UAE | Employment
UAE nationals check out career options in retail sector at job fair
There are plenty of jobs to be filled by UAE nationals in the retail sector, said companies yesterday.
- By Wafa Issa, Staff Reporter
- Published: 23:25 July 12, 2007
- Image Credit: Wafa Issa/Gulf News
- UAE nationals interact with representatives from the retail sector at the open day under the theme 'Your Future in the Retail Sector' at the Dubai Women's College.
Dubai: There are plenty of jobs to be filled by UAE nationals in the retail sector, said companies yesterday.
Some 15 major companies in the retail sectors participated in a Career Open Day organised by the National Human Resource Development and Employment (Tanmia) yesterday.
The open day was organised to give UAE national jobseekers an opportunity to explore the retail sector.
Ivett Kecskes, Human Resource Manager at Magrudy's, said that they would like to employ UAE nationals in their shops as they need more Arabic speakers for their stores.
"We have a target of employing at least one Emirati in each of our six stores across the country," she said.
Magrudy's is already offering UAE nationals who wish to work for them flexible timings and is trying to take into consideration the social norms of the Emirati jobseekers, according to Kecskes. But Magrudy's still face several challenges when looking for suitable Emirati candidates.
Requirements
"The problem is that sales jobs have certain requirements you simply cannot alter such as the eight-hour working days, minimum English requirements, [and] retention at the job. ... we have to admit that salaries are not the highest in the market," said Kecskes.
"Emiratis usually ask for 25 to 30 per cent more than the average salary we offer and this we cannot accommodate especially if the candidate has no experience or qualification."
Anibel P. Vibandor, Human Resource Administration Assistant at Spinney's, said that employing Emiratis will help them have a multi-cultural staff and the company has many job opportunities in this category.
So far, Spinney's have employed more than 60 UAE nationals.
"But we face problems when recruiting nationals. Many are picky with the sort of jobs they would like to work and they are not exposed to sales environment," said Vibandor.
"The shift system is one of the challenges we face when recruiting nationals," he said.
"We sometimes had six employees in the same shop asking for the same shifts causing problems when planning. But slowly we are changing their perception of work as we explain that this is not possible."
Mey Abuzinjal, Human Resource Executive at Al Futtaim Group, said any serious company must work to recruit more UAE nationals as they are the representatives of the country. "We do not only offer jobs to nationals, we even offer them an opportunity to develop within the job."
Mattrias Klatchadourian, Training Manager at Damas, said that so far some 39 UAE nationals has been employed in retail by Damas and more jobs are on offer. "We think that nationals enrich our multi cultural team and therefore we encourage them to join our ranks," he said.
"The problems that we sometimes have to deal with are that some nationals are not sure of their career choices and we really need to work on their time and attendance discipline."
Tanmia launches training programme
A retail training programme for UAE nationals was launched yesterday by Tanmia.
The four-month programme provides both classroom teaching and on-job training. It will be customised according to each company's needs.
The cost for each student will be between Dh6,000 and Dh8,000 and the company will stand for some of the costs.
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