More than one third of jobseekers in the Mena region find online professional websites to be the most effective method of networking, a report said.

More than 90 per cent of professionals find it useful to receive notifications about new jobs that they may like via phone or email, added the “Recruitment Practices in Mena” survey recently conducted by Bayt.com, a leading jobs site in the Middle East.

About 26.9 per cent of the respondents in Mena making hiring decisions at their companies believe that the lack of salary benchmarking tools is one of the most important challenges they face in meeting their recruitment goals. The good news is that there are tools in the market to tackle this, such as Bayt.com Salaries, which let employers know the best salary rates in the market, Bayt.com said.

The other challenges are a perceived lack of qualified applications for specific roles (16.1 per cent), poor recruitment process management tools (15.9 per cent) and too many candidates (14.7 per cent).

Around a quarter (25.6 per cent) of respondents who make hiring decisions for their firms believe that the ability to ask job seekers questions when they apply would making hiring easier. Features such as Bayt.com Tests and dedicated professional content sharing and discussion sharing platforms such as the Bayt.com Specialties platform allow employers to be much more confident in their hiring decisions by making sure candidates have the required skills for the job.

In addition, respondents said that the following would also make hiring easier: having the vacancy highlighted in a highly visible location (16 per cent), the ability to automatically filter out irrelevant candidates (8.7 per cent), ability to filter candidates by numerous settings (7.9 per cent), and tools to manage the recruitment process online (7.5 per cent). Over a third (34.3 per cent) of those surveyed said that a combination of all of these would ease the hiring process.

Almost half of those surveyed (47.4 per cent) find it very difficult to hire senior talent and managers, while 30.4 per cent say that it’s the same as hiring other talent. 22.2 per cent of Mena respondents do not find it difficult at all.

When it comes to the easiest way to hire top candidates, 36.4 per cent of those surveyed in Mena believe that searching through millions of CVs with an easy and quick search tool is easiest; 20.3 per cent think that it is posting vacancies on a website accessible to millions of people; and 12.5 per cent say that engaging with specialists on professional networks is the preferred method.

Only 4.8 per cent say that using traditional recruitment companies is the easiest way to hire top talent. Close to a quarter of Mena respondents (23.3 per cent) believe that using all of the above mentioned makes for the easiest way to hire top candidates and leveraging the right tools is the solution. Bayt.com Job Postings is one such tool that is both cost and user friendly and tackles the numerous challenges employers face, while Bayt.com CV Search allows employers to search for the right candidates filtered down to exact specifications.
The majority of hiring professionals surveyed (81.6 per cent) said that interacting with candidates on professional networks would be beneficial, with 57.9 per cent saying it would be highly beneficial.

Looking for a job in Mena

The best ways to find employment in Mena, according to survey respondents, is through job postings on jobsites (27 per cent). Other methods include recruitment agencies (23.4 per cent); sending unsolicited resumes to employers (18 per cent); friends and referrals (17.8 per cent); and social media and online networking (7.5 per cent).

Almost half of Mena respondents (43.5 per cent) found their current jobs through friends or colleagues, 22.4 per cent used an online professional network or job site and 12 per cent found their current job through a company career site. 10.8 per cent of the respondents used other methods, 6.1 per cent found their jobs through traditional recruitment agencies and 5.3 per cent used newspaper job advertisements.

Suhail Masri, VP of Sales, Bayt.com said: “At Bayt.com, our mission is to empower as many people to find jobs as possible, which is why we try to tap into all job-finding methods. As our poll shows, many jobseekers in the Middle East find a job through friends and colleagues, which is Bayt.com has built in tools to help professionals discover who from their friends work at companies that currently have vacancies, and to use that information to apply free of cost.”

“It is also interesting to see that both jobseekers and recruiters are turning more and more to job sites, like Bayt.com for their recruitment purposes across all career levels, with 27 per cent of jobseekers utilising jobsites as the best way to find employment, and 22.4 per cent finding work through sites like ours.

“The power of online recruitment is more important than ever before. We can also see that 89.3 per cent of employers believe that their company’s recruitment would benefit from having a career site on their corporate website. As such, employers can make use of Talentera, one of our flag-ship products, through which employers can create branded career channels and hire professionals through their own website as well as manage the entire recruitment process in the most optimal, up-to-date and streamline manner.

“At Bayt.com, we remain unwaveringly dedicated to providing jobseekers and employers with in-depth insights into the recruitment trends currently punctuating the market. Our mission has always been to empower other to lead better lives and our strategy has been two-fold; to meet the needs of candidates and improve hiring efficiency for employers,” he added.

Researching salaries is an important aspect of recruiting talent and also finding a job. 82.8 per cent of respondents offering jobs to candidates in Mena believe it is important to research market salaries, while 95 per cent of jobseekers in Mena believe that researching market salaries when accepting a new job is important.

Thirty-six per cent of respondents find online professional websites the most effective method of networking, followed by college alumni associations (20.5 per cent) and workshops or courses (14.5 per cent). Only 8.9 per cent and 8.3 per cent of respective Mena respondents found conferences, seminars and professional group memberships effective methods of networking. 11.8 per cent of those surveyed said that they found other methods and blogs effective.

“These days, a static CV is not enough to land a job most quickly, easily and effectively, as we see leading employers resorting more and more to dynamic online platforms such as Bayt.com’s Specialties platform where they can assess candidates’ professional histories and career track records via their Public Profiles and then also assess their skills via their online conversations as well as the qualities of their professional rankings, referrals, recommendations, badges and endorsements and also engage in a public discourse with them or invite them to take online questionnaires and tests,” Masri added.

“More and more employers are realizing that the significant savings in the time to hire and cost to hire enabled by engaging with candidates in a deeper and more sophisticated manner at the hiring stage and improving the screening and ranking process using the latest online tools are well worth it.” – TradeArabia News Service