5 Minutes With… Bayt.com CEO

Name: Rabea Ataya

Job title: CEO

Company: Bayt.com

Years in company: 12

What will your company be focusing on this year?

Social is the theme for 2012. The social Internet has completely changed the way people communicate with each other and has moved the power of mass communication from the large media companies to society at large.

The Arab Spring has resulted in massive amounts of people from our region of all ages who are very comfortable using social media platforms like Facebook and Twitter, and as social technology advances, we are very excited about disrupting the recruitment industry by coming up with new and innovative ways to leverage social in recruitment.

Are you concerned that the current volatile global economic climate will affect your strategy?


Adaptability and openness to change is one of our key values at Bayt.com. A change in the economic climate will garner even more change from us. Change leads to innovation, and so we embrace it.
For example, during the 2008 financial crisis, we realised the importance of internally crowd-sourcing the evolution of Bayt.com and its products by involving over 200 employees. Thus, Sawtna, an internal product for Bayt.com employees, came to be.

It allows any employee to provide any recommendations they have for Bayt.com as a company, as a service, as a web site, and as a business model. Employees can submit recommendations as well as vote for their favorites. Since the inception of Sawtna, several products and services were launched as well as multitude of improvements were applied to our existing products and services, and new processes and systems were put in place.

What are the growth areas currently for your industry?

The massive shift to online services especially in terms of recruitment comes from the fact that we live in a fast-paced world where time is money and top talent do not remain long on the market. Both job seekers and employers want the best in a short timeframe; and this can only be found on online platforms that are easy to use, efficient and offer a large margin of flexibility, accessibility and choice to both parties.

The near future of the web is largely mobile. The infrastructure and tools for safe, reliable mobile purchasing has been advancing rapidly in recent years. We have recently launched an exciting mobile application that allows professionals to search and apply for their ideal jobs through their mobile phones, regardless of when and where. The application also has a notification center to notify users when their job applications have been viewed, when a job matches their profile, and at other important junctions.

Another important change happening with the web is that of big data, as today, the massive amounts of information online can be analysed to help people make better decisions. In the context of Bayt.com, it’s no secret that measurability is the key to success.

Calling upon 12 years of Middle East job market data, we have created an intuitive set of career-building tools for our website, giving jobseekers and employers alike access to vital statistics that will streamline – and significantly improve – both sides of the recruitment process. With 8.25 million jobseekers and more than 40,000 employers registered on Bayt.com, the jobsite’s measurability and data power is certainly substantial.

What new products will your company launch this year?
We have very exciting plans around socialising Bayt.com, stay tuned to find more.

Will you be expanding into new territory?
Bayt.com has 14 different offices around the MENA region, and we are always exploring new grounds to spread our services even further.

What will be the biggest challenges for UAE businesses in your sector in 2012?


One of the initial challenges faced by the founders at a time when the internet was still extremely young and very much in its infancy in the region was to effect the transition from traditional recruitment methods to online recruitment at the professional level and across all career levels from fresh graduates to senior executive and board. Today, that isn’t a problem anymore with millions of people using online channels for finding jobs.

For employers and job seekers though, the main challenge is that of too much choice. With so many CVs online, employers need very powerful filtering tools to find the perfect candidate, while job seekers have to stand out in a large pool of qualifies candidates. We try to help both employers and job seekers solve the issue of choice by providing very powerful CV filtering tools to the former and ways in which a CV could stand out to the latter.

Will you be hiring this year?
We are constantly looking for talented people to join our team. Interested professionals can take a look at our vacancies on our website.

What’s your leadership style?
At Bayt.com, we actively encourage every member of the team to be a leader by always striving to be unique. Good is the enemy of great. To be a leader, the first step is learning continually. The more a person knows, the more he or she is likely to succeed. There is always more knowledge to be acquired by reading (especially books), communicating, and experiencing. A leader should devote some time every day to learning and then to putting that learning into practice.

It is always very important to ask “Am I more knowledgeable today than I was yesterday?” Then, a leader has to apply what he knows with pride and be innovative. Being the best requires us to be both continually different and inventive. It is essential to always find ways to be truly unique and special by doing more, better than is expected or has previously been done.

Define success in five words…
Success is freedom to create.

Three tips for becoming the boss…

Always produce with pride
; welcome change and be adaptable
; learn, learn, learn

When I’m not at work I like to…

Spend time with my family and play sports.