The UAE plans to mark “2020: Towards the next 50” through various mega-events, specifically the inauguration of the Barakah Nuclear Plant, the launch of the Hope Probe and the hosting of the Expo 2020. It is worth to follow the latest Top Recruitment Trends in the UAE.
The expo aims to create significant employment opportunities, not only in Dubai and the UAE but also in the entire MENA region. An independent study published by financial consultants E&Y noted that the UAE’s investment in the expo will create close to 1 million job opportunities during the period 2013-31. This open whole lot of opportunities for all the businesses, especially recruitment agencies in the UAE.
Over the years, recruitment has been evolving. There is a lot of buzz about AI’s effect on the jobs, but, its’ not just the jobs. AI is improving the lives of recruiters in the UAE as well as job seekers. Some of the developments have been gradual and others have been nimble.
Hiring Talent is not just about paper resumes and phone interviews anymore. But the focus is shifting on skills assessments and virtual interviews. The trend is shifting from taking chances to precise screening and intelligent selection. Talent Acquisition staff of organisations, as well as recruitment companies in the UAE are following the trends.
So with all these thrilling changes and as we approach the Expo 2020, what can we expect from the Staffing & Recruitment industry in the UAE?
What are the hiring trends that we will see more of in 2020?

1. The Growing significance of candidate engagement in the UAE.

The wealth of communication channels we have at our disposal is massive as we live in the age of technology after all. So use them wherever possible. The significance of candidate engagement as a recruiting trend can’t be underestimated.

• Consider all mediums at your disposal to engage with candidates applying for jobs in the UAE.
• Deal with several platforms if you would like to, make sure you keep candidates engaged throughout the hiring process and you are a winner.
• Use social media, email, text, chat bots, WhatsApp, WeChat, Viber, Telegram, Skype, or whatever you and your candidates have access to. Keep all the communication channels available and open.
• Thanks to recruiting automation which can help you successfully engage candidates even in high volume personally. Personalise your approach to each applicant instead of using Dear Applicant approach.
• Keep your candidates engaged with the content that adds value, otherwise you are wasting your time and theirs with unnecessary communication.

2. Ethical & Transparent Hiring is the way forward for Smart Companies in the UAE.

Honesty it the best policy. Make sure you reciprocate with honesty if you want candidates to be honest with you.
It is worth informing the candidates if you are using any latest technology in your recruitment process. Let them know your, screening criteria, how you are conducting your selection, and the technology you are using in recruitment to help you in your decision making. Be open and transparent.
A top recruitment trend going forward, which will act like a magnet for top talent will be, being transparent in what you can offer candidates from the beginning. It’s useless to waste anybody’s time by being reserved, it will only cost you and your organisation if you end up hiring a wrong resource.
Understand and manage an applicant’s expectations and reservations from the outset:

• Salary and Compensation Budget in the UAE: Do share the salary range and perks with the interested applicants or you risk eliminating top candidates by pushing them to undervalue themselves or worse, contributing to the gender pay gap. A good chunk of talented job seekers in the UAE wants insights around benefits and perks in an organisation, flexibility of work, and salary ranges of relevant roles before even submitting an application.
• Timelines: You know the deadline, even if it is lengthy, stick to it and don’t shy of communicating the same with the candidates. A clear timeline will ensure a smooth transition from their current role to a new role.
• Post-Interview Feedback: A successful candidate after the interview is definitely going to hear from you, but ensure that you provide a feedback so that they can learn, grow, and excel in their careers in the UAE, even if it’s negative as long as it is constructive.

3. UAE Companies are focusing on Retention Based Hiring.

All Businesses in the UAE always find ways to reduce cost. Turnover is expensive. From initiating the screening process till finalising their legalisation permits i.e.; offer letters, work permits, medical insurance, employment visas, etc.; involves cost which can only be profitable if an employee fulfill their term with the organisation. Turnover also creates delays to customer’s projects and services, productivity is lost, hurts team and organisation’s morale, creates stress on immediate team, including legal and HR issues ramifications.
For the same reason retention focused hiring will be an important recruiting trend in 2020 instead of just filling the position. Don’t just hire because you need to fill the seat, but look for the leader that you will need to get the job done tomorrow, be proactive.

• Future Resistant. Try to enhance the knowledge and skills you need for executing necessary functions not only for now, but in the future too. Flexible candidates who are not only capable to deliver what you need today, but are also willing to learn the skills that your organisation will need in future should be screened.
• Loyalty Check: Try to assess an applicant’s potential loyalty by going through their work history and time spent with an organisation to determine their commitment to your organisation during an interview.
• Soft Skills Matters: Soft skills like; problem-solving ability, creativity, and innovative thinking are very important and to assess these skills adopt a fluid, conversational style interview. Inform them the job responsibilities and challenges they may encounter and ask them how they are going to overcome them. Figure out what why they are motivated to join your organisation.
• Career Path: The importance of a growth and development plan for every position you hire can’t be ignored. This would give candidates an idea what their potential career path looks like in your organisation. The wider exposure to the company as well as a multitude of additional skills would never leave them bored and would ultimately benefit you by retaining them in your organisation for longer duration.

