The Most Common Question: Are there still jobs out there?
No matter where I am in the region, the most common question that I am currently asked: “Is anyone still hiring?”
It is generally followed in a hushed, apologetic voice with, “How is bayt.com doing?”
The underlying premise is that, due to the current economic crisis, hiring in the Middle East and North Africa has come to a grinding halt and bayt.com’s phenomenal historical growth has been stunted.
The reality is, and www.bayt.com is clear evidence of this, there are still tens of thousands of companies hiring hundreds of thousands of people across the region. True, the hiring may not be as aggressive as it was last year, companies may be shedding resources, and economic prospects remain unclear. However, surviving companies are continually in a state of upgrading their existing talent and replacing staff due to natural attrition. There is no better time to find phenomenal talent interested in working in the region and through Bayt.com there is no better way to hire these individuals quickly, easily and cost-effectively. Companies are therefore still hiring and Bayt.com is still expanding.
Now for the answers to corollary questions: Are there still jobs in Dubai? Is Qatar still growing? Is it time to consider a career in Kuwait or Saudi Arabia?
Yes on all fronts (see jobs in Dubai, jobs in Qatar, jobs in Kuwait, jobs in Saudi)! In this marketplace great talent is still in demand across the region, and professionals should open their horizons to the right opportunity wherever it exists. The search for jobs in the Middle East is, and will be, more challenging than it has been in prior years. However, with the right preparation, hard work, and initiative, good people will find good jobs!
Interview with Joumana Abu-Shaheen from Leo Burnett
1. What is the most important thing you look for in new hires?
Leo Burnett vehemently believes that we are only as good as our people so we look for expertise, curiosity, enthusiasm and cultural fit. And the advertising/communications industry is one that requires a great deal of passion and a spring in ones step, so when you look around, you want to see everyone having fun, generating big ideas and contributing to the creative spirit and purpose of the agency. This is why we look for the before mentioned qualities.
2. What is the biggest challenge you face in hiring talent?
Our industry is becoming increasingly fragmented so the availability of talent that specialize in the different areas of
communication has always been the most challenging aspect of my job. And naturally time is always of essence, but you cannot rush on finding quality because a wrong hire will eventually cause a rift in your operation and you are
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CV Tips and Job Hunting Tips
Glenn Kelman, the CEO of Redfin, an online real estate brokerage firm recently posted a great guest post on Guy Kawasaki’s blog about writing a CV. With so many people currently looking for jobs in Dubai, I’ve included the most illustrative and universal section was his list of likes and dislikes for CV content:
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2009 Middle East Salary Survey Released
The much-anticipated annual Bayt.com YouGov Middle East Salary Survey has now been released and is available online on Bayt.com. What difference does a year make? Quite a bit of difference when the year is 2008 as the Salary Survey results show. The Survey highlights trends in Middle East salaries and cost of living and sheds light on key behavioral issues and perceptions related to current economic conditions.
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.
Top Jobs in the KSA
Bayt.com, the Middle East’s #1 job site, is at it again! What has been one of the primary propellers of Bayt.com’s phenomenal success story to date? Beyond the pioneering technologies, world-class product development activities and leading databases, it has simply been the fact that the company has consistently been able to very quickly learn from and build on its successes to engineer even larger and more impactful future successes! The Virtual Job Fair Bayt.com is currently holding for the KSA jobs market is a case in point.
Following the unprecedented and well publicized successes of Bayt.com’s Virtual Job Fairs in the UAE (the first ever Virtual Job Fair in the Middle East) and Jordan, Bayt.com is currently conducting its 3rd Virtual Job Fair in a row this year, in KSA this time, between November 22 and November 26.
Why a Virtual Job Fair?
Because Bayt.com is unequivocally married to and committed to the region at large and the most fundamental tenet of the company’s unwavering commitment is its constant endeavor to most effectively and efficiently connect qualified job seekers with top employers in order to exchange valuable information for recruitment purposes and seek an optimal fit.
Engineering Jobs in the Middle East Experience a Surge
“There’s gold in an oil degree” asserts the title of a recent Fortune article on CNNMoney.com which goes on to say that “newly-minted grads in the field are making a killing.’’ Engineers in general a recent Bayt.com month-long online poll has shown, are in top demand across the GCC. Overwhelmingly, employers in the Bayt.com poll have cited that top engineering talent is highly in demand and is difficult to come by in their countries of residence. The poll shows that from a regional employer perspective, engineering positions are significantly harder to fill than Marketing, PR, Sales, Human Resources, IT and Finance positions.
Seasoned engineers across the GCC smile as they remember a previous Middle East boom in the 70s when the demand for their expertise was at record peaks and the regional universities couldn’t churn out enough engineering talent. The Middle East renaissance we are seeing today is more diversified with regional economies such as Qatar Bahrain Kuwait and the UAE enjoying a more diversified growth trajectory with a slew of emerging industries contributing to the phenomenal growth. However even with the emergence of the new regional financial services, healthcare, tourism and retail hubs the petroleum sector remains the main engine of growth in the region at large and demand for the latest talent and technologies in that sector is at record highs.
Workplace inequality prevails in Jordan, recent Bayt.com study shows
Recent research conducted by the Middle East’s number one job site – Bayt.com has found that just 59% of women in Jordan’s workplace feel that they are treated fairly compared to their male counterparts. Furthermore, more than a quarter of working women in Jordan felt that their gender had affected their career prospects, with a total of 26% of women citing that their gender has been a negative element in their career.
The survey additionally revealed that working women in Jordan felt there was a disparity between the sexes in terms of their treatment in the workplace; with 44% of women feeling they have a lower chance of being promoted than their male colleagues and only one fifth of women – 20% – feeling that their chances of promotion depend entirely on their hard work.
The Bayt.com Women in the Workplace survey is a measure of women’s perceptions, attitudes, experiences and satisfaction of various elements of their role in the workplace, especially in regard to their treatment compared to their male counterparts.
The Government as an Employer of Choice?
Bayt.com’s recent 2008 Women in the Middle East Workplace Survey brought many interesting workplace trends to light, not the least of which is the role of the Government as an employer of choice for women in the Middle East.
Several interesting facts emerged about the role of the Government in promoting women’s workplace rights in the Middle East.:-
- The Government as a more equitable payer than the private sector. 49% of government and semi-government institution employees feel they receive equal pay as their male counterparts; versus 43% in internationally owned companies and 34% in locally owned companies.
- The Government as a more equitable promoter than the private sector. 51% of women believe they have an equal chance of being promoted as their male counterparts and/or that their promotability will depend entirely on their hard work not on their gender. This figure is 50% in internationally owned companies and only 44% in locally owned companies.
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