Careers – StartUpArabia

CareerJunction Middle East Launches Mobile Version

January 27, 2009January 27, 2009 MMM

CareerJunction Middle East, an online recruitment web service, has just launched a mobile version of their application that allows its registered users to search and apply for jobs using their mobile phones, furthering their goal to provide CareerSeekers access to top regional jobs anywhere and anytime in all confidentiality.

CareerJunction Middle East’s mobile application gives registered job seekers the opportunity to search and apply for jobs on the go, or email the jobs to themselves or their friends.

It also enables them to customize their cover letters before sending out their job applications through the service.

Ihab Hashwa, Regional Operations Manager of CareerJunction Middle East, said: “… Our new application is fully optimised for a mobile phone interface with easy navigation and quick download time. There is no difference in the application process on our website and the mobile phone, making it simple and easy to find and apply to hundreds of jobs, especially for those who do not have easy access to the internet.”

Hashwa added: “We believe the new service will be an invaluable tool for our clients who are always looking for innovative ways to extend the reach of their job ads. Coupled with our state-of-the-art job competency profiling, candidate screening and online interviewing technology, the mobile service means that our clients can receive greater exposure for their job ads while receiving qualified and appropriately matching candidates.”

Within a year of its launch, CareerJunction Middle East announced numbers of more than 100,000 registered users from all over the world.

Laazi, New Job Portal Simplified For Job Seekers

January 5, 2009January 5, 2009 MMM 3 Comments

Laazi is a new job portal that was recently launched in its beta version to cater to the Middle Eastern job market, trying to simplify the process of finding a job for job seekers in the region.

They started by the UAE job market but will be expanding across the entire region soon.

Laazi’s design is very simplistic, and attempts to make things as easy as possible for jobseekers, by eliminating the usually long registration steps; making it very quick to sign up and start searching for jobs on the portal.

To register with Laazi, a user only needs to upload their CV, and then all information is extracted from there to automatically fill in the registrations forms. All the user has to do then is check if all the information was filled correctly, make whatever modifications he needs and save his profile.

Laazi enters a market with some already big and established players, but hopes that by cutting down the time to create an account and start searching for jobs, they’ll be able to lure users their way and get them to use their service.

The beta version of Laazi was launched in September 2008; it’s a product of Danat, the same company behind Logta, which was previously reviewed here.

# Laazi

Bayt.com To Host First Virtual Job Fair In Kuwait

January 3, 2009January 3, 2009 MMM 5 Comments

Bayt.com the leading job site in the Middle East just announced that they’ll be holding another one of their virtual job fairs; this time in Kuwait.

This is the fourth such event in the region, with previous ones held in the UAE, Saudi Arabia and Jordan.

The event will be hosted on the virutal job fair section of Bayt’s website and will run from the 18th to the 22nd of January.

The aim of these events that Bayt is holding is to offer employers and job seekers alike a chance to conveniently and effectively connect and interact online; thereby providing qualified job seeking candidates with interesting career opportunities; and giving local, regional and international employers access to professionals from around the region; pushing the online recruitment concept even further.

The virtual job fair will feature 3D booths of exhibiting companies, where they will be able to display company information and job vacancies. Visitors to the online fair will be able to leave CVs at the stands and apply for specific jobs. Companies can then connect to candidates through either video or online chat.

# Bayt.com Virtual Job Fair

ReKrute.com Expands Into Tunisian Employment Market

December 17, 2008December 17, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

ReKrute.com, one of the leading online career portals in Morocco, that was launched from Casablanca in 2006, just expanded into the Tunisian market, recently opening an office in Tunis and launching a dedicated version of their portal.

Like other online job portals, ReKrute.com aims to continuously connect companies looking to recruit in Tunisia with the best candidates out there.

The portal is totally free for candidates searching for a job, hoping to become their main access point to the job market, providing them with fresh job offers, information on the Tunisian job market, career advice and tips, online language tests and more.
Of course, the possibility to just post their CVs to the portals database so that they can be found by employers is also possible.

For companies, ReKrute.com provides a global and flexible e-recruitment solution, that enables them to search through a database of CVs that match their exact needs, post their job vacancies and get in touch with the right potential employees for them.

All Job offers through the portal will also be reachable through the MSN Maghreb‘s job section which is powered by ReKrute.com.

