With the coming of the Internet, individuals have opted to shop, stay in touch with friends and families and advertise their businesses online. Not only has e-living woven itself into the fabric of Western society but it has also taken hold in the lives of an increasing number of people in the Gulf. Along with it comes a trend that promises to become indispensable for both companies and individuals — e-recruiting. I think about this as I walk through Dubai Internet City on my way to interview one of the leading e-recruitment companies in the Middle East, Bayt.com. Mona Ataya, Vice President for Marketing, welcomes me and escorts me into the conference room. I take one look at the conference table, in reality a ping-pong table, and know I’m in a young, dynamic organization.
Bayt.com was launched a year ago and is the brainchild of a group of young Arab entrepreneurs with their sights set on changing the way employers recruit as well as the way job seekers find employment. Bayt.com aims to empower job seekers by providing tools and information that will enable them to find the work they want. "Many job seekers in the region feel that their hands are tied because of insufficient information. This keeps them from making informed decisions about their lives and their futures," Ataya explains.
People immediately recognized Bayt.com’s potential. Since its launch a year ago, the number of job seekers has risen by an average of 1,500 a day, reaching a total of more than 120,000 job seekers at present. According to ITP web index 2001, Bayt.com is one of the five most visited sites in the Middle East. For employers, Bayt.com provides a faster, easier, more efficient and more effective way of recruiting the best employees from all over the world. In fact, more than 4,200 Middle Eastern companies in 84 different categories are registered with Bayt.com.
One such company is Atos Origin Middle East, a leading IT Consulting firm in Alkhobar. According to Samer Kawa, Human Resources and Personnel Manager, the company uses a combination of traditional and online recruiting. The company has posted a number of jobs on Bayt.com, Monster.com, and on its own website. "We usually don’t have a lot of time to look for resources. The speed of online recruiting enables us to find the resources with great speed. With Bayt.com, it only took us a couple of days to recruit for the openings we had posted. Bayt.com made it easy because we could look through their database and narrow our search," he explained.
He views e-recruiting as an additional method by which companies can hire personnel. The difference between e-recruiting and traditional recruiting, is the time each method requires from the employer. "Online recruiting requires you to spend some time concentrating on what you want. With a traditional recruitment agency, they do most of the screening for you," Samer pointed out.
Bayt.com’s income derives from employers who pay to post openings and to browse the database of CVs. During the past year, the Bayt.com team has focused on fine-tuning its service for the employers’ benefit. "When we first launched ourselves, we found many employers were not coming back or that those using the system were not hiring," Ataya explained. "This was a problem so we created a system that essentially tracks movement within our site. Every time a movement is not optimal or if a company doesn’t find a match, our customer service team receives a flag. At that point, a customer service agent calls the employer up and gives some pointers on improving the search. We’ve received phenomenal feedback from employers about this. They really feel we are trying to understand what works for them and what doesn’t."
For job seekers, Bayt.com has a team of agents which responds to e-mailed questions. In addition, the website contains an online CV builder for helping people write a successful CV. "A lot of people who have been working for years do not know how to write a CV, how to market themselves or even how to dress for an interview. There are others who don’t understand the differences between companies. Knowledge is not as widespread as you think. We get some 300 e-mails every day asking us all kinds of questions. Our customer care team and HR expert usually answer within 48 hours."
Although its approach is new, Bayt.com continues to receive requests reflecting more traditional attitudes about hiring. "We’ve noticed that whether we’re dealing with an Arab employer or a non-Arab employer, they prefer foreigners. We go to a company, and the manager says, for example, ‘I’m looking for an Australian.’ We answer, ‘Are you looking for a nationality or a level of expertise?’ That is disappointing. The other thing we’ve noticed is that employers here don’t want to take the risk. They prefer a seasoned employee rather than one who needs to be trained. Multinationals are an exception; they want fresh material that they can train from scratch."
So what is Bayt.com’s main competition? "The traditional way of hiring is our main competition but a lot of those companies are also going online. Based on international trends, particularly in North America, traditional recruiting will ultimately take a secondary role." Bayt.com is not the only player in this expanding marketplace. CareerMiddleEast.com, targeting Middle Eastern companies and job seekers, is another company that has taken recruiting online. They have divided their market by country and have developed specific websites for each segment, such as CareerSaudi.com and CareerBahrain.com. In addition, an increasing number of companies have been popping up online, undoubtedly encouraged by the success of their larger counterparts, but none have yet attained the recognition that Bayt.com and CareerMiddleEast.com have.
Ataya welcomes competition as it helps Bayt.com develop. "We won’t have to go out and spend time advertising the category like we do right now. When we go to employers, we spend most of the time educating them about online as a concept, then we start talking to them about Bayt.com."
The prospect of online job seeking brings to mind an interesting question. Armed with more information, will employees begin to job-hop or will they find jobs which they like and to which they are therefore more loyal? Only time will tell, but Ataya has her own views. "E-recruiting will definitely change things for the better. Employers will value their employees and employees will not only value their employers but will also know what’s available."
No matter how job seekers and employers choose to utilize the information at their fingertips, e-recruiting is a welcome development in the Middle East and one with a great deal of potential.
