Sourcing Talent in Kenya, Crossover With Harleen Jabbal talks to Charlotte de Rider
Charlotte De Ridder: Managing Director, Yusudi
12th June, 2017
Yusudi is a term derived from two words, the Kiswahili Kusudi and Youth. Yusudi aims at giving youth a purpose to achieve their goals.
Harleen Jabbal of Crossover Kenya sat down with Yusudi Managing Director, Charlotte De Ridder to find out more about the company. Charlotte and her co-founder spent 6 months researching the situation in the country in regards to youth and employment. In the end, they came up with Yusudi to create a program to help young people get employed.
According to Charlotte, most youth in Kenya want to get a corporate job. When they graduate from university, they do not really know where they want to be in life. They just follow what their parents and the system has told them to do which leaves them ignorant of what they are really passionate about.
At Yusudi, they do not tell you what you are good at. Instead, they ask questions to help you understand what your good at and what you want to do. They are different from other recruitment firms as they are passionate about people and place a lot of effort and attention on every person that goes through their program.
Being a female entrepreneur had its ups and downs. On the positive side, being female helped Charlotte and Yusudi connect easily with other female business owners. However, being female and young led some to be skeptical of Charlotte’s and Yusudi’s expertise until they saw evidence of their capabilities.
For Charlotte, her life motto of Experience, Explore and Evolve led her to move to Kenya after graduating university in order to set up her own company. Additionally, both her parents are entrepreneurs so she grew up with an entrepreneurial mindset making starting her own company the easy choice. She sees her crossover moment as being when she first came to Kenya and decided to return to set up her own company. Everything else fell in place from that moment.
To find out more about Yusudi and the its passionate managing director, tune into the Crossover Kenya show here: https://youtu.be/YbH1JemIMAY