In order to promote ReKrute.com in Tunisia and increase its visibility, partnership agreements are being finalised with big media entities, as well as a number of important Tunisian and European universities.

Ramla Jamel, who previously was a channel manager at Intel Corp., is the general manager of ReKrute.com in Tunisia.

Hozpitality.com, Hospitality Career and Networking Portal

November 27, 2008November 27, 2008 MMM

In the backdrop of the continuing growth trail and potential of the regional hospitality industry, a new hospitality networking and human resources portal, Hozpitality.com, was launched yesterday by Dubai-based VR Online Group.

Promoters of the new portal said the sector’s rate of growth in job opportunities in the Middle East, North Africa and Levant is estimated to be at 24 per cent between 2008-2011 while in GCC it would be some 20 per cent in the next four years.

“The Middle East, North Africa and Levant is now the fastest growing region for global hospitality industry with approximately 300 new committed hotel projects coming up between 2008-2011, cumulatively adding up approximately 85,900 rooms. Once the projects come on stream they will face an enormous need for manpower, which we estimate will be to the tune of 111,650 staff. In this context, we believe Hozpitality.com could play a salient role, be it global sourcing of manpower, hotel supplies or in offering an exclusive networking platform for industry professionals,” said Mr. Raj Bhatt, Director, Hozpitality.com.

He said that the aim of Hozpitality.com was to grow beyond the confines of a conventional portal and to add more value-innovations to its offer portfolio in tandem with the growth and sophistication of the regional hospitality industry.

“Hozpitality.com is much more than an ordinary job portal. We are trying to build a dedicated hospitality company where everyone wins. Normally job boards have job postings and candidates applying and that’s it. We would have much more than this,” Mr. Bhatt said.

While recruitment will be the core activity on the website, the portal will be a platform where the entire hospitality community can network while posting jobs or applying for live jobs. Regular networking events for the hospitality community would also form one of the core activities.

Employers or Job seekers would have free access to focused hospitality supplier listing; registered employers can post any movements, promotions, transfers or post any announcements on the website. The portal would also extend services of professional CV designing to the candidates.

This move comes just a few months after the launch of Travel Yolk (previously reviewed here), that caters to the recruitment needs of the Travel industry, which signals a shift towards more specialized portals in such areas of service.

# Hozpitality.com

StartUpArabia Officially Launches Job Board

August 4, 2008August 4, 2008 MMM 8 Comments

Today, I’m glad to announce the official launch of the StartUpArabia Job Board.

The goal of this job board is to help people who share the same entrepreneurial mentality and startup spirit get together to work and produce great products and services.

From my experience working with different companies and startups, and with people working in them from developers, to designers, to other specialties; I believe that not everyone is really cut out for or even interested in working at a startup, where a certain level of creativity, involvement, excitement, commitment and “geekism” is needed.

A lot of time is often lost looking for good candidates for this or that position, or having to deal with people who just don’t fit into the whole spirit of a startup, …etc.

The goal of this job board is to connect the readers of this blog from both sides: the entrepreneurs looking to recruit, or the developers/designers/managers/salespeople …etc that are interested in startups and in working with them.

For the launch period of this job board, posting job vacancies is open for FREE for all technology startups and companies operating in the Arab world.

There already are a number of posted vacancies from the likes of Questler, Argaam and even Google Middle East.

One last thing I’d like to add is that this job board is in no way meant to compete with the other Arab career and employment portals out there; they obviously offer a great added value to many companies and job seekers around the Arab world, and will continue to do so. The StartUpArabia Job Board only attempts to help companies and job seekers in the startup culture niche connect and work together.

# StartUpArabia Job Board

Interview With Twffaha Co-Founder & CEO Ashraf Mansoor

July 14, 2008July 14, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Before anything, I’d really like to thank Ashraf Mansoor, the co-founder and CEO of Twffaha, the job portal for Arab women, which was previously reviewed here, for taking some of his time to answer our questions about Twffaha, and give us more insight into the startup, how things have been going so far, as well as sharing some tips and advice for other entrepreneurs.

How would you describe Twffaha in your own words?

