Middle East Employers and Recruitment of Overseas Talent
With employment markets shaking at the knees worldwide and oil prices sinking to new lows, the question many highly qualified JobSeekers from outside the Middle East are asking is how amenable are Middle Eastern still today to overseas talent.Bayt.com, the Middle East’s #1 job site, recently ran a series of polls for both JobSeekers and Employers to shed light and provide real data on this very important topic. Asked whether they are willing to hire talent from overseas, 69% of employers responded in the affirmative. Asked what the biggest impediment is t their company hiring overseas talent most employers responded that it was ”availability of CVs from overseas” at 27.5%, followed closely by ”cultural concerns” at 25.5% then ”legal issues” at 19.6%. Only 7.8% of employers indicated that they had a ”preference for local experience/expertise” or that ”pay packages” of overseas talent were an issue.
Moreover, asked what percentage of the talent they hire is sourced overseas, 28% of responding employers indicated 60-80% and 27.1% of respondents indicated 80-100%. Only 8.3% ideate they do not source talent overseas and 12.5% indicated they source 20% or less of their talent from outside the region.
How Attractive is the GCC Employment Outlook for 2009?
According to the US Labor department, the 533,000 jobs axed in the US in November represented the largest monthly cut since 1974, and the month’s jobless rate of 6.7%, up from 6.5% in October, was at a 15-year high.
With a deepening US recession casting a bleak outlook for employment in the US, at least for the foreseeable future, the question being asked in many markets outside the US is, to what extent will this decline in employment be exported, and will it accelerate, level off, or be corrected in 2009.
The US recession, largely acknowledged to have been induced by fundamental failings of the housing markets and credit and financial systems, has already had significant ramifications globally. This has been witnessed by contracted US demand for imports, reduced outsourcing to overseas operations, sharply reduced confidence levels in US and international stock markets as well as real estate slumps and increased unemployment levels internationally.
