AI-DRIVEN JOB MATCHING PLATFORM WITH AN INTELLIGENT CHATBOT ASSISTANT FOR MALAWI'S INFORMAL SECTOR

The AI-Driven Job Matching Platform with an Intelligent Chatbot Assistant for Malawi’s Informal Sector is a web-based recruitment system designed to address the inefficiencies and challenges associated with recruitment within Malawi’s informal labour market. The informal sector provides employment and income opportunities for a significant portion of the population, particularly individuals engaged in vocational activities such as carpentry, plumbing, bricklaying, electrical installation, gardening, welding, painting, cleaning, and other skilled services. However, recruitment within this sector largely depends on word-of-mouth referrals, personal networks, social media platforms, and physical searches for workers. These traditional approaches are often time-consuming, unreliable, and poorly organized, making it difficult for employers to identify suitable workers while limiting the visibility and employment opportunities of skilled individuals. To address these challenges, the proposed system introduces a centralized digital platform that connects employers with informal workers through intelligent job matching and automated conversational assistance.

The platform enables workers to register and create professional profiles containing information about their vocational skills, work experience, location, availability, and other relevant details. Employers can create job postings manually or use the intelligent chatbot assistant, which guides them through a series of conversational interactions to specify job requirements, location, budget, urgency, and other essential information. This approach simplifies the job posting process and makes the platform more accessible to users with limited technical knowledge. Once a job is posted, the AI-driven recommendation engine analyses the job requirements and compares them with available worker profiles using criteria such as skill compatibility, ratings, and availability. The system then generates ranked worker recommendations to help employers identify potentially suitable candidates more efficiently and make informed recruitment decisions.

The platform also incorporates user authentication, profile management, job management, and centralized database functionalities to support organized information storage and secure access to system services. The system is developed using PHP, MySQL, HTML, CSS, Bootstrap, and JavaScript, following the Agile Software Development Methodology. This methodology supports iterative development, continuous testing, feedback incorporation, and progressive improvement of the system throughout the development process. The proposed solution aims to reduce the time and effort required to find workers, improve the visibility of informal-sector professionals, simplify recruitment procedures, and promote more effective connections between employers and jobseekers. Furthermore, the platform provides an opportunity to apply artificial intelligence and chatbot technologies to a localized employment challenge that is often underserved by conventional recruitment systems. Ultimately, the project seeks to contribute to the digital transformation of Malawi’s informal labour market by improving access to employment opportunities, supporting efficient recruitment practices, and demonstrating the potential of intelligent web-based technologies to contribute to socioeconomic development. The effectiveness of these expected benefits will depend on the successful implementation, testing, and evaluation of the proposed system.