Online portal dubizzle is hiring up to 40 people as it expands across the region and seeks to make its product and marketing world-class.
The Dubai-headquartered company, which was formed in 2005 and launched its first ever web series in Egypt earlier this year, is looking to hire a head of creative and a head of media for its in-house agencies, as well as product developers, product managers, data analysts, media planners, writers, designers, and social media specialists.
The expansion follows the move of co-founders Sim Whatley and JC Butler into advisory positions in August. Both have relocated back to the US, with former director of marketing Arto Joensuu taking on the role of CEO. Stepping into Joensuu’s position is Alex Hutley, who is now director or marketing.
“The expansion plans are based on two factors – expansion in the region and making our product as good as possible in the UAE,” said Hutley. “Locally we are building new features and functionality every day in each of the verticals that we operate in. With this new focus there is a need for product developers and engineers to test and build all the ideas, [and] along with this comes the need to market those products and then manage the relationships with both consumers and businesses that come to rely on dubizzle every day.”
Hutley adds: “As well as strengthening product development teams, we are going all-in on our internal creative and media agencies to try and create game-changing big and little content.
“We have animators, designers, writers, filmmakers, coders and media buyers all sitting side-by-side. The media piece is huge. The agility needed to handle the reduced latency of comms we are aiming for requires dedicated brand engrossed specialists. In light of all this product and marketing innovation, it breeds a need for a whole function of data analysts and business intelligence specialists to see if what we’re doing is working.”