New Year’s Resolutions are not exclusive to individuals. Every year, companies set out goals that they aim to quickly achieve. One goal that every company shares is to spread its good name among the crowds and potential employees in order to attract top talent. With current-day professionals expecting more from their companies in terms of adequate work environment, recognition and rewards, a thriving culture and more, companies should be reconsidering their employer brand and how to push it in the positive direction. Simply listing a mission statement or a vacancy announcement is not enough to win the best talent; your company should also be perceived as an ideal place for work and that can be done through stellar employer branding.

In order to have a winning employer brand, you need to cater to what professionals expect. Bayt.com, the #1 Job Site in the Middle East, presents you with four things you can implement to become a more desired employer in 2017:

1.   Revise your brand identity

The oldest trick in the book is one of the most important; brand association. In order to create a brand that people associate positive things to, everything from logos and color schemes to fonts and mottos should be set and ready for the target audience. But beyond that, there are other things that you can take into consideration such as detailed and exciting descriptions of vacancies in job postings, the celebratory presentation of your staff on your website, and the harmonized vision, mission, values, and culture that are well articulated and supportive of your employer brand. One of the best ways you can do this is by signing up for a Bayt.com Premium Company Profile, which helps thousands of companies create a brand that stands out and attracts the right type of talent.

2.   Offer non-traditional perks

Millennials will soon constitute the majority of the global workforce. Their fresh perspectives and unprecedented technology savviness bring something new to the table. Even their priorities and expectations do not conform to yesterday’s methodologies. For instance, good work-life balance and training opportunities top the list of loyalty factors according to Bayt.com Millennials in the Middle East and North Africa Survey. Many of them are even willing to sacrifice more hours from their personal life to go up their career ladder.

This is why companies should keep up with such values and expectations when structuring their employer brand. While salary is important, professionals are also looking for other perks, such as training opportunities, wellness programs (such as gym subscriptions and nutrition counselling), entertainment at the office, flexible work schedules, and so on. Such perks help create the environment sought after and will make your company more desirable to work for.

3.   Digitize and humanize your branding

It’s no secret we live in the digital era. A single bad tweet can make or break your employer brand. Among the best ways to let people know about your work environment is by being active online and engaging with your audience. Humanizing the digital approach is essential to make potential employees as well as customers relate to your company. People want to reach out to you and be heard. According to the Bayt.com Social Recruiting in the Middle East and North Africa poll, 55% of the respondents feel that they are more likely to get hired if they engage with the company online.

Instead of utilizing your online presence only to pitch at your audience and market a product or a service, engage and spark conversations. Let your employees talk to your audience. It will bring back positive feedback to your employer brand.

4.   Create brand ambassadors

We’re not talking about hiring people and paying them to represent your employer brand. This approach lacks genuine fondness of your brand and only works at face value.

Instead, create a great working environment, plan an engaging and strong marketing plan, run your social media channels in a humanized manner, etc. By taking such actions, the satisfaction and loyalty of your employees will avail, and automatically your employees will spread a good word about the company; whether by actually talking about the company, or documenting their work environment online. Hence, your employees become the best brand ambassadors, as they speak about your company out of good experience. Even your customers, partners, suppliers, and all stakeholders can potentially become your brand ambassadors if you adopt these strategies.

Employees in all companies and organizations are interested in building reliable career trajectories through professional development. In order to do so, they depend on the employer for continuously providing opportunities that expand their knowledge, enhance their skills, and help them meet their goals. This sentiment is increasingly popular among professionals in the Middle East and North Africa (MENA) and it is becoming more vital for businesses and employers to address this matter in order to retain their talent.

According to the Bayt.com Career Development in the Middle East survey, a lack of career development prospects can make or break employee engagement and retention. In reality, many employees feel that their companies are failing to equip them with the learning and training opportunities needed to ensure their career growth. This consequently leaves the employee feeling disadvantaged in their jobs. In fact, more than three quarters of professionals say that they would leave their company for better training opportunities.

