Making Talent Search Better in Saudi Arabia

Abstract

Talent-Hunter is a start-up tech and finance recruiter based in Dubai. The company started with a small business grant of USD 300,000 from the Emirati government and took two years to develop a technology-based local recruitment company. The money was intended to develop an AI-based approach to automating video interviews. However, problems with the technology—particularly with responses to questions that require local knowledge and a common-sense understanding of culture—have forced the company to rely on a chatbot app that walks job seekers through a series of basic fields. The company has had limited success in the past two years, but believes that there is an opportunity to enter the talent search market in Saudi Arabia by leveraging the information acquired from hundreds of thousands of résumés. Doing so would allow it to semi-automate certain search features in regional cities in the Saudi recruitment market. This case reviews the challenges and opportunities faced by Talent-Hunter in its attempt to enter the local Saudi market.