Orooma: Building Sudan’s First Digital Recruitment Platform in a Low-Trust Market

Orooma started with a simple promise: make hiring in Sudan faster, fairer, and searchable. The timing was both good and difficult. Job seekers were eager to try anything that moved them beyond word-of-mouth and WhatsApp forwards. Many business owners, on the other hand, distrusted new systems and were wary of paying for a platform before they saw proof that it could deliver candidates who were better than what their informal networks already produced.

I joined to help turn a solid product into a business that companies would trust. The first months were about listening and translating. We sat with HR managers, founders, and line supervisors across telecom, FMCG, mining, and engineering and asked what “a good hire” meant in their context. That work turned into more than twenty tailored sales presentations and offers. Each deck used the company’s language, showed relevant talent pools, and made clear which parts of their hiring flow we would actually improve: sourcing speed, screening consistency, interview throughput, and record-keeping.

On the product side, we leaned on a user-centered design approach. We watched how people really used the site and app, not how we wished they would. Small decisions added up: clearer job categories for Sudan’s market, fewer steps to complete a profile, stronger guidance on CV uploads, and faster feedback loops when an application moved forward or stalled. Those changes raised user retention by about 35%. It wasn’t magic; it was removing friction and telling users what to expect at each step.

Discovery mattered as much as usability. I put in place a straightforward SEO plan that focused on the searches people were actually making in Sudan—specific job titles, sectors, and cities in both English and Arabic. We cleaned up on-page basics, built content around common search intents (how to write a CV that passes quick screening, what to expect in a telecom interview, salary ranges by role), and earned links from credible local sites. Organic traffic grew 78% over twelve months, which lowered our dependence on paid campaigns and gave employers a steadier flow of candidates.

Marketing was practical rather than flashy. We ran social and search campaigns that did one of two things: bring in qualified candidates for high-demand roles, or put Orooma in front of companies that were actively hiring. We tracked every campaign against a small set of KPIs—cost per qualified application, employer activations, and time to first shortlist. The result was a 32% increase in social followers and a consistent 10% month-on-month rise in app downloads, but the metric that mattered more was conversion to completed profiles and employer requests. We cut spend where followers didn’t turn into candidates and doubled down where the funnel held.

Direct outreach complemented the top-of-funnel work. We collaborated across product, data, and partnerships to run targeted email and WhatsApp programs for alumni groups, professional associations, and graduating cohorts. The CV database grew by roughly 60%, and more than twenty new companies registered and posted roles during that period. For many of them, the deciding factor was not a campaign but a short onboarding call that mapped Orooma’s steps to their existing process and showed how to run their first requisition without getting stuck.

We also shipped the iOS app. The goal wasn’t parity for its own sake; it was reach and reliability. Many users in Sudan hop between devices and connections. A lean app with offline-friendly screens and clear status updates reduced drop-offs during profile completion and made it simpler to apply on the go. The app supported our retention gains by making notifications timely and actions obvious.

Not everything worked. Business hesitation didn’t disappear just because our numbers looked good. Some HR teams feared losing control of their process, or they had internal rules that required multiple signatures before paying a new vendor. In a few cases, the first job posts were poorly written and underperformed; we learned to provide templates and quick edits so roles would be discoverable and attractive. On the candidate side, we underestimated how much hand-holding first-time applicants needed to reach a complete, credible profile. We added tooltips, examples, and short in-app prompts, and completion rates improved.

If I were starting again, I would publish a public “quality bar” earlier—clear standards for job posts and profiles—so both sides knew what “good” looks like. I would also formalize a short pilot program for hesitant employers with defined success criteria and a firm end date. That would speed up procurement discussions and reduce the cycle between interest and paid adoption.

What I took from Orooma is that trust is built in layers. A clean interface helps, but the real work is making sure the next step always makes sense, the metrics you report map to outcomes employers care about, and the first experience for both sides is well supported. In a market that questions technology by default, consistent delivery is the only argument that sticks.