Middle East job portal Bayt sees a major revamp, adds analytics and real-time CV translation

The Middle East’s number one job portal, Bayt, has been steadily adding new features, in what would appear to be a bid to become the LinkedIn of the region. Its most recent update brings a completely overhauled look and feel to the site, packed with new features for its users, as well as a lot of changes under the hood.

Bayt’s new design

At first glance, you can’t miss the site’s new clean and sleek design. The site is far easier on the eye now, and is much easier to use.

With the redesign, several separate Bayt tools have been merged into one interface. Bayt’s major features – its job search, salary tool and community are all now available under one convenient menu.

More important than appearance, however, are the changes that have been made to Bayt’s huge suite of tools for employers and job seekers.

Import your CV with the click of a button

One of the most time-consuming aspects of signing up for a job portal is getting your resume details onto your profile. With Bayt’s new CV builder, you can import your completed CV into the service, and Bayt will do the rest for you. If you’ve already completed your job history on LinkedIn, simply connect your accounts and Bayt can extract the necessary information, making sure that you don’t leave anything out that prospective employers may be looking for.

The CV editor itself has undergone a significant overhaul making it far easier to use than before.

Analtyics for job-seekers

Job-seekers on Bayt are no longer left in the dark about when their CVs turn up in employers’ searches. With the new analytics tool, Bayt users know when employers see their applications, as well as getting insight into what keywords in their CV are turning up in searches. Armed with this knowledge, users can tweak their CVs to make sure they’re getting noticed by the right prospective employers. You can also opt-in to receive a monthly digest of all of your stats.

Socializing on Bayt

Bayt has been boosting its social services, recently launching a networking tool, simply named People, and a few new features have been introduced into the mix. The People channel is soon getting a ‘Specialties’ feature, which is meant to spark conversations between Bayt users. With the specialities feature, users can easily discover hot topics in any given industry, and more.

Under the hood

A significant ‘under-the-hood’ change that Bayt has just made has brought an improvement to its search algorithm. The new search tool sorts job results based on a variety of factors including freshness, keywords and filtering.

Real-time translation for employers

Bayt is available in three languages – English, Arabic and French. If you’ve uploaded your CV in English and a prospective employer is searching for candidates in Arabic – you might miss out on a career opportunity. With Bayt, however, that’s no longer the case. The CV Search tool used by employers can perform real-time translations in all three languages, and CVs are matched and sorted regardless of the language they’re submitted in.

A new mobile interface

Bayt has also launched a mobile interface which makes it easy to keep up with the service on the go. Features in the mobile app include the ability to search for jobs on the go, receive notifications when applications have been viewed or when a job match is found.

What do you think of Bayt’s revamp? Let us know in the comments.

➤ Bayt