How to find the perfect Job in the Middle East

In this blog post Corina Goetz talks about what it takes to find the perfect job, the right business partner for a project or success generally in the Middle East. There are so many incredible ways on how to learn more about the Middle East and this post is a great summary of all the things you can do from the comfort of your own sofa.

 

3 Steps to help You get a Job in the Middle East

Because if you want to go work in the Middle East or you have been offered a project in Saudi for example then one of the things that you need to know of course is how can you build a relationship fast. How can you go through the negotiation process? What do you need to know when you talk to people from the Middle East? There are some specific things about the country that you need to know and that’s really where I can help because I have a lot of experience and I have been working with people from the Middle East for the best part of 15 to 20 years.

So all my knowledge has come by asking questions and talking to people and traveling there so that’s really where I can help. However, I thought I’ll do a little episode on a few steps that you can take that are useful to you and that you can do yourself to make a start now. So I would say the number one is belief, so with belief I mean is what do you know about the Middle East? What have you heard? What have you heard from the media? Is that something that makes you anxious? Is that something that you worry about because you’re not really sure “is it safe?” And how easy will it be to travel there or live there and what will life be like? And you just hear about lots of like dangerous things or what people talk about terrorism coming from the Middle East and is that something that worries you?

 

Assumptions

So here is my question – Have you ever been there? So have you actually seen what the countries are like? So I think that’s a very very important thing to work on is what you believe. If you believe all of these things that I just said – then I think you need to look for people that are living there or who have just traveled there. You need to look and connect with people that have jobs there, maybe you need to try and find people that are natives there – to try and explore a different side to what you believe so you can ultimately change your belief system. Because whatever you believe is your reality and that will not give you the courage to move forward so you have to look at your belief system and then start working on that.

 

What Sector is Good for me?

Number two is you need to identify what kind of industry you want to go into. Do you want to work in construction and if you want to work in construction what are the projects that are going on and where can you find out information about those projects? Or do you want to work in private staffing or hospitality again where are the people that would work in these kinds of fields? Do you need to look for recruitment companies? Do you need to apply for the job with companies directly and then where can you find them?

 

Where to find Middle East Job Opportunities

Number three is then you need to start doing your homework so you may have identified maybe the country that you want to work in or you’ve identified a couple of companies that you want to work for and then you can start looking for these places. Where is the best place in my opinion to look for these companies and to look for these people? So in my opinion the best one of the best places you can find out more about projects and you can also educate yourself in order to make a decision is LinkedIn. So when you look at the Middle East, for example, Saudi Arabia is very active on LinkedIn. They post about all the new projects, they post a lot of jobs in Saudi. You can find key decision-makers on LinkedIn and it’s generally a really good way of finding out more about what you want to know.

Very interestingly there was a summit recently called the Future of Hospitality summit and they live-streamed it on LinkedIn so you could actually watch a lot of the projects that were going on and hear from the people in charge. You could hear from CEOs from The Red Sea Development project or the Alula project – these people were all there talking about what they are developing and what is the meaning behind it. What do they want to achieve, and where are they getting people from and there is a huge amount of knowledge that everybody can bring to the region and can be part of these exciting projects.

 

Star-CaT – Middle East Experts

So don’t be a stranger and of course you can also connect with me on LinkedIn – I do a lot of stuff about the countries in general. I share some of my travel experiences there and useful things to know.

I generally just want to bring people together and want to show people how great the hospitality in the Middle East really is – so once you know what your target companies or jobs are then I would say connect with people, follow people, comment on their posts.

 

And educate yourself. Ask questions but don’t just assume that because somebody has some knowledge in the Middle East – they will do the job for you. You really need to go and put yourself out there and you need to take your own initiative. One of my biggest bugbears is actually when you have let’s say a recruitment company and they post oh I have this really amazing job in Dubai for example and people start commenting I’m interested. I mean what are you interested in? If you are interested in the job then

1. Do the homework
2. Connect with the recruiter
3. Send them your CV.

The recruiters are going to get so many people applying for these jobs they’re not gonna go through every single response saying I’m interested or check out my profile. No – the onus is on you to make sure that you present yourself in the right way, that you show them you know something about the country, that you have done your homework and you really want to have this job. So please do not comment: I’m interested on any of the recruitment posts and do go out there, do your homework and then connect with the recruiter, send them your CV and show initiative.

 

Shortcuts – kind of

Nowadays we have so many tools at our disposal which is really incredible. You know you can find a recruitment web page, you can find email addresses there. The web made it possible. You know and if people maybe don’t respond on LinkedIn you have to find new ways to connect with them if you really really want the job. One of the things that we always learn is that its persistence that pays off. It’s not the first person or the first job that will always work out – it’s all about persistence. You need to keep going. You need to keep looking and we have more tools at our disposal to help us with this than ever. Because the internet is such an amazing incredible tool we have all these social networks and

LinkedIn is such a brilliant tool to connect with business job opportunities. And when you are learning about different cultures, it’s really amazing what can happen – it connects people from all over the world.

 

Conclusion

You know, sometimes this can be overwhelming and we start thinking if I need to learn something new about a country, where do I even start and where can I even find the right information? So this is where we as Star-CaT can help because we give you the tools, we give you a course that you can do online anytime and anywhere. You can subscribe to our newsletter and we tell you what’s going on in the region and we give you all this information every month. We are here to make things easy for you. So you don’t have to keep looking and searching through website after website after website and worry about what will be the right thing. We also have a blog on the website (which you are reading now) where we write a lot of things about Saudi and the Middle East, mainly on what we have experienced.

There really are a lot of incredible projects happening in the region not just in Saudi also in the whole of the Gulf region and there really are so so many opportunities but it is really down to you to take these opportunities and make them happen.

Whether you’re just looking for a project or whether you’re looking for a new job but don’t assume other people are going to do the work for you you need to put some work into this to make this a success.

 

What can I do once I’m there

Once you have found a job and you are ready to move on and to move into the Middle East you will see how incredible the region actually is and how hospitable people are. You will see how excited the Nationals are to show you their country and it will be an experience like nothing ever before.

I was talking to a friend of mine who used to work in the music business and she actually had a project on offer to her to go and work on Middle Beast the Soundstorm in the desert. You may have heard about this: in Saudi, they started doing this festival and flew in all these amazing DJs like David Guetta and it was like a rave in the desert that now happens every year. So this was such an interesting opportunity but she really wasn’t sure whether she should take it as she didn’t know much about Saudi so she asked us.

So let me ask you: What do you think she should have done?

100% she should have done this project because we knew she would love it. It was something so new and it combined the love of music with a different country. So she took the leap and did it. When she came back, she was so happy. She said: This was the most incredible experience and now I know what you always talk about when you say people don’t want to go to Saudi. There are just so many misconceptions and it was so different to what everybody had portrayed to me it would be like. It truly was so incredible and I signed up for next year too. She said, I never believed how hospitable the people were and how amazing the country is. This really made me so happy, because it was the most incredible testimonial to know that – what we are doing is right. To bring cultures together and create a better understanding. Because everyone should really appreciate what is happening in Saudi now and how they are starting to open the country. I was so happy to hear this from somebody that had never really been to the Middle East and then had such a great experience with this project.

So there you go: We have created a couple of PDFs that link back to some of the projects in Saudi. You will find some of the recruiters in there but do use LinkedIn to educate yourself and then success is just around the corner.