The job hopping days are over for region’s PR talent

Dubai: Regional employment prospects for public relations (PR) professionals could be sparse in 2016 as the continuous lows in oil prices hit marketing budgets and stifle growth across many sectors, bottlenecking the chances of candidates entering the job market for the first time.

Roughly 1,700 Middle East-based PR professionals changed their jobs over the past year. It is a feat unlikely to be repeated any time soon given the slow market conditions. The situation could also impact first-time job seekers in a region that welcomes an average of 730 fresh PR graduates each year.

According to an April 2015 LinkedIn insights report, the online professional network has 21,200 members specialising in PR across the GCC, Levant, Iran and Pakistan. The bulk of the region’s PR professionals is based in the UAE where 6,800 specialists ply their trade at agencies or through in-house roles.

The second biggest employer of PR professionals — albeit a distant one with just 2,900 current positions — is Pakistan, closely followed by Saudi Arabia in third with 2,600. Iran, Qatar and Lebanon have a combined total of 4,300 PR pros, almost evenly spread across the three markets.

It’s about the money

But regardless the geographic diversity and their ethnic backgrounds, PR professionals in the region are unanimous in the attributes they are looking to find at their next job. According to the LinkedIn report, 63 per cent are looking for a job that will pay them a higher salary. And 43 per cent of those are also looking to work for a company of which they could feel proud of.

Plus, these companies could offer them a clear career path and work-life balance. Job security was also mentioned by 40 per cent of the respondents as one of the top attributes.

The UAE also tops the list of the most popular Gulf market among PR professionals, having increased its talent pool by 3.5 per cent in the 12 months from April 2014. Not surprisingly, Qatar was in second place with an increase of 2.8 per cent in its domestic PR workforce during the same period.

The two GCC markets plus Saudi Arabia are runaway leaders in the list of the region’s most competitive markets in terms of employment prospects. LinkedIn benchmarks this against the frequency with which members are contacted by professional recruiters on the platform.

The competition for talent indicates that the average PR professional in a region is interacting with recruiters more frequently than their peers elsewhere.

Ambidexterity needed

Professionals working in the Middle East’s public relations industry represent a meagre 0.21 per cent of the region’s registered 10 million LinkedIn professionals across all sectors. Yet the competition to land this dream job is becoming harder, especially when the pool of available roles gets even more shallow based on employer profiling by linguistic skills or nationality.

Job hopping in the sector, a popular past time in the golden noughties, seems to be well and truly over, especially for the top 16 per cent of the crop who sit in managerial positions.

With the relentless onslaught of digital, recruiters and employers have grown accustomed to ask for those PR professionals who possess the ambidexterity to seamlessly oscillate between traditional and new age PR and with flawless English and Arabic language skills.

Against a backdrop of challenging economic conditions that is gradually drowning the aspirations of the traditionalists, PR professionals must first try to reinvent their skill sets and change mindsets to accept the new realities. And then hope for the best.

— The writer is Head of PR and Social Media at Al Futtaim and author of ‘Back to the Future of Marketing — PRovolve or Perish’. Follow him on Twitter @georgekotsolios