If you are still uncertain about the importance of talent development, Bayt.com, the Middle East’s #1 Job Site, has four more reasons that explain why you should  pay more attention to employee training and development this year:

1. It is not done sufficiently

Many companies aren’t fully aware of the essential training their employees need and would like to have. In fact, one in two professionals (47%) have not formally set any development plans with their manager in the MENA region. The great majority (95%) of those not having set any development plan would like to have one, according to the Bayt.com Career Development in the Middle East and North Africa survey. What may sound more alarming is that more than half (54%) of professionals in the region are prepared to move to another country, while 53% are prepared to move to another sector to develop their career and expand their skills. These figures show that many companies are not doing enough to develop their existing talent. The lack of promotional opportunities may indeed compel employees to abandon their jobs in 2017.

2. It is not done correctly

Professional development starts by listening to employees and finding out what their specific needs are and what skills they would like to acquire to improve their performance. Unfortunately, not all training and development opportunities in the past have reflected what employees actually need. According to the Bayt.com Career Development in the Middle East and North Africa survey, while considered relatively more important, a smaller proportion of MENA employees received training in management development, leadership, time management and foreign languages. If training is provided but is targeting the wrong skill sets or job requirements then it is entirely wasteful. Professional development must be based on what employees are lacking or need to obtain in order to succeed in their positions and contribute positively for their workplace.

3. It is not done cost-effectively

Training and talent development does not have to be an exorbitant cost to companies. With the proliferation of online learning and assessment tools, businesses in 2017 no longer have to shell out huge amounts of money for training their employees and expanding their skills and knowledge base. Companies and professionals who are looking for better career development opportunities and chances to learn and grow can now do so cost-effectively using learning platforms such as Bayt.com’s online courses and tests, many of which are free of charge. There are also numerous research reports and career support articles that are available on Bayt.com for all professionals in the MENA to make use of. Even more, if employees would like to autonomously manage their training, they can use many self-assessment tools that are available online.

4. It is not done equally

Career development is seen as one of the most important factors for employee retention, loyalty, and engagement. This applies to all career levels and all positions. It is no longer sufficient to empower senior management with the best training opportunities while excluding those in more junior positions. In fact, starting training and development with the most entry-level positions will help your new-joiners perform better and establish a solid career path at your company. According to the Bayt.com Fresh Graduates in the Middle East and North Africa Survey, the most important job attributes include opportunities for career progression (60%) and good training opportunities (58%). This shows that even fresh graduates highly value professional development that supports their career advancement from early on.

Training cannot be reserved for certain groups over others. For instance, despite the fact that nearly two thirds (63%) of women surveyed in the Bayt.com Working Women in the Middle East and North Africa survey agree that they work the same number of hours as male colleagues, less than half (48%) of women in MENA believe that their chance of being promoted depends entirely on job performance, with no regard to gender, and about a third of them cite the lack of sufficient job training and coaching as a major career challenge. It is critical that all employees are given the training they need to excel in their job, otherwise, their performance will be sub-par.

Job vacancies need to be filled efficiently and cost-effectively. Employers and recruiters have a big responsibility in making sure they find the right type of employees. Employees frequently move from company to company and from country to country. There are always new businesses hiring and new positions opening up. To keep up with such a dynamic process, employers need a reliable tool to help them in finding the right employees while keeping in mind their time and cost limitations.

Over 40,000 employers are benefiting from the Middle East’s largest online talent database to search for and hire their ideal employees. Bayt.com is home to nearly 27 million professionals. Through CV Search from Bayt.com, employers and recruiters are instantly accessing millions of potential employees. Not only can they search the candidate profiles, they can also conduct advanced and customized search and filtering to guarantee that they are finding the right talent for the jobs available.

CV Search has secured talent needs for thousands of employers. Here are some of most favored features that employers in the Middle East regularly use to find their employees:

CV Freshness

There is nothing worse than finding a great candidate and contacting them only to learn that their experience is no longer relevant or that they have moved in a separate direction. It is time-wasting for employers who are on a mission to find the right employee in the shortest time possible. But this issue is easily solved with Bayt.com CV Search. CV Freshness is a highly popular and useful filtering feature that Bayt.com offers. It automatically sorts results based on the most-recently updated CVs. Using this feature ensures that employers can find candidates with up-to-date and relevant experience for their available position.

