Dubai Job experience is required in the recruitment system of most companies, but the question that wanders among fresh graduates is how they will get experience in the workplace if they need experience to be recruited.
Basma Mokhtar, 21, graduated from the American University of Sharjah with Bachelor of Science in Chemical Engineering in January 2011. She spent three months applying in more than 20 companies. She never got a reply.
“Job market for fresh graduates, particularly engineers, is not great in the UAE because engineers are valued mainly by their experience,” she said.
Although the latest Labour Force survey by Dubai Statistics Centre showed the unemployment rate reached 5.7 per cent for Emiratis and 0.2 per cent for non-Emiratis, and signs of unemployment decline, many graduates are complaining about the difficulty of finding a job.
Mokhtar said she relied on her CV to stand out among other graduates. She used online tips that can enhance her CV, designed a layout for it and made it look more professional.
In May, two companies scheduled an interview with her and she is now lined up for other rounds of interviews in one of the companies to finalize their decision.
Assistant Finance Manager in Fox, Binoey Charles said graduates do not find jobs easily because most companies require experienced employees to handle a job independently.
Another reason, he says, is “most graduates coming for interviews do not perform the qualifications mentioned on their CVs.” They include qualifications to seem applicable for the job, but their quality is usually very low, he added.
Mokhtar suggests that companies should place more emphasis on personal interviews and onsite activities than the CV to identify the quality of candidates in a clearer view.
“A piece of paper, CV, cannot tell them who would do the job best when all the candidates are fresh graduates, meaning their CVs are pretty much going to look the same,” she said.
She advises graduates to know what makes them stand out from others and to have as many internships and connections as possible for better chances of finding a job.
Maria Baghdoyan, 22, has similar story. She graduated from University of Sharjah with a Bachelor Degree in Clinical Nutrition and Dietetics in 2011.
Like Mokhtar, Baghdoyan said she applied in around 20 hospitals and clinics but no one hired her.
“My biggest challenge was that I needed to do my licensing exam to be able to work and the contradicting issue I, and all my colleagues faced, was that to qualify for the Dubai Health Authority (DHA) exam I should have 2 years clinical experience and no hospital or clinic hires without the DHA license,” she said.
Baghdoyan applied last April in a slimming centre that accepted dieticians without DHA license. Since it was not the job she wanted, she stayed for a month until she got a better job as nutritionist/marketing specialist at a multinational Food and Nutrition Company, but she is still not titled as a “nutritionist” in her labour card.
The Principal Consultant at talent2 Pavileen Wynne attributed the difficulties graduates face to the lack of programmes that can prepare graduates to work.
“In the West, there are different programs set up for fresh graduates to give them experience and prepare them for the workplace, but we do not have these programmes here. This is why it becomes challenging for graduates to find a job,” she said.
Wynne said that graduates should work on standing out and presenting themselves as a brand.
“They have to be far more targeted in their plans, have more connections, finish more than one internship and work on their networking skills,” she said, “if they stood out, their chances of getting a job will be higher,” said Wynne.
