Printing CVs and two-round interviews: the hidden bill that keeps young South Africans out of work
A hiring boss says employers can cut the cost of applying for a job with a few simple changes, starting with the paper CV and the second interview.
Finding work in South Africa costs money before it pays any. Printing a CV, paying a fare to hand it in, travelling again for a second interview: the bill lands on the job seeker long before the first salary does. Heine Bellingan, co-founder of the hiring platform JOBJACK, says employers can bring that bill down with a handful of changes, and that most of them cost the business very little.
His argument is aimed squarely at entry-level work, the store-floor and counter jobs that carry a large share of young first-time applicants. Those are exactly the roles where the cost of applying bites hardest, because the person applying usually has the least money to spend on getting the job.
Bellingan’s first suggestion is that companies stop recruiting from a pile of printed CVs. It is 2026, he said, and collecting applications on paper is no longer necessary. The printing itself costs the applicant money, and so does getting to the shop or office to drop the document off. Moving that step online removes a charge the job seeker currently carries alone.
His second point concerns the interview. For a store-level role, he said, there is no need to put a candidate through two separate rounds. A second round multiplies what the applicant has to spend to stay in the running, because it means another trip and another fare, and it can mean another day away from whatever work or responsibilities they already have.
Bellingan’s third suggestion is about where employers put their effort. Businesses spend heavily on finding the right person for a head office job, he said, because a bad hire at that level is expensive. He argues the same care should go into filling a store-level post, because getting the right cashier matters just as much. The cashier is the person the customer deals with, the person on the floor who drives sales, and a business that does not invest in finding the right one can end up bringing people to interview who were never going to succeed in the role. That wastes the applicant’s time and money on a trip to an interview they cannot win.
None of this is presented as a cure for unemployment. Bellingan was clear that many things have to come together to get young people into work. His case is narrower and more practical: some of the barriers are easy to remove, and employers hold the lever. Technology has changed how hiring can be done, and the businesses that adjust can widen the pool of people who can afford to apply at all.
For a young person weighing up whether to spend the last of the week’s money on printing and transport for a job they may not get, that difference is not small. It is the difference between entering the race and staying out of it.
The Enquirer will keep following the practical side of South Africa’s jobs crisis, including the costs that sit between a young person and a first paycheque, and will report what employers and hiring platforms are actually changing.
Source: eNCA, The cost of unemployment tallied