Advanced Search Filters

Finding the right employee may require being extra specific with the job requirements. As a result, employers often need to perform an advanced search to find the most relevant job candidates. Fortunately, CV Search from Bayt.com allows employers to use a combination of keywords and Boolean search operators (‘and’, ‘or’, and ‘not’) to retrieve highly relevant CVs that precisely match the qualifications they’re looking for. For example, using Boolean Search employers may want to search for CVs that contain the phrase “project manager” OR the phrase “program manager” but NOT CVs that contain the word “construction”. Such specifications are now possible with CV Search.

Related Keywords

This feature is extremely useful when employers are not sure what keywords to use in order to find their ideal employees. Employers may have one or two keywords in mind but are not sure what other search commands to use. With Bayt.com CV Search, the related keywords function helps employers access a wider variety of CVs. The feature automatically finds job titles and positions related to specific words and terms the employer is searching for.

Nowadays, employers need to have access to a sophisticated search tool that allows them to perform advanced search and find their ideal employees. With CV search from Bayt.com, hundreds of thousands of employers across the Middle East and North Africa are finding it easier to find talent and hire them with minimum time and cost.

To learn more about CV Search and request a FREE demo, please visit this page.

Wait a minute, did I read that right? Employers can post jobs for free? In what world is there anything for free? In the world that I know, even birthday gifts come with some cost. Because you can’t just take gifts and not give them. So at the end of the year, you are most likely not gaining or losing a single dollar.

But hold that thought. How about a free job posting on a leading online job site with over 26 million registered professionals from all industries, locations, and career levels? Is this just a fantasy?

The simple answer is: No, it is not a fantasy. Free job postings for employers are a real deal.

Bayt.com, as the Middle East’s #1 Job Site, has a mission to empower people, provide them with the tools and information, and help them lead the lifestyle of their choice. Because of that very mission, Bayt.com enables all job seekers to register online, create a profile, view and apply for thousands of jobs for free. Job Seekers never have to pay to access and apply for your jobs.

But Bayt.com also wanted to help out the region’s startups, small and medium enterprises who are struggling to find the right hiring tools. With this in mind, Bayt.com created JobsLite, a free recruitment solution specifically designed for employers with limited budgets.

With JobsLite, Bayt.com empowers small and medium enterprises (SMEs) and startups to find and hire their ideal employees, all online and for free.

Although Jobslite does not have all the features that a premium account has, it does provide a great hiring solution for many employers with limited budgets as well as those who are still testing the water with online hiring. Why not post jobs for free and gain access to millions of high-caliber professionals who are looking for employment? You might like using Bayt.com so much and decide to upgrade for additional benefits. All hiring solutions from Bayt.com are designed to lower your cost and maximize your Return on Investment (ROI).

Over 40,000 employers are benefiting from Bayt.com’s talent database and hiring solutions. Job seekers, as a result, have daily access to over 10,000 jobs across the Middle East and North Africa.

Are you ready to join and post jobs for free? Here’s a quick guide on how it works:

Jobslite is extremely easy to use for posting jobs.

1. Register on Bayt.com as an employer,

2. Post your job for free, and give it 1-3 days to be verified by our team.

3. Our representative will contact you during the verification process. You can also make use of this call to better understand the platform and how to use the tools and gain the maximum benefit possible from your account.

4. There’s always the choice to upgrade to a premium job posting if you decide you want to choose this option. Paid postings of course do provide more benefits, such as more filtering criteria, further visibility and higher rankings.

Customer feedback is important for the success of any business, since it plays an important role in measuring customers’ satisfaction. It’s also an easy tool for identifying unhappy customers, malfunctions, and areas for improvement. Not to mention that it’s a way for differentiating a brand, which can help attract new customers from a competitive business environment.

