Employment in Dubai, a view from the employer

Earlier, I wrote about how I was looking for a job in Dubai, and now the time has come when I myself began to look for employees in our company. I hope my experience will allow job seekers in the UAE not to step on the rake that will be described here. I would like to immediately note that this article is not some kind of revelation, our problems in finding applicants, in general, are widespread.

So, our company has opened 2 vacancies: one for the PHP developer, and the second for the content manager with knowledge of HTML / CSS and PHP (in fact, to be engaged in content and only in some cases make minor changes to the code and / or HTML). We began to operate according to the standard scheme: we gave 2 vacancy announcements on various sites and waited for resumes of potential employees.

Resume collection
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In less than a week, about 300 resumes were received for both vacancies, of which only 3 resumes were from chatru.com (the most popular Russian-language portal in Dubai), and most from www.dubizzle.com .
First, general data on applicants:



As you can see, a quarter of those who want to get a job are girls, which for me personally was somewhat unusual compared to Russia.



This diagram shows that the overwhelming majority of candidates are from India and Pakistan. At the same time, the salary expectations of the overwhelming majority of these candidates fluctuate around 6,000 dirhams (about $ 1,500).

Further work with the resume was divided by vacancies:

PHP developer

About 120 people responded to the announcement of a PHP-developer vacancy.

We had a strict limitation not to hire employees who are not currently in Dubai, for this reason, of all the resumes sent, only 60 remained.

Each candidate was sent a letter with additional questions. The essence of the questions is not important, the main thing is the fact that none of the resumes did not have all the answers of interest to the employer, namely:

1. A list of links to finished projects (portfolio), with comments on what exactly the applicant was doing for this project;
2. How much a job seeker assesses himself professionally as a coder or developer;
3. Experience with popular CMS;
4. Salary expectations and working conditions.

Of the 60 people, 15 people answered additional questions, only 9 of them answered during the same day, 4 answered the next day and two more answered 2 days later, while one of the applicants did not respond in time to the letter with the appointed date and time of the interview .
At the end of the study of the answers, 6 people were invited to the interview: of which one did not pass on knowledge in general and the impression was created that someone else wrote an abstract and answers to the questions. Another candidate from Pakistan was with terrible spoken English, so he came with a translator and, despite the fact that he had good knowledge, we rejected his candidacy. Another 2 candidates did not cope with the test tasks and the 2 remaining candidates (Russian and native of India) scored the same number of points and in the final conversation Russian was chosen.

Work by e-mail greatly simplifies the work, time costs are not very large, but, as you can see, the "return" is also small.

A content manager with knowledge of HTML / CSS and PHP

For this vacancy, the methodology was already different, we telephoned the candidates with resumes that interested us, talked by phone and in the end, if a potential employee was interested in us, invited us for an interview. Of the approximately 40 candidates, 12 people were invited, and as a result, the necessary employee was found.

Calling candidates and interviewing took about 2 weeks, while the requirements for vacancies were less. In the future, we do not plan a similar method of working with candidates.

Brief recommendations for applicants

1. Your resume must contain all the necessary information for the employer, namely, brief information about you, a list of your work (with comments), salary expectations. No one will pay attention to your hobby and description of a rich inner world;
2. It is recommended in the resume to place your photo, so it will be easier for the employer to recognize you at the meeting;
3. Attach to the letter, in addition to the resume itself, also the so-called cover letter, since it is easier for the employer to carry out the initial selection;
4. Names of files sent to the employer should contain your name, for example, “vasya_pupkin_resume.pdf”, instead of “Resume_job_28sep2014_Dubai.pdf or” “CURRICULUM_VITAE_2.pdf”
5. If you contact by mail, you must respond promptly, so the higher the chance that the very next day you will be invited for an interview;
6. Looking for a job is better being directly in the city of the employer, you must be a very impressive candidate to be attracted to work from another country;
7. Write your real skills and knowledge, the reality will still be found out at the interview, but the attitude towards you will deteriorate;
8. Specify the salary for which you are really ready to work, it makes no sense to lower your requirements, just to get through for an interview. For example, a candidate whom we chose indicated salary expectations higher than average than, at least, made him consider his resume in more detail.