Yasin Halawany, cofounder and CEO of Cantalop, said the regional job search engine has attracted more than 2 million page views since its launch in late 2014.
Halawany expects his website to launch in Jordan before the end of the year and is confident it will be able to bring together employers and professional talent on the look out for new career opportunities.
What differentiates Cantalop from any other job search engine in the region?
To answer this question we have to compare between three completely different models: job boards, job aggregators, and job search engines. A job board does not include any kind of crawling or spidering technology. The job ads on job boards are actively posted there by companies and recruitment agencies in order to advertise either hard to fill positions, or roles that need to be filled on an urgent basis. Consequently, the number of jobs on job boards is relatively small compared to the overall online job market. Job aggregators, on the other hand, collect jobs from companies and any third party sources. It is usually full of scams, with duplicated and out-dated jobs. A job search engine like Cantalop only indexes verified jobs that come directly from the employer which helps us create a far better user experience. It does this by using crawling and spidering technology to index and update the jobs automatically.
How does your search mechanism work?
You can think of Cantalop as Google for jobs. Jobseekers can simply login to our website and type the job title, employer, location or any other keywords they are looking for and click search. In a few seconds our job search engine will enlist all job postings that are relevant to his or her search query. At any time job seekers can save job alerts to be notified if any job opening of their preference becomes available in the future.
Where do you currently operate and what other markets are you eyeing?
We are currently listing jobs in the UAE, Egypt, KSA, Qatar, and Kuwait with plans to cover Jordan and the entire MENA region by year-end. We are currently assisting companies like Vodafone, Orange, JTI, Toyota, Deloitte, Teradata, M.H. Alshaya, among many others.
What are some of the most searched for jobs on your website?
Surprisingly, IT and engineering job search trends are through the roof. Then comes sales and retail followed by admin and support functions like finance, marketing, and HR.
What’s your business model and how do you make your money?
Cantalop’s business model is subscription based and SaaS (Software as a Service). We operate on a freemium business model by allowing Basic Job Postings free of charge and up selling premium services to employers as well as job seekers.
