Business pin up: Bayt.com

After winning in the categories of Technology and online and Business Star of the Year at our Stars of Business Awards, 2011, we decided to take a closer look Bayt.com. Aparna Shivpuri Arya talks to the CEO, Rabea Ataya, about their best practices and what has been their recipe for success.

Bayt.com was established provide a link between job seekers and employers in the Middle East by leveraging the Internet to provide free access to employment opportunities in a region that has historically had limitations on the flow of both information and people. The motivation that powers Bayt.com is an obsession to empower others to lead better lives, by creating technologies that will help people lead the lives that they want for themselves.

What is your management philosophy and vision?

Bayt.com’s management philosophy and vision revolve around leadership and empowerment. At Bayt.com, we believe that the most effective leaders in the world history are those who:

- Are admired and respected by their peers and reports

- Lead from the front and are not hidden away in ivory towers far away from the action

- Form strong personal relations with their team that transcend just a working relationship

- Are supportive and respectful

Every Bayt.com employee is actively required to be a leader as well as to empower others. We do this by ensuring that our corporate culture preaches respect, and allows the freedom to act independently within a framework. People, planning, perseverance and passion are the four basic Ps of a successful business. This is what we believe in. We are here not to make quick money, but to build a successful business that we are passionate about.

Bayt.com has 227 employees in 12 different countries. 73% of the workforce is Arab, 27% is non-Arab and we have 15 different nationalities.

What is innovative about your approach?

At Bayt.com, we are constantly striving for innovations that anticipate and meet the needs of both job seekers and employers. Our teams work very hard to ensure relevancy, above all else, and that requires a lot of innovation. Our goal is to ensure that job seekers have relevant job recommendations, have access to relevant career development resources, and have the ability to create CVs and cover letters that are relevant to the jobs they seek.

During the past 11 years, we have innovated a lot to achieve relevancy. Some of our innovations are technological; our proprietary industry-leading CV search tool, for example, has very intricate algorithms that were custom designed by highly specialised teams at Bayt.com. Other technical innovations include Bayt.com Salaries, Bayt.com Career Watch, Bayt.com People and Bayt.com Classifieds.

Some innovations are related to services; Bayt.com’s Career Services team for instance help job seekers on a case-by-case basis in order to ensure they are maximising their professional branding and career planning.  And some of our innovations are related to culture and team spirit.

What challenges have you faced along the way and how did you deal with them?

The story of Bayt.com’s success has been a story of hard work, persistence and an unwavering commitment to excellence, innovation and integrity. When Bayt.com was founded in 2000, the main two challenges were the very limited Internet penetration in the Middle East at the time and also the task of very speedily educating our various stakeholders about unique features and huge unparalleled benefits of online recruitment we were introducing in the region.

How has the company fared during period of economic slowdown? Did you have to change your approach in the past two to three years?

One of Bayt.com’s key strengths as a sustainable business has been its flexibility and ability and willingness to recognise, anticipate and adapt to change readily and in an optimal fashion. Bayt.com recognised early on that the economic slowdown would actually only further consolidate our leadership position across the region as a heightened emphasis on sourcing only the very best human capital, coupled with drastically shrunken HR budgets and an increased attention to maximising HR ROI in sophisticated corporations across the industry spectrum. We have used the period of slower economic growth to build stronger, more endearing and more creative relationships with our clients, to increase their loyalty, and to increase and diversify our product offering further to take advantage of new opportunities to deliver value.

What insights can you provide about the job market in the UAE? Are there any particular issues that anybody entering this field should pay special attention to?

The UAE remains a very robust attractive place to live and work and a popular hub for highly competitive top-grade talent looking to settle in a modern, cosmopolitan environment with a world-class business infrastructure. The attractiveness of the UAE globally as a work destination has meant that local employers over the past decade have had the luxury of being able to attract and retain world-class talent with very little difficulty.

Currently as per the latest Bayt.com Jobs Index Survey it seems that the hiring expectations trend across the region suggests more hiring activity in a year’s time than in the coming quarter. The UAE is not an exception with 62% of companies considering hiring within a year according to the latest Bayt.com Jobs Index survey, and 49% looking to hire by January 2012 with the private sector being more likely to hire in the next three months, especially multinational companies

What are the salient features of your HR policies and training for staff?

A very important aspect of success is constant training, and Bayt.com is well aware of that. We have a STARS Training methodology that is applied company wide. In STARS, employees undergo periodic training related to:

1. Systems: The understanding of our internal and external software processes

2. Techniques: The systematic procedure by which a task is accomplished

3. Activities: Measurable amount of work performed in converting inputs to outputs

4.Role-Plays: Acting out actions in a simulated situation

5. Stories: A true account of a client interaction where a lesson learned was applied towards a successful outcome

Aside from the STARS system, all employees are encouraged to participate in external trainings and seminars, for which we cover the costs. We also have the Speaker Programme, where leading individuals come to our offices on a monthly basis to talk about topics that are interesting, like innovation through moviemaking and the psychology of change.

Are your processes eco-friendly?

Green processes are at the heart of all our activities at Bayt.com. Here are just a few of the ways green thinking is the very core of our business operations:-

- Online recruitment has meant paper CVs, paper files and physical letters and filing cabinets and storage space associated with the recruitment process are both unnecessary and inefficient.  Video CVs also enabled have also meant less of a carbon footprint associated with the screening process and less inefficiencies and waste.

- Branded career channels have allowed leading organisations across the MENA to tap into Bayt.com’s green platforms to eliminate inefficiencies associated with the traditional recruitment process.

- Virtual job and education fairs have also greatly elevated the green ethos in the region by eliminating the need to create expensive venues.

- We have eliminated our sales collateral in favour of online presentations and live tutorials which are more targeted, more engaging and more eco-friendly.

Are there any CSR initiatives undertaken by your firm?

We have had many CSR initiatives over the past 11 years, as they are a part of our identity as a company. These include – sponsoring orphans from all over the world on behalf of each and every employee with a long serving history with us, donating a fixed percentage of revenue to charities, offering free job postings, university outreach programmes and roadshows.

What are your plans for the next five years?

We have huge plans for the next five years.  Bayt.com will continue to deliver on its longstanding commitment to the region to deliver the indisputable best recruitment technologies, tools, services, insights and local customer support available in the region today and also the greatest amount of recruitment choice for both talent and employers.  We expect our leadership margins to be widened significantly further as several key initiatives we have only soft launched this year including Bayt.com Salaries, Bayt.com Communities, Bayt.com Career Watch and Bayt.com People become more formally entrenched in the regional recruitment landscape. At the same time we will continue to launch new products and iterations and grow our professional communities.