Live from the Bayt virtual job fair – helllloooo anyone there?
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I just virtually-walked around the Bayt virtual job fair, and although it might still be early in the 2-day affair to really measure success, early signs arent looking very good.
As a sidenote first, I did initially think this might be a cool second-life-esque affair but it turned out to be more like a chat + video chat service buit on top of an interface resembling booths and halls from a job fair.
Anyway, here’s the good, bad, and ugly.
The good
1- Bayt was able to see one advantage of having a Internet-based job fair. Candidates from much of Asia, phillipines and even the USA who wanted to work in Dubai were there hoping to speak with company reps. This ability for people all over the world to connect with employment opportunities around the world was in itself attractive for this fair
2- The interface allowed people to learn a lot more about the companies than just a name and position. I’ve argued this many times – the path to finding better candidates through job sites is to allow candidates to learn more about the company. In this case, there were documents, corporate videos, samples and more to explore for each employer there.
3- The job seeker chat created a sort of watercooler effect where people could meet and share notes.
4- Good premier sponsors – getting Siemens, Emirates and other big companies on the first get-go is interesting.
The Bad
1- There weren’t enough employers. Sure, I understand that this was something brand new for this region, but the job seekers who were there were expecting more than 15 companies to welcome them – I think they were atleast expecting more companies in each type of category, as one of the job seeker I spoke to said there was only 1 company there for his area of interest.
2- While the interface was good in finding detailed information about a particular company, it wasnt enough to see how many companies were there – you cant beat list-views for that, although making a "floormap" of sorts would have helped.
The Ugly
1- If you give people an interface that looks like a job fair, they’ll expect an experience like a job fair. Even though people could drop their CVs at the company booths, the job seekers there were expecting to actually meet and speak to company reps. Sadly, not one company rep seemed to have shown up. There were people who were up at 0230 from the US and had been waiting for 3-4 hours but still hadnt seen any company rep anywhere.
This was making all of the job seekers claim that while this was a good concept, it was poorly organized and very frustrating.
2- Adding to the frustrations was the fact that no one from Bayt was there either! If people had questions about employers, or wanted any other type of help, there was just absolutely no one to speak to.
3- Thirdly, there wasnt really any good filtering mechanism. The problem with making it so easy to enter these fairs is that you basically end up getting people who are desparate for jobs because they cant find any anywhere else. So in the watercooler area I could see people coming in with "I WANT TELECOM JOB HELP" type of messages. This means that even if company reps had been there, they would have gone home rather frustrated too.
There’s a couple of days left so I hope it picks up – but I wont be dropping in again. If someone is able to find a good job lead from there do let me know that its been successful for you
10:57 pm
dear osama
what i want to comment on is a very important note that you wrote in the ugly that u mentioned, point 2 to be specific and i dont know where you got this info that no one from bayt was in the job fair today, I PERSONALLY was there from 7 am till 6 pm to answer questions from jobseekers as many of my colleagues were online too to answer questions + the bayt.com booth is made for the support of the jobseekers to answer thier questions.
11:08 pm
Well… i would like to comments on the Ugly point 1 … actually i dont beleive that this is true. Company representative are available with different timing,you may check the time they will be available if you checked the details of their availabilty on their booths. I logged in many times during the day and it happened that i chatted with the representatives of three companies participating in the Job Fair.
11:28 pm
Guys,
Thanks for adding your comments. My source is the people who were there – I spent a long time in the participants chat window interviewing people.
Initially I asked ‘are you satisfied with this job fair’ and everyone there said NO resoundingly. Two gentlemen said they were there for the past 4 hours but reps were not present.
3 other people came to the chat shouting WHO IS THE ADMINISTATOR OF THIS FAIR and were asking others how to find them. The truth is no one actually knew how to get to you guys.
If a few people dont know thats ok, but if everyone resoundingly doesnt know, its a problem.
But like I said in the post, theres still some time left so I hope you were able to fix the issue.
11:33 pm
Having a Bayt booth isnt good enough – your reps needed to be in chat
1:28 pm
osama,
thank you for the review. we have taken your feedback and have appointed more bayt.com reps to be available in chat room too apart from bayt.com stand.
we have also encouraged companies to appoint more reps in their booth as the response we got from the jobseeker is enormous and its hard for couple of HR people to handle 1000s of jobseeker at any time.
its been a great learning and we will try our best to make sure that areas where we need improvement are well covered during the next 4 days of the virtual job fair and in our future job fairs.
9:08 pm
Overall i consider this job fair as a very good effort and after the mistakes of this virtual fair, they might come up with better strategy and improved services next time…..
9:16 pm
@smaak: Agreed. Its a great idea and full points for having the guts to introduce a new idea somewhere.
I cant wait to see their stats too – most likely it will blow the socks out of a physical job fair.
2:09 am
I was waiting for this to happen but was very frustrated when I entered, always trying connect and when I managed to connect there was no companies and one Bayt rep with no clue !!! Thank you Bayt for adding on my frustration and this has been the case since 2 years applying to hundreds of Jobs and no one calls, I wonder does that happen by chance, maybe it’s my bad luck !!! The good news I finally found a job through G News.
10:07 am
salem, i am sorry to hear that it was not a good experience for you. i agree with you that some of the companies reps didn’t participate and many others who did participate (including me) received a huge amount of chat requests and it was kind of impossible to chat with everyone.
any new idea takes some time to mature and i must say that overall we got a very good response. we have learned a lot from our first execution and we will make sure that all the queries we received including yours through this blog are well sorted out in our next execution.
great to hear that you got the job through G News. wish you best of luck with your career.
7:43 pm
osama,
regarding the statistics you might want to check this link.
http://www.tradearabia.com/news/newsdetails.asp?Sn=EDU&artid=145971
we are working on making sure that the areas that needs improvement (many of them pointed in this blog) are well sorted out before the next launch.
9:14 am
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11:50 am
I just saw this and am very disappointed to see that what I considered to be a very successful and convenient event was not enjoyed by others. I was able to chat with employers from the comfort of my living room at home, send CVs and get feedback and ask all the questions I needed to ask of the employer I was targeting. I personally didn’t get the job I wanted but know from one of the recruitment managers I am still in dialogue with that the job fair was a huge success for them in terms of hiring and they would like it to be a repeated event. Bayt is very transparent about its customers as you can see all over its site – 2.75 Million JobSeekers and 30,000 top employers – obviously even if employers hire massively, not everyone is going to get a job – but the most qualified candidates will! Thank you Bayt for delivering on your promise, it was pain-free and cost-free for me as a jobseeker and the HR contacts I was able to establish at the fair were key
11:55 am
Dear
Any body help me to get the job in uae ,
I am working as HR officer in india & i have 12 years expirience.
thanks
Riaz
4:12 pm
Hi everyone,
I am from the kuwait bayt office.. the virtual job fair has been a great experience here. We hope more co.’s do participate in the future VJF’s coz the number of job-seekers was much more than anyone can imagine.
Keep up the great task Bayt heads.
Cheers
Faisal