As a Customer Empowerment Executive at Bayt.com, I handle all sort of feedback, from complaints to suggestions to bug reports. As the Middle East’s #1 Job Site, Bayt.com offers highly advanced products and technologies. Therefore, having a fully-prepared customer and technical support staff to resolve any issues as they occur is essential for us. It would be very difficult for a company to survive or grow without a dedicated customer service team who answer queries, analyze feedback, handle complaints, and turn all the input from customers into valuable information.

That being said, here are four reasons why you need to listen to your customers’ feedback, and why it is an important tool to measure their satisfaction:

1. Secure customer loyalty

If you want customers to be loyal to you, you must first become loyal to them! It is very important to show customers that you have a solution to any problem they are facing and that you can address their concerns as quickly as possible. This is not a one man show of course. If you don’t have a satisfying answer, connect the relevant department, or refer the customer to the correct contact in a professional manner. Your brand is an experience, and if your customers go through a smooth experience to find a solution, not only will they be satisfied and loyal, their positive word of mouth will also play a key role in increasing your brand awareness.

2. Help your business grow

When customers complain or send you some comments, the last thing you want to do is ignore them. That feedback, as well as any other information you’d gather from surveys or polls, is gold. It will help you measure your customer’s satisfaction levels and know exactly what you are doing right and what you are not getting correctly. When you receive feedback, use it, analyze it, find the solutions, and make your business more customer-oriented.

3. Enhance your marketing

Consider asking your customers how they found out about your brand. This information will help you pin point what aspect of your marketing plan is working best, and which needs more improvement, and that will help you better allocate your marketing budget. If you are naturally receiving many comments from customers, whether positive or negative, know that you are engaging your audience, which is a good thing. The trick is simply handling the feedback effectively to reflect positively on your brand and satisfy your customers.

4. Accept fresh opinions on your business

Being investedin your business’s day-today operations might not let you see where flaws are. Everything could be looking good from your perspective. But if you’re interested in being the best at what you do, then it is vital to seek an outsider’s perspective. That could be done by enabling customer feedback through email or live-chat, conducting surveys, contacting customers directly, and sometimes by seeking another professional’s opinion, such as a business consultant.

Customer feedback is an invaluable tool for business growth and improvement. Think of it as free consultation. Your customers care about you, which is why they give you feedback. What you need to do is handle it professionally and seriously, use it to improve your offerings, and focus on maximizing your customers’ satisfaction.

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Change is inevitable and every organization, big or small, goes through it. Promotions, new hires, budget cuts, geographical expansion, and many other possibilities that are likely to happen frequently. However, the response to change and the results thereof can vary greatly from company to company and from team to team.

While you, as a leader, might be ecstatic about change or simply accustomed to it, your employees might not be as enthusiastic. If you want to create a culture that not only accepts change but also thrives on it, then you must train, introduce change gradually, and create an atmosphere of safety for your staff.

According to the Bayt.com Career Experts, here is how you can create a company that welcomes change and successfully reaps its benefits:

1. Inform your employees in advance

Unless the change is completely unplanned, it’s always a good idea to take your employees beforehand through the entire process of change and outlining your plan in response. This can be made easier by passing on customized plans to various department heads who then explain it to their teams. The plan should also include a detailed description of how each department will transition into the change, gradually and in phases. A sudden change would most definitely increase anxiety. Therefore, you should mitigate the element of surprise whenever possible.

2. Reduce the fear of failure

Change always brings with it the fear of failing and getting out of one’s comfort zone. The need to learn new skills and be constantly alarmed brings a tense atmosphere to any team or department. As a result, managers must instill confidence in their employees that they would not be reprimanded for failure, especially during the transition stages. You must affirm to your employees that making mistakes during times of change will only lead to an increase in learning and an improvement of processes. Don’t allow change to be an excuse for complacency or for shying away from taking risks and trying out new techniques. On the contrary, empower your employees to experiment and strategize in order to adjust and grow.

