Jobboard Finder’s opinion
Summary: Bayt (which means “home”) was created by Rabea Ataya and is one of the leading aggregator job boards in the Middle East (which refers to: Egypt, Iran, Turkey, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Syria, the UAE, Israel, Jordan, Palestine, Lebanon, Oman, Kuwait, Qatar, Bahrain and Cyprus). Particularly active in Saudi Arabia, it is consistently ranked around the 285th most active site! It attracts 5.3 million views a month from all over the MENA area. The numbers have been mostly steady over the past few years. In 2008, it also set out to make a name for itself in the North African countries but most of its success comes from Saudi Arabia, the UAE, Egypt, India and Qatar. How did Bayt become so successful? Other than the obvious reasons, Bayt invested in a large television advertising campaign at the start of their creation to attract users. Today, they have over 37.5 million CVs in their database, 14 regional offices with contact information for each one. You can follow them on different social media and they even advertise other job boards to make sure you find what you’re looking for. The site has followers on Facebook (1 442 752), on Twitter (19 300), on LinkedIn (241 206), on Youtube(19 700), on Instagram (14 600) and on Pinterset (662). The LinkedIn and Instagram networks have grown a lot over the last 2 years, showing once again that Bayt follows a smart strategy when it comes to marketing. The Youtube and Twitter followers have dropped a lot though.
Design: To be honest, the house-like logo did remind me of a real-state website, but Bayt is careful about emphasising their search engine. It's easy to use with an appealing design. You’ll find photos and shorts bios about the employees, testimonials from companies (and there are many of them! Sorted by country) and clear information about posting jobs. The jobs themselves are filtered by various categories (country, city, area, job role, specialty, industry, career level, employer type, gender, company type, company name, date modified; with the number of available jobs per category indicated in brackets). Now you can also activate the following options: work from home, hide external jobs.
The job board objective: Bayt wants to be the biggest job shopping center.
Recruiter observations: The good news is you can post a free job offer to try it out . You can also access the CV database for a free trial and filter using an impressive 33 filters (including when the jobseekers were last active; expect to see many female profiles without photos). More good news: the costs are available on the website. For some countries, additional information is available regarding who has applied to the job presented in the form of charts (years of experience, top job title, Education major of applicants, career level of the applicants and the nationality). Some countries (like Germany and Canada, South Africa, Nigeria, Japan) don’t allow/provide this kind of information though.
Jobseeker observations: When you upload your CV, the job board then fills out a lot of your online form itself. Additional questions include: your visa status, your marital status, the notice period needed, the visa you would like and whether or not you have a driver’s license. You can also include recommendations, different membership to clubs and videos. Jobseekers can boost their visibility with offers which include who viewed the profile and getting to the top of the job application lists (among other things). Surprisingly though, you can’t upload your CV in Arabic.
The job offers: Currently about 51 000 jobs are online according to the site and mostly in the field of mangement, IT and press correspondance. As can be expected, most of the job offers are in Saudi Arabia and the UAE. Even if the traffic has dropped slightly, the offers have gone up. There's a third more job offers specifically for men than ones specifically for women but most offers overall don't require a gender in particular. This is progress from what we saw some years ago.
Reactivity: If you want to contact the team, you'll need to identify your reason for writing: CV services, employer services, jobseeker portal, Affiliate Program, etc. Depending on your choice, you'll have a different contact form. On the site, you'll find a local and international number and an email address, or different numbers based on the location. There is a chat window on the recruiter page.
Special features: The blog (mostly English, divided into several sections, such as the Market Knowledge and Interviews and Offers); CV database preview access; CV and job offer analysis (to see if you fit the profile); packages for jobseekers; the Youtube video on the homepage; AfterHire; job alerts; the information on salaries within the company; CV Services (for jobseekers); Shagheel (for skilled trade workers - which has not been a huge success); the detailed salary page based on different MENA countries; podcasts; the courses and degree programs; "People Who Found Jobs on Bayt"; Awards page; virtual career/job fairs; employer tests for recruitment; the recruiter network; testimonals from recruiters; the examples of their charitable work.
Verdict: It's always a good thing to see transparency on a job board, which Bayt used to have. Now the photos of the team are gone and we know less about the story behind the job site. Futhermore, in the North African countries, Bayt is yet to surpass the big local job boards but they have really built up their database and list of partners. Plus, their presence in a number of the countries in the area means they have a hands-on idea of what’s available and what’s needed. They had added many new features over the years, always adapting to the market and the demands. It's a fountain of iinteresting information for recruiters! If you need a job in the MENA; go shopping on Bayt first.