4. Using tactical talent insights

Over 200 nationalities in the UAE and with the availability of the best talent, all small and big companies in the UAE want to build the best team possible and retain their top talent.
The question is how do you do this? By building and using the current recruiting trends of strategic talent insights, careworn from your organisation’s existing talent intelligence.

• Researching everything possible about the candidates form insights at the micro level from their service history to their social media activity, concluded at macro-level data such as your current headcount and what company culture you wish to promote. Talent intelligence is everything.
• Imagine, if you figure out why you are losing your top talent to the competition, then you are most likely to do something about it. This would help you in strategic workforce planning.
• Work closely with the recruiters and do appreciate the advisory role they offer. Don’t just use any recruiter to source talent for you, realise that with the changing nature of Talent Acquisition has come the changing role of recruiters.
• Top Recruitment companies in the UAE are incredibly strategic and offer invaluable insights into the industry and your future workforce that will ultimately help you grow your business.
• Use Smart Workforce solutions in the UAE. Workforce development has a huge impact on achieving your organisation’s strategic goals. Why not employ the knowledge of your recruiters or hire the best recruitment agency in the UAE to bridge the talent gaps?

5. Hiring and managing an agile and outsourced workforce in the UAE

Usually low or medium-skilled workers are brought in to fill a particular role or for a project to boost a company’s existing workforce which is called a contingent workforce model and helps & assists your agile headcount. An agile headcount is your organisation’s workforce which is focused exceptionally skilled workers with extraordinary skills brought in on as and when required basis.
While an agile workforce can overcome challenges because of their specialised talent, a contingent headcount fills the gap. Both workforce options offer different innovations solutions, to a diverse range of complexities.
Increasing number of businesses in the UAE are recognising the fact that super-specialised workforce or knowledge employees with tailored skills are very crucial for a company’s success. Though, they are not a cheap option if hired on permanent basis, an organisation really need to find the gaps where their specialisation is required.
Careful planning to accomplish a particular, critical business, and value added outcomes, one must know how to use a mix of internal and external outsourced workforce solutions together, mixed and matched wherever necessary. A unique and non-traditional group of workers makes an agile workforce.
A very important factor to consider for this recruiting trend is that an agile workforce won’t materialise unless you have employed fit for purpose strategies and technology to allow them to carry out their responsibilities effectively and efficiently.

Efficiently structuring an agile workforce with-in an organisation in the UAE:

• Delegate – Allow employees to take on new challenges and give them freedom to perform on their own.
• Swap – Rotation of employees in different departments or different roles exposes them to your wider organisation. Don’t hold them in their existing role.
• Inspire – Encourage your workforce to discover, revolutionise and make decisions without fear of failure or negative consequences if they do.

6. Focus on the employee life cycle in your organisation’s branding in the UAE

Are you working really hard to attract Top Talent into your company and then ignore the rest of their career path throughout their employment with you?
A colossal trend from Recruitment Trends in UAE will be to live your core values and bring your employer brand to life with a strong organisation culture. Employees leaving your company also incorporates in branding your organisation. Ensure that every stage of the employee life cycle is a positive one.

Employer Branding is an aspect that can’t be neglected in an organisation’s culture. This can be demonstrated beautifully by focusing on an employee’s journey at your organisation, at the beginning when you are hiring talent, during their employment with a well-defined career path, and a smooth transition process when they are heading for a new role within your organisation or to a new employer.

It surely will help you with the retention and also would turn your workers into your brand ambassadors. Do you think that your employee will share their experience or encourage others to join your company if they don’t like you, or have no intention of staying?

That and a happy employee is the best combination for an organisation and the biggest companies in the UAE would like to have such employees.

7. Evaluating prospective Talent in the UAE

High performers in an organisation generally hold three characteristics; ability, social skills and drive to succeed.
Are your Top performers contributing to the maximum company output? If, yes, then you really need to assess the potential for the candidates before hiring.
To make most out of these Recruitment Trends in UAE, think of assessing candidate’s learning ability, growth mind-set, emotional intellect, etc.; and you can do this through:

• Set well defined requirements before you kick-start your recruitment drive in the UAE and clearly conveying and making candidates understand what exactly you are looking for.
• Screen by asking relevant and specific interview questions.
• You may use personality questionnaires, skills tests, situational judgment, cultural fit or the cognitive ability for pre-employment assessment.
• Ask for references or name of the reporting manager in the UAE and do speak to them.

