Bayt.com in Celebration of 15 Years in the Business of Building Careers

It’s no surprise that global leaders are increasingly looking at entrepreneurship as a way to grow jobs and stimulate economies. Even in mature economies (including the US) most jobs are created by young businesses in their high growth first 5 years.  In the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) in particular, entrepreneurship is direly needed: at about 25%, youth unemployment rates in the (MENA) exceed those of any other region in the world. 

Throughout its tenure as the region’s leading careers site, Bayt.com has diversified to encourage entrepreneurship in the region. The portal recognizes the value that entrepreneurs add to the economy by creating new business, social change, community development, and importantly new jobs. Over the last fifteen years, Bayt.com has operated with the aim to bridge the gap between employee and employer, and to assist both startups and established businesses in hiring the best talents.

“Encouraging entrepreneurship has become a focus for many countries throughout the region as they bolster the economy and drive innovation. If every entrepreneur in the region were to hire just one other person for their business, that is exponential job creation in itself. Encouraging entrepreneurial endeavors is truly beneficial to the region’s economies – entrepreneurs significantly contribute to the economy and job creation of the country,” said Suhail Masri, Vice President of Sales, Bayt.com.

Today, the portal redefines conventional recruitment, democratizing interactions with portals by enabling conversations to happen during the recruitment process. Bayt.com supports entrepreneurs and small business startups with the Bayt.com Start Up Kit, free of charge, so they can access the portal’s database and gain visibility to the 8 million Bayt.com monthly visitors.  

“We have been helping start-ups to recruit top talent across the industry spectrum at all career levels. In fact, the Bayt.com platform has been instrumental in facilitating and enabling recruitment activities for entrepreneurial ventures from start-up phase through to maturity since our inception in 2000,” continued Masri. “Bayt.com also works with thousands of large enterprise corporations in the Middle East to help them fulfil their hiring needs, across all industries and career levels. In keeping with our commitment to redefining the recruitment landscape, we have managed to help bridge employment gaps across the region, contribute to the creation of vibrant career conversations and solid career trajectories, and build a fully-fledged professional community. As we mark Bayt.com’s 15-year milestone, we would like to take a moment to thank all of our stakeholders, who have played a pivotal role in our growth story and we remain committed to providing them with the most effective, enriching and engaging online extension of their careers and lives.”

"Using Bayt.com, Gulf International Bank (GIB) has become much more cost-effective in the recruitment function," said Nawaf Kably, Head of Recruitment & Staff Benefits, at Gulf International Bank. "In just one year, Bayt.com has helped us trim the time it takes to close our hiring targets to almost half, and saved approximately $150,000. Bayt.com solutions has especially been a terrific tool that has measurably improved our bottom line and quality of hire."

On its 15th anniversary, the company has crossed the pivotal 10,000 jobs-a-day milestone, empowering over 22,750,000 professionals and 40,000 leading organizations to build the careers and businesses of their choice. This year, the Middle East’s number one job site is celebrating years of delivering effective, end-to-end employment solutions to job seekers and HR professionals throughout the region. Since its inception, Bayt.com has grown at an incredibly rapid pace – from a simple online job portal to the single largest career site and recruitment solutions marketplace for professionals and companies in the Middle East and North Africa. In 2015 alone, Bayt.com welcomed over 3 million new members spanning the region’s hottest and most vibrant sectors and career profiles.

Bayt.com: The Past 15 Years

Looking back, Bayt.com’s 15-year journey has been punctuated by a slew of milestones and industry ‘firsts’. 

In 2001, Bayt.com became the first bilingual recruitment portal in the region; two years later, it launched an application service provider enabling instant connections between relevant jobs and potential employees. In 2004, Bayt.com launched a CV writing service, followed by professional career coaching in 2006. This led to the first ever Virtual Job Fair in the Middle East, a platform now very popular with conglomerates and educational institutes seeking to engage real-time on a large scale with jobseekers and students across the region.

In 2010, Bayt.com launched its Salaries platform, which has since evolved into a comprehensive salary research tool. In 2012, a mobile application was launched, making the site more accessible to those on the move. In 2013, a career tool enabling professionals to showcase their interests and expertise while networking with industry peers. In September 2015, Bayt.com Specialties hit the 1-million-questions milestone and 10-million-users mark in a resounding testimony to the dynamism of the career conversations on the site.  

Bayt.com’s current roster of high value pioneering functions includes a ‘Learning’ section – that consists of tests and courses – especially created to empower members to enhance and develop their careers. In addition, it enables employers to gauge knowledge of new hires in a fast and simple way with pre-existing tests. There is also a new and highly differentiated mobile application, in an extensively augmented line-up of employer tools.

Masri concludes: "We are delighted with how far Bayt.com has come and we continue to expand assignments from loyal existing clients and attract strategic new business from market leaders in every industry. We are very proud of how our work in both the private and public sector advisory and core direct recruitment arenas has gone a long way in truly paving the region’s employment landscape and impacting the lives of millions of professionals and their families, in line with our mission to empower people with the tools and technologies to build a better life.  Bayt.com remains the region’s leading platform for top talent and employers to meet, interact and effect highly informed employment decisions in the fastest, easiest and most efficient manner possible."