Dubai, UAE: The Bayt.com ‘Middle East and North Africa Hiring Practices’ survey, conducted amongst recruiters and employed professionals in the UAE, revealed a variety of insights about the evolving hiring landscape and how recruitment practices have changed in the digital era. According to the survey, online job sites emerged as the most common resource used for recruiting candidates for managerial positions in organizations in the UAE. In fact, 75% of recruiters in the UAE agree that online recruitment has facilitated the hiring process at their companies.

The survey, administered by Bayt.com, the Middle East’s #1 job site, and YouGov, a global pioneer in online market research, aims to gather opinions on the hiring trends and practices in the UAE to help employers and jobseekers better understand today’s hiring mechanisms and strategies, measure preferences, and identify trends in hiring and job hunting.

Recruitment in the Internet Era

Survey results indicated growing trends in online resource usage for recruiters in the UAE. According to the survey, respondents consider online job sites (47%) to be the most effective source of recruitment for managerial roles across the UAE, followed by recruitment agencies (44%) and their company’s internal network (33%). For non-managerial roles, online job sites (27%) remain the most popular, while employee referrals (22%) emerge as the next most effective source of recruitment. In addition to that, applicant tracking systems are used by 42% of employers for managerial positions and 28% for non-managerial positions.

More than four in five (86%) respondents agree that online recruitment has facilitated the hiring process for managerial employees, including nearly half (47%) who believe it has ‘greatly’ facilitated the hiring process. The same can be said for non-managerial employees (75%), with two in five (31%) respondents claiming it has ‘greatly’ facilitated the hiring process.

“With over 10,000 jobs available on Bayt.com on any given day, it comes as no surprise that the top method for recruiting candidates in the UAE is job sites,” said Suhail Masri, Vice President Employer Solutions, Bayt.com. “At Bayt.com, we have been working with organizations in the UAE large and small for almost 20 years, helping them recruit top talent. We have been listening to client feedback and improving our offering to improve recruitment efficiency. For example, many employers complement their Bayt.com CV Search tool with employment tests that verify the candidates’ skills. Likewise, online job sites have evidently helped prepare jobseekers to better execute the job hunt. In line with this, we at Bayt.com work with over 32,000,000 job seekers and 40,000 companies using advanced hiring technology to make the process smoother, less time consuming, and much more rewarding.”

The Job Interview

For managerial and non-managerial candidates, interviews (69% and 79% respectively) are considered to be the most popular method in the hiring process, followed by second interviews (40% and 43%), background screening (40% and 32%), pre-employment tests (34% and 42%) and academic certificates (29% and 36%).

For the majority of companies, a typical job interview for both managerial candidates (72%) and non-managerial candidates (64%) lasts up to 30 minutes; and at a large majority of UAE organizations, potential candidates for both managerial roles (80%) and non-managerial roles (68%) will be interviewed by two or three different people throughout the hiring process.

The survey found that first impressions make a sizable difference in a job interview. More than half of respondents believe that first impressions matter ‘greatly’ in a job interview for both managerial (60%) and non-managerial (49%) candidates, 38% said it matters ‘moderately’, while around one in 10 think that first impressions don’t matter.

The Hiring Decision

After interviews have been conducted, nine in 10 UAE companies need less than four weeks to make the hiring decision for both managerial (91%) and non-managerial (89%) roles – and over half (57% and 55% respectively) need less than two weeks. Additionally, over three quarters of UAE respondents claim that the hiring process for both managerial employees (74%) and non-managerial employees (83%) can last up to two months at their company, while 37% and 49% claim that it typically lasts less than one month.

According to the survey, the most popular way to inform a candidate that they have been selected for either a managerial position (68%) or a non-managerial position (66%) is via phone call, while email (65% and 83% respectively) is the most common way to inform a candidate if they have not been selected for the job.

In terms of improving the recruitment process, respondents looking for managerial candidates most commonly believe they would need added help from specialists for interviewing talent face-to-face (31%), sourcing top talent CVs/profiles (29%), and screening and filtering CVs/profiles (34%). For non-managerial candidates, respondents most commonly believe they would need added help from specialists for interviewing talent face-to-face (40%), comparing and benchmarking salaries (32%), and sourcing top talent CVs/profiles (32%).

The Jobseeker Perspective

The survey also gauged insights on the hiring process from the jobseeker perspective. It found that currently employed professionals were keen on using digital tools to find employment, as nearly two thirds (66%) of respondents created online CVs/public profiles on top job sites during their most recent job hunt, 46% used a cover letter and 27% used a professional CV writing service.

As for the journey from recruitment to hiring, 67% of respondents had up to three different interviews before finding their current job and 42% had more than three interviews.

More than half (55%) of respondents found their current job within three months, including a quarter (20%) who found their job in less than one month. 44% found their current job after more than three months of searching.

“The hiring practices survey is an important depiction of the region’s current techniques and tools that are used to facilitate hiring,” said, Nehal Jibouri, Head of Custom Research MENA, YouGov. “With a comprehensive overview of the hiring process, companies can better understand what works and how the process can be improved. Likewise, job seekers can gain a comprehension of what their job hunt journey could look like and what tools are available for them.”

Data for the 2018 Middle East and North Africa Hiring Practices survey was collected online from 14 March 2018 to 26 April 2018. Results are based on a sample of 2,491 respondents from the following countries: UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, and Pakistan.

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About Bayt.com

Bayt.com is the leading job site in the Gulf and Middle East, connecting job seekers with employers looking to hire. Every day, thousands of new job vacancies are listed on the award-winning platform from the region's top employers. The portal is used by over 40,000 global employers and has a database of over 31,000,000 professionals.

© Press Release 2018