On May 30, more than 18,000 Kenyans tuned in live across TikTok for a jobs livestream. The 13-hour-long live event featured listings from over 100 employers and sparked thousands of engagements online.
Among the vacancies were positions for PSV drivers at Super Metro, stewards and waitstaff at Java House, beauticians in Nairobi’s Central Business District, and medical professionals sought by hospitals across Kenya.
“We had more than 100 active job posts from employers of all sizes,” says Anthony Munyi, founder of Rocket, a jobs placement platform, which hosted the event.
“The turnout was phenomenal. We went past our 12-hour schedule and ended up live for 13 hours, with over 250,000 likes and tens of thousands of comments from job seekers.”
The philosophy
Mr Munyi believes most job platforms fail to connect with the deeper needs of young job seekers beyond just matching CVs to vacancies.
“When you look at most job platforms today, they’re really basic, even boring,” he says. “They’re transactional. You want a job, you get a job. But we’re missing the bigger picture.”
According to Mr Munyi, the average job seeker is not just chasing a paycheck. They are chasing dignity, purpose, and a better life not only for themselves but for the people they love.
“The reason I’m trying to get this salary is, there’s someone I care about, my children, my parents, my siblings. There’s a greater journey people are taking. The job is just a part of that,” he says.
It is this deeper understanding of the emotional weight behind employment that Rocket is trying to tap into. Mr Munyi says the platform doesn’t just think about the next job a user wants, it looks at how to get them from an entry-level role to a career milestone, like the proverbial “corner office.”
Rocket was born from experimentation. At first, Mr Munyi created a WhatsApp group where he posted job opportunities. Then, using no-code tools, he built a basic prototype.
But it quickly became clear that the need, and the complexity of the problem, demanded something more robust.
As a former employer and someone who’s worked across multiple industries, Mr Munyi noticed glaring disparities in the CVs of job seekers.
“People at the lower end of the market- waiters, salespeople, cleaners-they’ve worked five jobs in five years, all different. Meanwhile, someone in banking or tech might have five years of steady, relevant experience. That lack of continuity is a huge issue,” he says.
Career mobility problem
In Mr Munyi’s eyes, Kenya has a career mobility problem. “You start out as an M-Pesa agent, then what? Where do you go from there? There’s no clear path upward. Most people jump from one unrelated job to the next just to survive.”
The consequences are twofold. Job seekers end up with fragmented resumes that don’t tell a coherent story, and employers struggle to find candidates with focused, cumulative experience.
“We need to solve this,” he says, adding that he combined digital tools and human-centred design. The Rocket team runs daily TikTok livestreams to engage users directly, often asking them what their dream job is. The responses are telling.
“You’d be surprised,” Mr Munyi says. “A lot of people have never been asked what their dream job is. They’ve never had time to think about it. They struggle to express it.”
As Rocket Jobs began taking shape, the team quickly realised they needed a tech-savvy partner to bring the platform to life. That’s when a friend of Mr Munyi, who had been involved in the early planning, mentioned someone who could help—Joshua Yullu.
“Then he was like, yeah, I can help,” Mr Munyi recalls. “Through that interaction, my friend was like, I think when we need to build this thing, Yullu can help. So he called Yullu.”
They asked him if he knew how to do front-end and back-end development using JavaScript. “Yullu looked at it and said, ‘Yeah, I can do this,’” Mr Munyi says. “And that's how I met Yullu.”
A global reach
What began as a short-term fix quickly evolved into a lasting partnership. “Initially, we just needed someone to fix a problem, and Yullu was the guy,” Anthony says. “But now, over a year later, we’re co-owners, co-investors, co-founders. We’re totally invested in the journey.”
That journey has taken off in ways they never expected. “We started something we didn’t think was going to become this big,” he says, sounding a little awed. Without any marketing outside Kenya, Rocket has attracted employers from over 15 countries including Germany, France, Norway, Poland and India.
“We’ve had like 1,800 jobs on the platform, and 250 of them are from India,” he adds. “It’s crazy.”
Their belief: Employers shouldn't have to pay to post jobs, and job seekers shouldn't have to pay to apply. That’s the core principle behind Rocket’s design, creating a frictionless, AI-powered platform that does the work for you.
When a job is posted, Rocket’s AI scans its database for matching candidates, analysing CVs and application behaviour, and then sends alerts in real-time. “That’s the stress-free life we want people to have. One of the things we’re very conscious about is ensuring that the employer retains control,” says Mr Munyi.
“The platform presents the information the way you want it.” For instance, when an employer has 50 or even 100 applicants, they can filter candidates based on years of experience, industries worked in, and how they answered certain questions.
From the data on their own platform, Mr Munyi says certain job types are already embracing AI rapidly.
“Social media managers, content creators, virtual assistants, they’re ahead of the curve. AI makes their work faster and more efficient.”