8. Improving the interview process in the UAE

Stay ahead of the hiring trends and look for means to create your interview process, intelligent, fairer, and less biased. LinkedIn Recruiter, is a popular tool that uses AI to screen and rank candidates. Feel free to use other innovative Recruitment tools or hire a Top recruitment company in the UAE which is well equipped with the latest AI technology. You can always keep yourself up-to-date with latest AI industry trends at AI Everything.
Few more methods to improve the interview process:

• Coach and train the interviewers to interview and involve more people in the recruitment and selection process.
• Emphasis on what you wish to achieve for an employee you are looking to hire, what skills and competencies matters the most.
• Develop a script with set of interview questions to match the minimum skills set you are looking for and have interviewers stick to the script.
• Establish a panel of interview and make it diverse.
• Follow up with both successful and unsuccessful candidates, provide them feedback and also ask for feedback/suggestions they may have for you.

9. Time to brush up recruiter’s skills

With the ever-changing Recruitment Trends in UAE in the industry, don’t forget that the Talent Acquisition Specialists need training too. Keep up-to-date with the recruitment trends in your industry and enable your Talent Acquisition Team to hone their skills so that they can hire you the best talent in the UAE.
Sales, Negotiation, and Marketing Skills: For some, the word ‘Sales’ means pressuring, manipulating, and maneuvering. Whereas you should consider sales as clearly explaining the logic and benefits of an action or decision and its clear every job requires solid sales skills: Convincing candidate to a role makes sense, proving to a hiring manager that a candidate will generate a solid return.

• Story-Telling – Inspire them to learn the art of storytelling so that they can create meaningful content to attract top talent in the UAE.
• Staffing, Recruiting, and Human Resource Courses – brush up your recruiter’s skills by in-house training if you have, otherwise you can opt into the best online and offline HR training institutes in the UAE.

10. UAE Companies to focus on cross-functional skills

Contenders equipped with cross-functional skills have a more wide view of a business, so another recruitment trend in 2020 will be to recruit, train and retain workers with cross-functional skills in order to create cross-functional teams and for long and short project-based work.

• Appreciate Employees who are willing to learn these skills and encourage others to follow the suit
• Who would not want talent with a mind-set for growth in the UAE? Cheer the employees to pursue cross-functional skills with lifelong learning.
• You may look into creating a buddy system in your organisation where you learn from your buddy a skill you don’t have and teach a skill they don’t have. Having mentors from outside the team can also be very helpful.
• Conduct corporate training sessions to help narrow down and ultimately close the skills gap.

Bonus Recruitment Trends in UAE: Employee Diversity in the UAE

Whether you are a SME or a large corporation, having a diverse workforce in your company in the UAE is vital and organisation all around the world increasingly understand this.
Chances of closing a deal and retaining diverse client base, improved teamwork, and fair monetary returns are just few of the benefits diverse organisations experience.

Companies in the UAE are classified and given a rating ranging from A to D. one of the criteria used for the classification is how diverse your workforce is. So, if you’ve mix of nationalities then you can enjoy a range of benefits from faster processing of your requests to discounted work permits. i.e.; Category B, C, and D businesses in the UAE pay between 20%-40% extra to legalise an employee in the UAE, than a category A company. You can make significant savings by implementing a smart plan.
In 2020, companies will be making sure that inclusion is deeply embedded in their organisation cultures and creating a sense of belonging in their staff.

Having noticeable role models to demonstrate a practical path forward, assistance in formal sponsorship and mentor ship opportunities, flexible working hours/programs, and effective diversity initiatives will be required for the implementation so that staff can flourish and grow.

Workforce is made up of as many as of five generations, Generation Z has been moving into the workforce and also bringing change in the organisations. So are the companies to engage and manage to communicate effectively while addressing their needs and expectations.

Organisations in the UAE are making innovative efforts to attract, retain, and engage top talent from all walks of life.
Furthermore, big corporations have already initiated recruiting dedicated diversity & inclusion employees. And while SMEs may not have the means or budget to recruit a dedicated D&I personal, these duties can soak into other generalist HR and Talent Acquisition roles.

Overall, the understanding of diversity and inclusion is shifting from just recruiting staff of different backgrounds and making sure that everybody has access to the same benefits to creating workplaces of the future where all workforce is treated justly, with esteem and where they feel appreciated and applauded. Generational Diversity in the organisation is imperative and is the need of the hour with the latest Recruitment Trends in UAE.

The ball is in your court. Yalla!

Even though we can now use a wide range of tools with the help of technology in hiring but still can’t expect recruitment to get any easier in 2020. That’s why it is necessary to stay up to date of the Recruitment Trends in UAE and industry developments to be able to progress how your organisation attracts, train and retain talent. You may use the list of these Top 10 trends as a motivation to assess your hiring process and make improvements wherever needed.

Read More: 6 Common Recruiting Mistakes to Avoid In Your Hiring Process in the UAE