This article was co-authored by Malcolm MacDonald, CIO at YES, and Saurabh Kirtani, Senior Product Manager at Microsoft
Youth unemployment is one of South Africa’s most persistent challenges with more than half of young people struggling to secure their first job. At the same time, employers hesitate to hire people without experience, and youth cannot gain experience without employment. Solving this issue requires more than policy - it requires data systems that can match candidates to opportunities, track progress, and deliver pathways at scale.
YES, the Youth Employment Service, was created to change that equation. As South Africa’s largest youth employment initiative, YES connects young people with 12-month work placements, learning programs, and job-matching services. Every month, more than 40,000 youth and employer partners interact with the YES digital ecosystem. Built on Azure Database for MySQL, this ecosystem centralizes data, strengthens reliability, and adapts to the demands of a national program.
YES’s mission is to break the cycle of inexperience and unemployment and create pathways for youth into permanent work or entrepreneurship. The results are tangible: nearly 45 percent of participants find permanent jobs within six months of completing the program, and that percentage increases when entrepreneurs are included. By building a resilient data foundation, YES is positioned to expand these outcomes.
Turning database sprawl into one source of truth
Running a nationwide employment program is as much a technical challenge as it is a social one. YES serves two primary audiences through two portals: an employer portal where partners register programs and upload youth data, and a youth-facing portal with learning management systems (LMS) and rewards where participants complete training, track progress, and build CVs. At this scale, learning management, rewards, and career services demand live updates because thousands of app events - course completions, supervisor check-ins, CV edits - must sync across both portals instantly; otherwise rankings, rewards, and job-match alerts drift out of date.
Previously, each portal ran on its own database replica. Data diverged quickly, and a number of staff members spent their days reconciling records just to restore a single source of truth. Routine database work - patching windows, backups, and other maintenance - was also largely manual, compounding the operational drag.
Migrating to Azure Database for MySQL replaced that sprawl with a resilient core. Automated patching, half-hourly snapshots, and multi–availability zone setup for core database snapshots substituted manual interventions with built-in safeguards. With portals now calling into a centralized CRM via schema-aware APIs, the replicas - and the reconciliation loops they caused - are being retired. The unified dataset also feeds Power BI for program oversight without adding integration overhead.
YES now operates on a continuously updated foundation of learner and employer data - accurate in the moment and durable over time.
How a seamless CRM keeps YES in synch
YES’s portals, LMS, rewards program, and new career gateway, Skillquest, all connect to a central CRM that serves as the system of record for every participant and employer partner. Every interaction - whether a youth completes training, an employer uploads candidate data, or a CV is matched to a role - is logged instantly in the CRM and supported by Azure Database for MySQL.
By moving to an API-first architecture, these services now draw from the same underlying database instead of relying on redundant replicas. That shift not only simplified operations but also allowed YES to retire multiple databases entirely.
Rather than building individual portals, YES designed a configurable framework that adapts automatically as data models evolve. When a new field is added in the CRM, the system interprets and applies the change across connected portals instantly. With schema-aware APIs and a dynamic architecture, the IT team can roll out updates quickly and efficiently - without reengineering front-end systems.
Staying responsive under pressure
Supporting a national program means being ready for sudden surges in demand. When employer partners launch new initiatives, thousands of records may be registered at once. In the past, those spikes risked slowdowns that disrupted critical processes like sign-ups and data uploads.
On Azure Database for MySQL, elasticity is built in. During a slowdown on the sign-up portal, the team temporarily increased database capacity to stabilize performance. Once the issue was identified and corrected, resources were right-sized, restoring operation without disruption.
This ability to adjust database capacity in minutes is critical for YES. Elastic scaling not only prevents downtime during peak loads but also allows the IT team to diagnose and resolve issues without affecting the youth and employer partners who depend on its platforms. From learning modules to Skillquest’s career services, elasticity keeps every digital interaction reliable and responsive.
Nearing 100% uptime with reliability and security at scale
For a program that spans every province in South Africa, reliability is non-negotiable. Since migrating to Azure Database for MySQL, YES is nearing 100 percent database uptime during business hours, even as demand on its systems has grown.
Previously, backups and maintenance were handled manually - a time-consuming process that tied up staff resources. Today, half-hourly snapshots of the central database and nightly backups across other systems protect critical data. Multi–availability zone protection ensures that their core system stays resilient with the Host Support Partner performing annual disaster recovery tests to confirm the system can be restored in another region.
Security is built into the same foundation. Encryption at rest protects sensitive personal information, while Azure Advisor provides an evolving set of recommendations for configuration hardening. Each month, the YES team reviews Azure Advisor’s recommendations with their vendor, using them as a roadmap to guide implementation and future investments without requiring senior engineers on staff. YES also relies on Microsoft Defender extensively across its environment and is shifting VPN access into Microsoft Entra so remote staff can connect directly into Azure rather than routing through on-premises networks.
These practices translate directly into measurable efficiency. By automating resilience and compliance tasks that would otherwise require senior expertise, YES keeps its cost per job below 2,500 rand (about USD $140) per year - one of the lowest figures of its kind globally. Every rand saved in IT overhead expands the number of youths who can be supported through placements, training, and career pathways.
Expanding youth opportunities with AI and data
With a centralized, API-first foundation in place, YES is now building new services that extend beyond initial work placements. Skillquest, a career gateway for alumni not absorbed into permanent roles, allows youth to create CVs, showcase skills, and connect directly with employer partners searching for talent.
At the core of Skillquest is a vector-based AI matching system where youth CVs are vectorized and compared against job specifications, surfacing the best-fit opportunities and automatically alerting candidates to apply. The system also incorporates results from cognitive skill assessments - World Bank–designed games that measure reasoning, speed, and problem-solving ability. By combining vectorized CV data with cognitive assessments, Skillquest builds multidimensional profiles that employers can query with precision.
YES has also introduced a ranking system to highlight top-performing youth. Running on the same MySQL foundation as the LMS, it aggregates structured inputs - SCORM course completions, reward triggers, supervisor feedback, and SkillQuest cognitive assessments - and applies weighting rules to produce a composite score. With rankings recalculated in real time through the CRM and APIs, employers gain a deeper, data-driven picture of candidates while YES maintains an always-current record of every journey.
This architecture positions YES to scale its impact further, supporting internship and training programs not only in South Africa but potentially worldwide. By making systems more dynamic and adaptable, YES can evolve its services without re-architecting its infrastructure, ensuring that data continues to drive opportunity.
Building systems that build futures
YES demonstrates that solving youth unemployment requires more than vision - it requires resilient systems that can deliver opportunity at scale. By migrating to Azure Database for MySQL, YES replaced reconciliation bottlenecks with continuous clarity, added elasticity to meet demand, and achieved the resiliency and uptime needed to support a nationwide program.
For the IT team, tools like GitHub Copilot have been just as transformative. Most of the staff at YES are in their first jobs. Copilot gives them a way to learn quickly and take on projects that would normally require senior expertise. By extending Copilot to the people running the systems, YES can keep innovating with confidence.
And the impact extends beyond infrastructure. With emerging services like Skillquest and AI-powered job matching, the organization is expanding its reach and deepening its impact.
Join the conversation
Hear more from Malcolm MacDonald, CIO at YES, in an upcoming session of the Monthly Azure Database for MySQL webinar series. In the meantime, read more about YES in Microsoft's featured customer story and inspiring video to see how technology is driving real impact.
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