As businesses worldwide recover from the pandemic, the UAE job market is humming with hiring activity. The salaries in the UAE are expected to increase by 5% across all sectors.

As per The National News, The UAE employers expect to expand their workforce by nearly 76% in 2022.

So, what does the future hold for the workforce of the UAE? Will automation triumph, or will businesses continue to hire in the same old ways?

Saudi Arabia is booming in hiring, and nearly 79% of employers here expect to increase their workforce numbers over the next 12 months, as reported by The National News.

What's in store for job seekers and recruiters?

Here are some insights on the hiring trends that Middle East job seekers may find helpful and HRs and recruiters should look forward to for this year:

1. Enhancing candidate/user experience

Providing a positive candidate experience is no longer optional. Instead, it is a vital necessity with significant repercussions. Organizations who want to improve the candidate experience should:

• Improve employer branding: If organizations plan to bring new talent on board, they need to plan their future course of action wisely, specifically to enhance their employer brand. Research shows that candidates who enjoy the hiring organization's brand or reputation are more inclined to apply. Even if they do not obtain a job offer, they will apply again.
• Communicate effectively: During the hiring process, candidates want to stay well-informed about the recruitment process. Furthermore, mobile recruiting is another way to attract competent candidates.

2. The hybrid work model is here to stay

According to Khaleej Times, about 70% of companies in the UAE are still practicing the hybrid working model. As the number of people immunized against COVID-19 has increased, employers have accelerated their plans to return their employees to work. However, HR professionals believe that the hybrid work model is the new norm in the UAE.

Employees in the UAE favor the hybrid approach because they prefer more flexibility for remote working.

Khaleej Times reports that Adecco Middle East's survey shows three out of four employees want more flexibility and remote working options. 

Why is the hybrid work model beneficial? It translates to:

• Increased employee happiness
• Substantial Increase in income
• Enhanced mobility

3. Accelerating AI-based solutions

With the advent of digital transformation, the talent acquisition paradigm has altered dramatically in the recent decade. 

Advanced HRTech solutions such as resume parser, search & match engine, and taxonomy can help you automate the recruitment process and save you significant time finding the best candidates. 

Resume Parser

The innovative resume parsing technology helps sort and store candidate data without bias. Here’s how it can benefit your organization:

• Enhance the candidate experience by allowing candidates to apply with a single click.
• Easily import millions of resumes overnight.
• Get resume data from emails in less than two seconds.

RChilli is one of the best resume parsers to parse resumes in 30+ languages, including Arabic in the region of the middle east:

• UAE
• Saudi Arabia
• Egypt

Search & Match Engine

The advanced search and match allow you to search and match candidates & jobs with great relevancy and accuracy. Search & match engine helps to:

• Enhance the user experience by showing the recommended skills/job titles to the candidate/recruiter while searching.
• Refine your search with facets/filters
• Find a localized candidate with a geographical search

Taxonomy

Taxonomy offers a comprehensive collection of skills, job profiles, and related information. Taxonomy can benefit your organization by:

• Efficiently map with the local govt. databases.
• Enhancing search results by getting keyword recommendations through related skills/jobs. 
• Getting recommended skills and job titles with skills/jobs alias.

4. Data-driven recruitment

You're doing data-driven recruiting when you use facts and figures to support your hiring decisions, from selecting candidates to formulating strategies. HR teams using data are more likely to be efficient than those who do not. How can data-centric hiring help the HR teams? Apart from increasing your quality of hire, data-driven recruiting also helps to:

• Wisely allocate budget for various recruiting channels

• Speed up your time-to-hire

• Promote unbiased hiring

• Benchmark and forecast your hiring needs

5. Mobilization of internal talent

Internal talent mobility refers to people moving within an organization to pursue new careers and development prospects. Internal talent mobility is often overlooked in organizations seeking new talent from external sources. 

What advantages can internal talent mobility initiatives offer? Both leaders and employees benefit from a well-designed talent program. It fosters healthy competition, enhances employee retention rates, and reduces recruitment expenses, among other benefits.

6. Diversity and inclusion

Every organization that wants to attract and retain top personnel, enhance the customer experience, and improve financial results must prioritize diversity and inclusion. Many companies boost their diversity and inclusion activities and are better suited to maintain diversity.

According to Forbes, an organization that embraces diversity is 1.7 times more innovative. 

Diversity and inclusion have several benefits, including:

• Recruitment from a larger talent pool
• Encourage innovation in your company's workforce
• It helps make better decisions

7. Employer branding focused on employees

Do you know what entails focusing on employer branding? When done correctly, it paves the way for a great candidate experience. Employer branding focused on what the company is doing to support employees, clients, and communities in times of crisis will garner more candidates than those who do not.

To progress, you'll need leadership-bound employees, and the simplest way to find them is to showcase your company culture and give them an idea about your organization.  The company culture and how its employees are treated can significantly impact the image you're trying to create on potential candidates, from the salary and benefits packages you give to growth chances to weekly happy hours.

Conclusion

The recruitment industry is constantly evolving, and breakthroughs in cloud computing and AI-based solutions such as resume parser, search & match engine, and taxonomy are accelerating the pace of change. Following COVID-19, the world is confronting a new set of realities, with enterprises being disrupted at an alarming rate and having to reinvent themselves in a short period.

Simultaneously, the way we work has evolved dramatically since COVID-19, with remote work and a global workforce, leaving organizations to adapt and implement the essential change programs. By implementing innovative HR tech tools, acquiring necessary talent can be accomplished. 

Source: RChilli blog