Kwara has launched a Customer Success Traineeship programme seeking to help young graduates fast-track their careers in fintech.
In partnership with Catalyst Fund and Cambridge University, Kwara is currently recruiting for the first cohort to kick off in January 2021, and you can apply here.
The Customer Success Traineeship programme has been developed as a two-part customer support training programme. The first three (3) months of the programme will be centred on providing general customer support while getting up to speed on Kwara’s technology and customer needs. In months 4-6, trainees will focus on specializing in either customer onboarding or customer success.
Along the way, trainees will also be coached by the team’s customer success experts, and benefit from peer exchange within their training cohort. Throughout the programme, trainees will also be evaluated based on their deliverables and interactions with customers, in an effort to accelerate the learning curve for trainees to grow into full-time professionals.
What is different about the Customer Success Traineeship programme?
Unlike those offering typical time-bound internships, Kwara’s goal is to hire successful trainees in order to expand their customer success team. The trainees will also provide feedback to Kwara so they can continue to improve the programme, and mentor future trainees as they build leadership skills within the organization.
To de-risk the inaugural cohort, the first round of junior professionals will be hired through the Catalyst Fund Internship program. This removes the recruitment burden from startups, funds internships for up to 6 months, and provides management support.
Since early-stage startups typically don’t have full HR departments, Catalyst Fund’s programme helps fill the gaps. As they grow the internship, the programme seeks to be placing more junior talent in roles that fill critical gaps at startups, including new positions identified through Catalyst Fund’s venture-building work.
Kwara’s programme is among the first Kenyan startup graduate schemes, and hopefully it can serve as an example to other companies that can invest in junior talent since supporting internships and apprenticeships are crucial to solving youth unemployment and underemployment in Kenya.
Growing the Job Opportunities
Although there are a handful training programmes targeting junior professionals in Kenya, there certainly aren’t enough to generate opportunities for the 500,000 to 800,000 young Kenyans entering the job market each year.
Moreover, those that do exist are mainly run by multinational corporations that have ported over programmes from other markets or government entities.
Meanwhile, Kwara who has been a member of Nairobi Garage based at our Kilimani Office Space, has also announced that its first SACCO outside Kenya went live. Based in South Africa, Everyday Savings SACCO is the first to use the Kwara solution outside of Kenya.
Congratulations to #TeamKwara on this great milestone. We are happy to be part of this great journey. More details on this milestone will follow.