to be “Africa’s leading search engine for employment.”

Aside from maintaining Luckysters.com, which he does “after hours and on weekends,” Sikhosana works for the SABC as an Assistant Financial Analyst for 5FM; Metro FM and Good Hope FM, using knowledge he acquired from completing a Bachelor of Commerce degree in Accounting at the University of the Witwatersrand. He grew up in Standerton, Mpumalanga, where internet access was limited, and therefore really sees the benefits the internet offers and how it is changing the world. He feels that: “Its greatest benefit to humankind is allowing everyone access to limitless information about everything, because knowledge is still power.” “So much has been done over the first 20 years of the internet’s existence… I look forward to the next 20 years, and it is my wish and hope that South Africa and Africa at large will raise their hands and be counted in the evolution of this great medium,” he added.

Click here to view Sikhosana’s personality profile, and visit www.luckysters.com for more information.