Text messages is being used to alert job hunters in south London to the best vacancies for them.

The Employment Cafe in Brixton is using its members' mobile phones to alert them to jobs matching their skills.

The area has one of London's highest rates of unemployment and the cafe specialises in offering people from ethnic minorities a personal service.

Ros Griffiths founded the independent jobs agency after years working in deprived areas of the United States.

Worldwide interest

She believes it is the first time the technology has been used for jobseekers and said it had generated worldwide interest.

The cafe could be alerting up to one million people a month by text.

She said: "They would just register on the site online once with all their details and it would build a profile of them.

"Once that goes onto a database the jobs will then match their profile and they would get a text."