Online recruitment firm Bayt.com has launched a new Outplacement Services offering, which provides employers with the option of supporting staff who have been made redundant due to corporate downsizing or restructuring. The idea behind the service is to allow employers to make a tangible gesture to employees who are being cut adrift through no fault of their own. Bayt.com’s Outplacement Services aim to equip individuals with essential tools for the job search ahead, giving them an edge in landing a new position, particularly in these difficult economic times.
“This is a service for all seasons,” said Saikat Sengupta, manager of the Career Services Division at Bayt.com. “Even during economically good times, any company that is restructuring may be forced to let go of some of its people who have been made redundant. This is a service for companies who want to maintain their brand image as a responsible employer of choice.”
Often when workers are let go, they may feel an understandable sense of being wronged. This impacts organizations - not just in the short term immediately after the lay-offs, but also risks long term fallout by creating a negative impression of the employer in the market and affecting the company’s ability to attract top talent in times of economic growth. When a company provides redundant staff with Outplacement Services, job seekers are equipped with a complete range of career planning and job search tools, which will maximize the candidate’s prospects for a successful job search and aid in a smoother career transition.
Employers are offered choices in which services they’d like to present to their terminated employees. Bayt.com claims that most opt for a comprehensive bouquet that genuinely seeks to help the soon to be former employee land a job again. Bayt.com’s career consultants assist redundant employees in creating effective resumes, familiarizing them with job search techniques and tweaking interview behavior.
Bayt.com can also make available psychometric tests which aim to discover the professional and personal strengths of job seekers, allowing them to identify positions that match their abilities.
“The primary target of the service is white collar jobs. The service is not as of now mature enough to cater to the blue collar workers, although we’d like to eventually extend it. Our experts can advise white collar workers in any field on the best career transitions; the ideal approach to market themselves; and even possible career changes,” explained Sengupta. “It’s important that people understand their strengths and weaknesses as well, so they can understand where they might take their careers from the point where they were made redundant.”
He added, “Often during the good times, when things are going well, people don’t take stock of where they should be going in terms of a future career. Sometimes a redundancy can be a blessing in disguise because it will allow an individual to step back and look at his or her working life. We’ve seen a few people that we’ve advised who have had a complete re-think on their career paths. And, as per their feedback, later on they turned out to be happier and more successful in their new careers than they were in the past.”
No other online recruitment company is offering Outplacement Services in the region and Sengupta believes that such support is an essential form of corporate social responsibility (CSR), particularly in these challenging economic times. He did point out however that the employment situation in the Middle East is still better than that found in many other geographies.
“In all honesty, the number of job postings regionally has gone down slightly, but not substantially. The trend is to always overestimate the good times. We see that things are stabilizing now. Fantastic growth is not there, but there is growth,” Sengupta said. “What we do note is that employers are focused on employing exactly the right person for the job. They aren’t casual about hiring anymore. Many more employers are trying out online recruitment for the simple reason that they perceive it to be more cost effective. Companies are more careful about getting the best value from their recruitment budgets.”
Interestingly, online job postings are not necessarily an accurate measure of which companies may be hiring. A large number of employers prefer to recruit candidates through searching the Bayt.com database.
Sengupta advised that many companies don’t ever post jobs at Bayt.com. They simply purchase a search package and look for the individuals in the Bayt.com database who they believe will be an asset to their company. Companies using this strategy don’t want to be bothered, or perhaps don’t have the time to look though the thousands of CVs of people who are responding to a job posting.
“Employers searching our databases are as many, if not more, than the number who actually put out a job posting,” said Sengupta. “That’s why candidates looking for a job should ensure that they’ve created a complete resume and added it to the Bayt.com database. This is the only way that employers searching for talent will be able to readily find them.”
