Bagoo makes a strong case for online recruitment

The Life: Curious about the Middle East, the recruitment professional Romain Lutter arrived in the UAE five years ago with just a suitcase. He continued to work in the industry but it soon struck him how disorganised it was.

Romain Lutter is the general mananger of Bagoo, which aims to simplify the hiring recruitment process for companies. Satish Kumar / The National

Curious about the Middle East, the recruitment professional Romain Lutter arrived in the UAE five years ago with just a suitcase. He continued to work in the industry but it soon struck him how disorganised it was. His new company, Bagoo, aims to simplify the hiring recruitment process for companies big and small.

Bagoo is a funny word. What does it mean?

It comes from an expression my parents used to use. When I was younger and faced with some kind of rejection, I would ask them for ideas [how to tackle it]. All my family is involved in recruitment. My parents would say "use your bagou." It's slang language but means think outside the box.

How do you come to be in Dubai?

I arrived in Dubai in 2008. I came just out of curiosity to learn more about the Middle East and more about the culture. I saw potential given the great number of multinational companies here and also the great entrepreneurial spirit. I came with literally just my suitcase.

Then what?

For five years I worked as a recruiter for two different agencies. Then, last August I started on this project. Working in recruitment in the GCC I soon realised it was quite disorganised. If you want to hire a new employee, whether you are a large multinational or a small business, you have to find the right recruiter for the task. But how do you choose the best recruiter? How do you make sure it's the best fit for your organisation? There are 170 agencies with 550 recruiters in the UAE. If you don't combine them all together, you are going to waste time and energy.

So Bagoo is a solution to this?

It's the first online recruitment platform in the Middle East. Employers post the job description and the fee they are willing to pay. We then share that with our network of recruiters in the GCC.

The benefits are that you work only with the best recruiters because we screen and approve them. Employers will then receive notification from our network partners informing then of their interest. Recruiters that use Bagoo have access to hundreds of open jobs.

And what has the reception been like?

We launched on January 6. So far, we've had a good number of multinationals interested and we've partnered with a freelance and recruitment agencies. It's a model that has proven successful in the US and its starting to catch on in the UK. We are the representatives in the Middle East.

How many people do you have working for you?

I have six people in Jordan developing the website. It's me doing everything else. But I hope to recruit a sales force within six months.