The 2011 MENA Internet Trends Survey conducted by Bayt.com with research partners YouGov revealed that jobs and careers are very much top of mind when it comes to personal online activity in the MENA. The survey showed that 64% of MENA residents spend at least 3 hours a day online, with as many as 18% maintaining they spend more than 6 hours a day online.
While the survey’s respondents claimed careers/jobsites were their favourite type of website, news sites and social networking sites also featured prominently as favourites with 17% of the responses each, exceeding the popularity of entertainment sites which pulled in 9% of the votes.
Both health sites and review sites registered a 3% vote, exceeding the popularity of online shopping sites which gained 2% of the vote. When it comes to social networking sites, 34% of the survey’s respondents maintained they use them to connect with their friends on a daily basis and a further 21% said they use them to connect with friends most days of the week. Only 10% maintained they never use them.
Moreover 44% access social networking sites at work. However when it comes to using the net to research items to purchase, as many as 37% of they survey’s respondents maintained they never do that. Further findings are that 95% of the survey’s respondents maintain they watch video clips online, 86% listen to music online, 79% read blogs/weblogs and 65% play online games. Interestingly while 45% of the survey’s respondents maintain that social networking sites are ‘’invaluable for connecting friends and family’’, 39% maintain they have ‘’tried to use them for business networking but without much success’’ and 43% have ‘’never’’ used them for business networking.
Bayt.com’s own foray into the professional networking arena has been very rapidly gaining momentum with its People.Bayt.com public profile platform which allows professionals to freely and easily build a public profile based on their Bayt.com CV that peers as well as potential employers, suppliers and clients can easily search and access.
Moreover Bayt.com’s brand new 2011 JobSeeker Workspace allows professionals to immediately discern which of their social networking friends are in their sphere of interest as related to jobs they are applying to and consequently enlist their mentorship, help and support. This kind of instantaneous knowledge, access, connectivity and visibility as now afforded by the MENA region's leading jobsite can make all the difference in securing the right job in the highly selective, highly competitive and ultra-connected regional recruitment landscape today.