Twffaha is an endeavor to endorse and promote recruiting women in the Middle East. It is an online job portal that strives to provide women job seekers with state-of-the art tools, and tips that will help them unearth jobs in accordance with their skills and qualifications. A platform for employers to land their next greatest prospect, and a belief that women are an underrated asset that if recruited properly will guide to economic growth and sustainability in the Middle East.

How did you get the idea for Twffaha? And what made you feel passionate about this specific idea?

The idea for Twffaha came in late 2007. We came across different studies that showed the rate of recruiting women in the region is far beyond the international rates. At the time we were designing a job portal for a different purpose, and then we thought we need to find a niche in order to compete with the numerous job portals in the market, that’s when we decided to launch an exclusive women job portal, and came up with the name Twffaha.

What difficulties or challenges did you face making Twffaha a reality?

As an Arabic startup you are destined to face challenges. The atmosphere is not conductive for startups. One of the problems was finding the right people who believed in the idea and who can be a driving force. We also encountered major outages during our public beta that forced us to reconsider our infrastructure, and find new reliable partners. We believe problems are an integral part of a startup structure, so we embrace them.

Syraty, Online Professional Resume Builder

June 18, 2008June 18, 2008 MMM 4 Comments

Syraty is a new Saudi-based Arabic online service that provides job seekers with the possibility to easily create and maintain a professional resume that is hosted online, available for download in Word or PDF format, or printing, and that can easily be sent to companies.

Users can build and customize their resumes online through an easy straight-forward interface, that allows them to add as many sections as they wish and input content for them through a rich text editor.
They can then either publish their CVs or keep them for their personal use; and even when published, they have the choice to either make them public and have them submitted to search engines or to password protect them so as to control access.

Instant email and SMS notifications can be enabled to allow the candidate to know exactly when and from where potential employers viewed their resume. A detailed statistics and graphs interface provides even more details about the resume’s distribution and where viewing visitors came from.

A list of Saudi and International employers is provided as well, enabling users to quickly send their hosted CV address to a number of these companies by simply selecting them and clicking send.
Of course job seekers can also send their CVs to other companies either by downloading one of the formats and sending it by email, printing the CV, or by sending the link to the online version of it.

Employers can use a contact form on the user’s resume page to get in touch with them, ask questions and eventually schedule an interview.

The service is available through three paid plans, ranging from $5.33 to $39.7 per year, providing different options and possibilities, like the number of themes that can be used for the created resumes, whether it’s hosted on a subdomain of Syraty or on the user’s own personal domain, the number of SMS notifications they can receive, …etc.

Syraty is generously offering StartUpArabia readers, the first 1000 at least, a free account under the Silver plan; Register for your free account.

The service’s interface is in Arabic only, but it allows users to create their CVs in English, as most companies in the Middle East region require English-language resumes.

# Syraty

Travel Yolk, Travel Industry Online Recruitment Portal

June 15, 2008June 15, 2008 MMM 5 Comments

Dubai-based travel industry technology solution provider TechTuners recently launched a new online recruitment portal named Travel Yolk that aims to address the staffing requirements of the Middle East’s travel industry.

Travel Yolk is built much like you’d expect a career website to be, providing the possibility for job seekers from the travel industry to build their CVs online, look for new job opportunities in the industry throughout the Middle East, get email notifications of interesting job vacancies and apply directly through the website.

On the other hand, employers can post their job offers and search the database of travel professionals to find people who best suit their vacant job positions.

As with most job sites, the service is free for job seekers, while employers will have to pay for posting their career opportunities. Different plans are provided to suit employers’ needs and activity.

An online forum where employees can meet their potential employers and vice versa should be added to the portal soon; making it easier and more effective for both sides to connect.

The website is available in English only for the time being.

# Travel Yolk

Bayt.com To Host First Virtual Job Fair In The Middle East

May 13, 2008May 13, 2008 MMM 2 Comments

Bayt.com the leading job site in the Middle East just announced that they’ll be holding the region’s first virtual job fair. The event will be hosted on a new section of Bayt’s website and will run for five days between 15th and 19th June 2008.

The aim of the event is to offer employers and job seekers alike a chance to conveniently and effectively connect and interact online; thereby providing qualified job seeking candidates with interesting career opportunities; and giving local, regional and international employers access to professionals from around the region; pushing the online recruitment concept even further.

This is the first event of it’s type in the region and it will be sponsored by the Emirates Group.

# Bayt.com Virtual Job Fair