3. Have policies on hand in case of emergencies

Change can be very unpredictable, especially when it comes to external and uncontrollable factors in the market and the economy. As such, it’s advisable for your company to prepare policies and cases for any sort of conceivable situations and likely trends. There are various types of trends such as hard trends (where the change is inevitable) and soft trends (where the change may or may not happen). Keeping this in mind, you must strategize with top managers on how to handle each type of trend and disseminate information to your staff so that they know how to act in case the change does take place.

4. Protect your employee’s status

Certain change, such as downsizing or restructuring, can cause your employees to become highly wary of their position and status in the company. They might be afraid that their status is threatened, and hence might not be very productive, or speak badly about the organization behind your back. It’s best to assure your employees that they will not be affected badly by the change, and will in fact benefit from it. If, in reality, the change necessitates terminating employment or re-staffing, then you must be honest and straightforward; explain to your employees what is happening and why. This will help you avoid bad publicity or harming your employer brand.

5. Train your employees

A great way for employees to accept and thrive on change is for them to be trained on the new the skill-sets that will be required after the change. Employees are often too comfortable in their daily routine and their work is habitual. It’s a good idea to ask managers to list down the skill-sets that employees might need in the future and suggest ways to fill in the gaps through internal or external training.

6. Adjust your talent acquisition strategy

Change will often impact the human element of your business. Whether you need to hire for your newly created positions, re-fill your old ones, or simply keep a talent pipeline for your predicted changes, you must have a good talent sourcing strategy in place. At first, you should widen your horizons by accessing larger and more diversified talent databases. For example, Bayt.com empowers recruiters and hiring managers by giving them access to over 27 million CVs. You can then easily move on to the next step of segmenting your talent needs, narrowing down your prospective employees, and identifying those who will be most fitting for your current and/or future openings. An array of powerful search, filtering, sorting, and organizing tools will make that step much smoother for you.

As a recruiter, a hiring manager, or an HR professional, looking for one or 500 new employees does not have to be a dreadful task. Take a step back. There is no need to stretch your muscles beyond their maximums, no need to break more sweats, or get lost between a million candidates and a thousand different search queries.

Technology is truly magical, and if you use Bayt.com for your talent sourcing and acquisition needs then you already know this much. Using CV Search from the Middle East’s #1 Job Site, not only are you able to access an abundance of CVs, you can also put the powerful tools to use and let the technology search, filter, navigate, sort, organize, share, save, print, or perform any other essential command you can think of.

If you don’t know all about CV search, then you should definitely request your free demo here! Don’t be late to the party.

But let’s get to it and address the challenge you are having right now (or maybe the one you’ve never anticipated running into.)

Time is precious. We all know that. But when you are working against deadlines, running hundreds of search queries, and trying to manage piles of applicants for different positions at your company things can get really messy.

This is why Bayt.com has even more solutions to help you find and hire talent as smoothly as possible. Check out the below super handy tools:

1. Saved Searches

Let’s suppose you want a candidate for a digital marketing position who is located in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, has three to five years of experience, is fluent in English and Arabic, is a citizen or holds a work permit in the UAE, has a bachelor’s in marketing or a related field, is less than 35 but older than 26 years old, and so and so.

Well, you might have a ton of specifications, which can first take you some time to input. But the great news are: A) you will be able to retrieve highly relevant results and find your ideal candidates. B) You can simply save your searches so you can save time and not have to re-enter the same criteria every time you are trying to fill that same position.

You can name your saved searches as you please and access them in one section a day later, a year later, or whenever you desire!

To save a particular search, specify your search criteria and simply click “Save Current Selection” as seen below:

2. Email Alerts

Not only can you save your search criteria and re-run it whenever you need, you can also choose to use Auto Search, where you start receiving emails whenever there are new CVs posted that match your saved criteria. You can choose the frequency of these emails: daily, weekly, monthly, or none.

You can adjust your email setting from the saved searches page you see below. From that page, you can also run, edit, or delete any saved search and the email alerts will be reflected accordingly.

3. CV Folders

You also have the option of using CV folders for organizing the search results. Using the CV search platform, you can export, mark, print, and save CVs into folders for later use. CV searches are smoothly saved into folders and can be re-accessed at any time. Employers have the option of creating the folders and sorting CVs based on position, relevance, or any other criteria. This can further simplify the process of selecting the right person to hire among many candidates.

