Bayt.com’s Communities, Goin’ Social with 4.5m Job Seekers?

Time comes for Web companies to renew themselves n’ get on with new features n’ enhanced strategies to cope up with users’ needs, opportunities, and competition. Bayt.com has gone through a series of additions to what they offer on their Website.

First was their Buy & Sell section that is just classifieds which is irrelevant to what Bayt.com is known for as a recruitment portal. And recently, Bayt.com added a new section named Communities. The new section is not live yet as it offers an introduction to what is coming up and features the first Community for Marketing professionals offering them Industry News/Updates, Networking, and Professional Assessment. Is that a shot at LinkedIn?

Bayt is rich in user-base, with 4.5 Million job seekers on board, this could be a shot well worth venturing for. Engaging such a big number of users in networking looks great on paper but in reality, the type of users that we’re talkin’ about are job seekers. And this is exactly the opposite of LinkedIn where professionals signup to network first and might get exposed to vacant positions.

Now there’s been attempts in creating professional networks before in the region, initiatives such as Akhtaboot’s communities which then became job categories despite the name. Not forgetting In The Loop and the mighty Xing that was dominating  the Middle East professional networking scene for a while.

So what could such a service mean to job seekers on Bayt.com?

Connect with other job seekers? How much of value would that be? Or is this a feature/section that is going to end up as a separate project? Is this going to be integrated in the job seekers/employers section of the Website? It’d be amazing say you could network with Employers and see who is actually posting jobs. The other two features, News & Professional Assessment are going to be the real value. Content & Interaction, now these type of services are the ones to keep users on site and get their attention against looking for jobs, applying and leaving.

It makes sense if you were Networking and occasionally got exposed to jobs and available vacancies or used your Network to get a job when it’s time. But, if you are a job seeker on a “job website” the value of Networking is likely to be a lot less.

Another feature that we need to see on Bayt’s communities is how users are going to be connected to each other through the communities–is it going to be open or connect only with people that you really know and dealt with before? There’s really low value in Netowrking if it wasn’t targeted or only virtual.

Industry News, it really depends on how this is generated, if it’s posted by Bayt.com then it’s going to end up as series of columns for half-journalists. But if it was crowd-sourced then the possibility of having users actually post is going to be challenging if only job seekers were meant to read’em.

All in all, it depends on how connected the service is going to be with other services that could push content to Bayt’s Communities. It’d be lovely if LinkedIn or Facebook profiles could be linked to it.

The service is not live yet, we shall see the end product soon and take a real look at it. So check it out for yourself and request invitation or suggest communities that you’re interested in.