Job-hungry, but market is sparse

Job-hungry, but market is sparse Sarah Young / 3 May 2013 The new generation of Emiratis might be more job-hungry, but are the jobs there? Sameh Raslan, Emiritisation engagement manager of Emirati-focused recruitment company ershaad, said there was a big difference in the attitude towards hiring Emiratis from the UAE public and private companies to other international companies. Companies such as Al Futtaim, which announced on Thursday they were holding 450 positions open this year exclusively for UAE nationals, were hiring far more than an international organisation like Microsoft or IBM, he said. ershaad had 35,000 job seekers in their database, and about 700 jobs available. Ninety per cent of the companies listing jobs were from the public government or semi-government sector — and 9 out of 10 of the private companies in the remaining 10 per cent were UAE companies, he said. While there were plenty of job seekers at Careers UAE, the question remained how many would actually get work. “(Organisers) might say (exhibitors are) offering 3,000 jobs, but there’s more than 15,000 job seekers here — what do we do for the rest?” The new generation of Emiratis was much more open to working overseas to gain experience and training, demonstrating a different mind-set coming through. “Emiratis are willing to learn, pursue education further, go into fields that are a lot more challenging. At the end of the day, these companies need to give someone the chance to flourish somewhere and prove themselves.” However, it could still be hard to find the right culture and personality-fit for multi-national organisations, especially since given the size of the Emirati population, the talent pool was quite small, Raslan added. Emiratis would generally consider private sector jobs if the working hours were reasonable, and there was a five-day working week. The most in-demand positions for males were in engineering, while for females, more diverse industries such as business, healthcare, social work and design were popular. While there were more female graduates than males coming through, it was often harder to find them jobs in the industries they were interested in, as the jobs were limited, he said. Salaries also differed widely, depending on the city, industry and sector, with semi-government generally paying the highest. General manager of Al Ansari Exchange Rashed Ali Al Ansari said they had noticed a “progressive shift” in the types of questions job seekers were asking: “They are interested in knowing the types of corporate clients they would be dealing with, and opportunities for professional development — as opposed to simply asking about the remuneration or working hours. This shows that their grasp of the job market is becoming more advanced.” The company hopes to expand their Emirati workforce by more than 10 per cent. Careers UAE project manager Maitha Mohammed agreed the mind-set of Emiratis had changed: “They want to work in the private sector, and get good experience. They’re now very ambitious.” Organisers had been pleased with the turnout at the fair, and hoped visitor numbers would top last year’s 17,000. Traffic on the new online job-portal had also been high, she said. Mohammed encouraged those searching to remain patient if nothing eventuated immediately: “Recruitment is a long process. They might look at your CV this month, or it might be six months later.” However, Sarah Mackenzie, Mena head of client services at careers site eFinancialCareers said there seemed to be fewer job seekers at the event than the previous two years. The company, which has about 1,000 UAE national job seekers registered, had about 150 to 200 Gulf job vacancies, mostly at the senior level, on any given day. Mackenzie said some private companies were reluctant to put jobs on the site targeting Emiratis, as they “didn’t believe they’d find anyone” but this attitude was slowly changing given the better work-ethic and qualifications of the new generation. sarah@khaleejtimes.com     Taylor Scott International