Ready to hire? Get to it!

It is no secret that great companies hire great talent, and the secret sauce to every company’s success is the effort and hard work of its teams and employees. So how do you ensure that you have a great company that is attracting the best talent and retaining its existing top employees? Here are the seven traits that every great organization has and how you can achieve them too!

1. Offer career growth opportunities

There are a few things that are more important than opportunities for growth and development. No one wants to be stuck in the same position, doing the same things forever. Therefore, it is exceedingly important for employers to focus on career development and to have a clear track for the growth of their employees. In fact, according to the Bayt.com Career Development in the Middle East survey, 82% of MENA professionals would leave their companies in search of better career growth opportunities. Show your employees that there is in fact ample room to learn, develop their careers, and climb the corporate ladder.

2. Provide training and learning opportunities

This one goes hand in hand with offering career growth opportunities. Employees highly value the opportunity to further develop their skills and abilities. Implement learning programs, either internally or externally. This can be done through online courses, seminars, social learning, mentorship, in-house training programs, and company-sponsored scholarships for higher education. If you’re on a tighter budget, you can always use these six ways to develop a low-cost yet effective training program for your employees.

 3. Recognize achievements and effort

Studies have proven over and over again that employees who feel appreciated, valued and recognized by their employers are the most productive and most loyal to their companies. Acknowledging effort, hard work, and achievements is among  the highest motivators for employees. This means celebrating their successes, as well as the risks they may have taken, even if they don’t result in perfect outcomes. Doing so is important to build a satisfied workforce. Formalize the process by introducing regular evaluation systems and reward programs for your employees. You can even get creative with your rewards regardless to your budget and size of company.

4. Encourage diversity, innovation and creativity

Diversity is not just about having different people from different backgrounds working in the same place. It is also about accepting new ideas and being open to a completely different school of thought. This means welcoming diverse opinions and ideas within the workplace. Foster the innovation and the creativity of all of your employees, trust their intellect, and be open to new and fresh projects that may enhance the company’s success, and improve productivity and efficiency.

5. Open up your communication channels

The healthiest work environments are those where employees and managers are honest and open with each other. Teams can share thoughts, discuss new ideas, and even give negative feedback, when necessary, without worrying about consequences from their managers. Always make sure your company is transparent and doesn’t leave employees in the dark about new developments and changes to the organization, whether they are improvements or problems. Ensure that all managers have an open-door policy, which allows for open conversations and trust among all employees. When employees are comfortable with their workplace and their minds are at ease, productivity naturally increases.

6. Create a health and wellness policy

A recent Bayt.com study revealed that 96% of professionals in the MENA region believe it is the employer’s responsibility to promote their employees’ health and wellness. Structured health programs and wellness policies are among the top benefits that job seekers look for when applying for jobs. This can also be a great motive for loyalty. Encourage all your employees to lead a healthy lifestyle, introduce healthy snacks to the workplace, offer discounts or free gym subscriptions, hold regular events outside of the office that promote activity, such as rock climbing, which can also double as a great team building activity.

7. Believe in the importance of work-life balance

Having a good work-life balance is essential and affects the morale of every employee. Though some people might find trouble achieving it, others relish it. It is the manger’s responsibility to set a good example for their employees and help them achieve a balanced state. Offer perks such as flexible hours or remote work. Allow your employees to work on their own time and to choose whatever is most convenient for them, depending on their lifestyle and other commitments they may have, such as childcare. Implement telecommuting programs that allow people to work from home every once in a while, if the nature of their work allows it. Flexible work arrangements help employees achieve a better balance and yields happier and more satisfied employees all around.

The first ever Bayt.com Compensation Trends Survey 2017 was a monumental success with respondents contributing from around the world across 25+ industries.

From compensation frameworks, incentive schemes to anticipated increases in payscales, we have the answers to questions on the minds of most company executives that were submitted first-hand in the survey by key decision-makers.

Get your own customized pay scale analysis report