Dubai: The ‘Ru’ ya, Careers UAE Redefined’ job fair for Emiratis started on Tuesday in Dubai, offering placements from over 100 exhibitors.
The three-day event, taking place at Dubai World Trade Centre, is being under the theme ‘The Future of Work’. The platform offers job prospects, opportunities to engage with leading employers, career-focused discussions, interactive workshops, study options and higher education opportunities, training opportunities, as well as all services necessary to progress in a career.
Sultan bin Saeed Al Mansouri, Chairman of the Emirati Human Resources Development Council in Dubai and Abdullah Ali bin Zayed Al Falasi, Director-General of Dubai Government Human Resources Department, opened the event.
Emirates, one of the leading companies exhibiting at the fair, announced it has 500 job positions available for Emiratis. Manal Ali Al Soori, Vice President Emiratisation & People Experience, Emirates, said Emirates has an expansive portfolio of job opportunities in aviation and travel for UAE nationals.
The job positions available at Emirates are in National Cadet Pilot Programme, Aircraft Maintenance Engineer License Programme, National Scholorship Programmes, National Cabin Crew Programme, customer service professionals. “These are for Emirati high school graduates,” said Manal.
For Emirati university graduates, the job availabilities are under the national graduate programme, technology graduate programme and positions as a senior software engineer. “There are new programmes we are launching like artificial intelligence. We are collaborating with various universities to enhance UAE nationals skill sets as well. We want to make sure we are driving and pushing new elements in the market,” said Manal, who added that Emirates is looking for candidates with “a good attitude and passion more than anything else”.
Meanwhile, Fatma Al Hamrani, director of recruitment section, Dubai Municipality, said this year it has launched several programmes to attract Emirati students and graduates for prospective jobs. Dubai Municipality launched an initiative, ‘Careers of the Future’ to enrol Emirati students in advanced specialisations and disciplines required by the municipality. It is in collaboration with the private sector in order to provide students with training opportunities to improve their capabilities to progress in their careers. “The specialisations offered include engineering course in 3D printing, the digital course which includes AI [Artificial Intelligence] and data science, and the food safety course with big data analysis specialisation,” Fatma told Gulf News.
‘Advise Me'
“We launched another ‘Advise Me’ initiative to educate high school students of the prospects and trends in the employment market as well as create awareness among students on the significance of choosing a university major that meets their academic preferences,” said Fatma.
She added: “The ‘Pioneers’ is another initiative which we are focusing only on fresh graduates. This initiative prepares candidates to fulfil the requirements of a government job, by providing sufficient trainings that help them gain experience in their fields of study.”
Fatma said Dubai Municipality has several employment opportunities in the fields of civil engineering, architecture, and mechanical engineering which will be announced soon. Emiratisation is one of the key pillars at Dubai Municipality. We are increasing the percentage of Emirati employees within our total workforce.”
Emiratisation at heart
Muna al Maazmi, Head of Emiratisation at Dubai Islamic Bank (DIB) also had the same positive message for prospective Emirati job seekers. “We firmly believe that Emiratisation has not only become a key component of DIB’s success over the past few years, but that it has also had a deeply positive effect on the UAE’s overall economic growth and development. Being the first Islamic bank in the country, Emiratisation lies at the heart of our philosophy at DIB, which is why we will continue to strongly support the government’s Emiratisation endeavors by bolstering our efforts to grow young local talent, empowering them to thrive and become inspiring leaders within DIB and the banking industry as a whole.”
Rafia Al Abbar, Head of Human Resources at DIB, also said: “Emiratsation has been a key pillar of growth at DIB, and in 2021, the bank’s Emiratisation ratio reached around 45 per cent – close to half its total employees. It further achieved 100 per cent Emiratisation rates at branch managerial level, the UAE Central Bank’s best Emiratisation scores.”
Division-wise targets
ENOC also announced at the fair that it is recruiting young talented Emirati nationals in the energy sector in specialisations including chemical, mechanical, and electrical engineering, sales, marketing, business development and the legal field, to support the Group’s growth strategy, IT & Cyber Security.
Saif Humaid Al Falasi, Group CEO, ENOC, said the Group has achieved 100 percent Emiratisation at executive management, 77 percent Emiratisation at senior management. He said: “We have partnered with global technology company SAP on its Young Professional Programme. The SAP Training and Development Institute’s Young Professional Programme is a three-month-long programme, through which 18 unemployed or underemployed university graduates gain digital and soft skills and become certified SAP Associate Consultants on SAP’s latest solutions. ENOC Group has hired 13 of the programme graduates.”
He added: “We have a robust on-the-job-training culture that provides job shadowing, cross-functional projects, and temporary assignments. As part of skill enhancement, ENOC provides training opportunities for the young UAE National students from various local colleges/institutions. The group also offers an Internship Work Placement for students in their final two years of university studies and a summer training programme for the high school graduates and students in first two years of university studies.
Multiple applications
Emirati student Najla Al Shamsi, 24, said she graduated last year and has been looking for a job. “The last one year has been a tough one. Many of my classmates are looking for a job in the market. The career fair has been very useful for us. I personally applied for six positions today. I am planning to make full use of the three day fair to look for the right position.”
She added that having a face to face connection with job providers does wonders. “It is one thing applying for jobs online. But being here physically, talking to HR heads is really nice. We get to know what is expected of us,” said Najla.
The event’s agenda also included a range of exclusive sessions for job seekers, including a series of workshops with LinkedIn to build a successful career, as well as the launch of the three-day immersive coding boot camp – ‘Top Coder’ – run in partnership with AstroLabs Digital Academy. There were also a series of inspirational talks under the themes of ‘Be Powerful’, ‘Be Soulful’, ‘Be Inspired’ and ‘Be Talented’. These were all in line with this year’s theme, ‘Be’, to inspire young Emiratis to be bold and follow their passions to turn them into careers.
Days two and three of the event will feature more interactive sessions and inspiring talks under the ‘Be’ theme, from talented and brave Emirati youths who created their own career paths, including Shaikha Al Mazroui of Dubai Police VIP Protection Unit and Abdulrahman Al Mamari, a professional Sky Diver. On the last day of Ru’ya, the winner of the ‘The Next You’ entrepreneurship competition will also be announced, along with the winners of the ‘Upcycle & Design’ sustainability competition and the ‘Top-coder’ best video game competition.
