Bayt.com has been a defining force in the Middle East’s online recruitment landscape since the year 2000 — launching when hiring was still dominated by newspaper ads, walk-ins and personal referrals. As the Gulf’s economies modernised and digital adoption accelerated, Bayt.com became the first large-scale online bridge between employers and jobseekers across borders, industries and languages — a homegrown technology success story built in the UAE for the region.
Its longevity has been fuelled by reinvention. “You cannot sustain 25 years in the internet business unless you have to reinvent yourself almost every couple of years,” reflects Co-Founder and CTO Akram Assaf. “We’ve been successful in focusing on continuous renovation through the Bayt.com main platform, but also through reincarnation of many of the products and offerings and launching a lot of services that support our user base, whether employers or job seekers.”
Over time, Bayt.com has evolved from a job portal into a suite of HR technologies — including Talentera, Evalufy and AfterHire — serving employers from sourcing to onboarding. That transition mirrors the region’s shift to skills-driven economies and rapidly diversifying job markets, where sectors from logistics to clean energy to digital government increasingly demand specialised talent and agile recruitment models.
Innovation as part of DNA
Technology has always been central to Bayt.com’s operating DNA. As the platform scaled across multiple countries, data volumes surged, and new products emerged, the organisation recognised the need for a cloud foundation capable of supporting low-latency digital services, AI experimentation and security at regional scale.
This is where Oracle’s role expanded. What began as software collaboration matured into a strategic cloud relationship. “We have worked with Oracle through various engagements… but now we are hosted in OCI for most of our product line,” Assaf explains. Oracle Cloud Infrastructure now underpins Bayt’s performance, security, resiliency and future-proofing for high-intensity AI workloads across key markets.
The partnership goes beyond migration. In late 2024, Bayt.com and Oracle announced a deeper integration that connects Bayt’s candidate network directly into Oracle Fusion Cloud Recruiting, enabling enterprises using Oracle’s HR suite to source talent from Bayt’s large regional database through a seamless flow. The partnership is designed to enhance recruitment efficiency in the Middle East — a region where global cloud players increasingly recognise the scale and maturity of digital transformation.
For enterprises, the integration unlocks two critical levers: access to Bayt’s candidate ecosystem and a recruitment workflow anchored in robust cloud security and compliance frameworks. For Bayt.com, it means becoming embedded in the enterprise HR technology stack — particularly in government and large-scale industries where Oracle has long-established penetration.
The collaboration aligns with the UAE and Saudi Arabia’s vision for sovereign digital capability and region-first data strategies. OCI’s presence in regional datacentres gives Bayt the ability to operate with data residency assurances — vital in markets where talent data protection is regulated and sensitive.
Assaf sees further potential in this convergence. “There is a good chance that we can optimise possibly for cost reduction… instead of spending too much money on massive models, you can have more purpose-built micro models that run on effective architecture in the Oracle suite,” he says.
In other words, it is not only about cloud compute capacity, it is about co-engineering a next-generation talent-AI stack anchored in regional architecture.
The era of hiring intelligence
Hiring today is increasingly complex. Employers want precision and predictive insight, not volume alone. Candidates want tailored guidance, not algorithmic guesswork. “AI is almost on every front of the communication process between the parties we are delivering solutions for,” Assaf notes. Natural-language experiences, intent capture and personalised matching have already become core to Bayt.com’s platform.
Assaf sees the next leap as moving beyond search and matching into continuous, conversational career guidance — a GPT-like layer tailored to the region’s talent landscape. Bayt.com is currently developing this capability, internally referred to as BaytGPT.
“Our Bayt GPT solution is almost a career consultant for every user,” Assaf explains. “Everyone would feel that they have a consultant working with them, bridging the gaps, helping them build the best possible profile, finding the best possible jobs, making sure my communication with employers is timely and effective.”
This isn’t a chatbot layered on top. It is integrated into the hiring journey: from profile optimisation to application positioning to communication timing and tone. It will launch with jobseekers first, then expand to employers with candidate insights and pipeline intelligence. According to Assaf, the rollout is expected to begin in the coming weeks. However, the company has not yet confirmed which markets will be included in the initial phase as launch sequencing is still being finalised. “We’re expecting to launch it within the next few weeks,” Assaf confirms. And, aligned with Bayt’s architecture strategy, “This is also running on Oracle Cloud… on the OCI cluster.”
In a region marked by workforce diversity and demographic fluidity, fairness and transparency matter. “AI does not really come to a conclusion or guide your decisions without clearly explaining how it came to that conclusion,” says Assaf. Bayt’s models break down variables, weightings and recommendations to ensure visibility — a direct response to global concerns around opaque hiring algorithms.
“We make sure that any of the AI technologies have been well-aligned to avoid any kind of bias that could take anything such as gender, race, age into consideration,” he adds. In doing so, Bayt aims to build trust across a talent ecosystem where fairness is not just ethical — it’s commercially and socially essential.
Looking ahead
Assaf sees a future where hiring becomes conversational, not transactional. “We all converse and we communicate, and with the capabilities of generative AI, these are bridging the gap between the machine and human,” he says. Rather than tapping through dashboards, users will speak, ask, refine and receive guidance in real time. Bayt’s vision looks like a voice-enabled recruitment concierge — or as Assaf puts it, a “recruitment butler”. “We’ll see the initial ‘Hey Bayt’ very soon,” he hints.
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