News - Everything AI
SBR and Jisr Bet on AI to Tackle Saudi Arabia’s Recruitment Challenges
by Ghada Azzi
October 4, 2025
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AdvertisementSaudi Arabia’s labor market is under pressure to adapt. Every year close to two million Saudis enter the workforce, a quarter of them fresh graduates. For employers, the challenge is how to match skills with jobs in a way that is fair, fast, and efficient.
This week, SBR, a homegrown HR tech start-up, signed a Memorandum of Understanding with Jisr, one of the Kingdom’s leading HR and payroll platforms.
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The agreement is a clear signal of how artificial intelligence is moving into the mechanics of recruitment, an area long dominated by outdated CVs and subjective interviews. It is also a clear example on how AI is beginning to reshape one of the region’s youngest and largest labor markets.
Founded by Saleh Baarmah and Hamzah Bawazir, SBR has built its proposition around a simple but telling idea: “Know Your Candidate.”
Borrowing from the banking sector’s “Know Your Customer” model, the platform aims to bring structure and objectivity to hiring decisions. Its algorithms analyze skills and experience beyond what a traditional CV reveals, with the promise of reducing bias and wasted time.
Poor hiring still costs companies heavily, not only in money but also in productivity. As Riyadh pushes for a more knowledge-based economy, the demand for smarter, faster, and fairer recruitment is becoming harder to ignore.
A spokesperson from SBR described the MoU with Jisr as a strategic milestone in enhancing the recruitment journey through AI, adding: "Behind SBR is a diverse team of analysts, data scientists, growth managers, developers, and marketers, all driven by a shared passion to transform the recruitment experience in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf and take it to a global level."
Jisr, which already supports thousands of businesses with HR and financial operations, will get a chance to add a recruitment layer at a moment when employers are searching for data-driven solutions.
The deal also fits neatly into Saudi Arabia’s Vision 2030 agenda, which places digital transformation at the heart of economic reform.
In a country where “transformation” has become a policy mantra, the real test lies in whether these technologies can deliver measurable results—shorter hiring cycles, better matches, and greater trust in the process.
Time will reveal if AI recruitment can move beyond pilot projects and start to make a visible difference in how Saudi companies hire and how young Saudis find work.
