Vocamina - Mining job portal
Peruvian mining sector specialized employment portal.
Bumeran, Computrabajo, and LinkedIn are the go-to platforms for job searching, but at the same time, they are also the platforms where labor scams are most prevalent.
Unfortunately, the sector that is most involved in these scams is mining. The sector indirectly benefits more than 8 million Peruvians.
Mining companies are aware of this, which is why they post information about the issue; however, they have not found a solution that completely stops this problem.
To sum it up, specialized mining human talent faces three problems: completely decentralized mining industry job offers, identity impersonators who create accounts with domain names similar to mining companies (to scam or sell their personal information) and gender inequality.
Concerning data:
- According to journalistic reports, labor scammers can extract from $150 to $1000 from each person scammed.
- In 2019, the female participation in the Peruvian mining industry was 6.6% according to the 2020 Mining Employment Report.
Vocamina is a web-based employment portal specialized in the mining sector. Its main function is to provide mining companies with a direct channel to reach specialized talent in the field; additionally, with validation processes, we can eradicate impersonators who scam or sell their profile information and generate a culture in favor of gender equality.
Currently, mining companies and contractors in Peru provide 250,000 direct jobs, of which only 16,500 are women. There is a great gender inequality in the sector. Additionally, a high amount of labor scam attempts by impersonators hinders finding a real job in the sector.
Someone who wants to dedicate themselves to the mining sector faces gender inequality, labor scams, and malpractice job offers.
With Vocamina, we promote gender equality, completely mitigate labor scams related to the sector, and moderate job offers to ensure good practices.
Rodrigo Chambe is a Business Management Engineer with a specialization in innovation. Throughout his life, he lived with his geologist father, which allowed him to understand the mining industry from a young age. Later, during his university studies, he specialized in business innovation and quickly got involved by participating and winning hackathons. In 2020, he founded Divelia, a software development and innovation agency, allowing him to develop innovative and technological ideas for more than 15 companies in 8 countries located in Latin America, North America, and Europe, along with Cristian Ycochea.
Cristian Ycochea is a Software Engineer, because during his life he wanted to develop solutions that improve people's lives. Since he graduated, he developed different digital products for mining companies, which allowed him to have a real understanding of the industry and the needs of these organizations.
Indra Bobadilla is a student of Economics and International Business. Currently, she is part of WIIE Venture, an innovation hub that connects professional women with innovation ecosystems in Latin America. Her knowledge aims to promote gender equity within the mining sector.
Alvaro Lupaca is a Geologist Engineer. Throughout his life, he was passionate about the mining industry, so he pursued a career that kept him within the industry.
All members of Vocamina are passionate about transforming the mining industry.
With the help of our close proximity to the mining sector through our family, we were able to quickly identify pain points. Additionally, when consulting multiple student communities in the field (GEOUPC, GEOGROUP UNI, SME PUCP), they mentioned it as a problem of great impact, as it completely hindered the search for job offers due to their fear of being scammed.
- Improving financial and economic opportunities for all (Economic Prosperity)
- Prototype: A venture or organization building and testing its product, service, or business model
Our solution proposal is innovative due to the thorough moderation of customers with the goal of centralizing job offers based on our culture of gender equity and anti-fraud that the mining sector needs. Additionally, by basing ourselves on a hyper-vertical solution, we can specifically specialize in the needs of users and customers in the mining sector.
Launching the official version of Vocamina.
- With our software team, develop a version that automates the registration of mining companies and implements an exhaustive verification process to not register any type of impersonator.
Detection and centralization of verified job portals of 50 mining companies.
- With the help of the Mining Innovation Hub, after the support of MIT, we will be able to directly contact multiple mining companies to collect social networks, job portals and verified websites.
Promoting gender equality in the 50 allied mining companies.
- With virtual workshops, transforming them into gender equality promoters with changes that demonstrate it to the outside and inside of the organization.
The platform will be developed as an online platform in Nuxt.js and Python. In addition, it will have a mobile version in Flutter.
- Software and Mobile Applications
- Peru
Currently, we centralize 17 mining companies, not yet being our ally, and we attend to 250 people who regularly consult our website.
For 2023, we want to reach 10,000 people who regularly consult our website, as it represents a significant pain point for the sector.
Currently, our main barrier is economic, as our reach is growing slowly. Although we are able to establish alliances with more communities, it is not enough to reach the whole market and day by day scammers / impersonators collect more leads.
GEOUPC
- Student community of geotechnics from the Peruvian University of Applied Sciences, currently they are helping us by giving us feedback on our solution, promoting the solution with their internal team and disseminating information to their external audience.
GEOGROUP UNI
- Student community of geotechnics from the University of Engineering, currently they are supporting us by disseminating our publications on their social media.
SME PUCP
- Mining, metallurgy, and exploration society of the Pontifical Catholic University of Peru. We are currently making direct contact with the faculty of Mining Engineering of the university.
Our business model is based on a subscription model. Mining companies can pay a monthly fee in order to attract more talent to their organizations, as they currently face a significant problem due to a shortage of talent according to S&P Global.
To finance the initial stage of Vocamina, we are applying to this call for funding, as funding from MIT could impact 7.5 million Peruvians. Additionally, we are seeking funding from universities or institutes; however, it is complicated, as they do not usually have a budget defined for these initiatives.
