Dubai: After a slump in 2016, recruitment activity in the UAE and across the Middle East and North Africa (Mena) is starting to pick up, with companies offering thousands of employment opportunities during the first quarter of the year.
The latest data released by Bayt.com showed that employers in the region opened more than 32,600 fresh positions for jobseekers between January and March 2017. Out of the total vacancies, 10,149 are for UAE-based organisations.
The actual numbers are expected to be higher, as the recent data don’t take into account the postings made daily through the portal’s CV search tool.
“The first quarter of 2017 shows an increase in online job availability,” the career site said.
The advertised jobs are for candidates with qualifications and/or experience in sales and marketing, engineering and construction, finance and accounting, information and technology and communications.
Employers who are looking to recruit are not going for specific level of expertise and educational background. “The jobs announced are increasingly varied in terms of industry, location, required skills and educational degree.”
A growing number of companies in UAE are, however, leaning towards hiring UAE nationals, to comply with a government requirement.
At the Careers UAE, employers like UAE Exchange, have offered positions for Emiratis, with some job offers being done on the spot.
The money transfer operator said it is offering locals with the option of flexible working hours (part time or full time), convenient job location posting and periodic trainings that seek to enhance staff’s professional development and skills. There is also a four-week internship and training programme called Taleem for Emirati students.
Abdel Kareem Alkayed, the company’s country head for the UAE, said they are also hiring non-UAE nationals for their operations across the globe. However, their focus at the jobs fair in UAE, scheduled to close on Tuesday, is to hire Emirati nationals.
“A lot of Emiratis have come and submitted their resumes with us. Few of them have been interviewed on-site but the final process of screening is yet to take place,” Alkayed told Gulf News.
Other recruitment specialists had said that more employment opportunities are expected this year, as companies are open to hiring additional staff.
“Following a year of massive redundancies caused by the collapse in oil prices, the Gulf region is finally set to witness a stabilisation in job cuts and a moderate rate of new job creation in 2017,”GulfTalent had said.
Findings of a survey conducted by the firm among 800 employers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region showed that only less than three in ten companies (23 per cent) were planning to reduce their headcounts this year, a decline from 40 per cent in 2016.
Bayt.com’s Middle East Job Index survey also showed that nearly 69 per cent of companies in the UAE have plans to recruit staff this year.
