BEFORE YOU TRAIN
BY PAT LUBY
HR Technology
Before you can train and develop your team, you have to recruit them!
Employee’s viewpoint….
To simplify the issue, I am looking from the viewpoint of an employee in the GCC (any nationality!) who wants to find a better job, or who has been made redundant and needs a replacement job very soon, as opposed to visitors, tourists and long-distance job seekers.
The dominant online players, such as Bayt, Monster Gulf and Gulf Talent.com all require you to complete their online application forms, upload CVs, photos and then you wait for the rush of interest from the employers’ side.
For the great majority of jobseekers, there is no rush, only silence. People become depressed by the lack of response and often blame the service provider for it. To make matters worse, many applicants then turn to direct applications via employers’ websites too.
Most of the leading multinationals and smart local groups have invested in online recruitment systems, so yes, once again, forms have to be completed online, CVs uploaded, and so forth, which adds to the battle to keep your morale high while the response is still low or zero.
Executive Search firms and Recruitment Agencies (many with their own online application systems too) are very customer-focused.
Unfortunately jobseekers are not their customers, corporate business are.
So what is causing this situation?
The answer is competition; the huge number of people in the Gulf (and worldwide) who are also looking for the ‘right’ job in this region.
Online systems are the best way for any organization connected to recruitment to cope with literally several hundred candidates applying for each vacancy, plus a similar number of people making speculative applications, daily.
Imagine trying to read thousands of CVs every week, responding to them all personally and then filing them somehow so they can be found in a search with any degree of accuracy.
It can’t be done!
There is no easy solution for jobseekers in this market, sorry to say, unlike South Africa which has a very mature operation called Career Junction.
Applicants complete one online file and this is then accessed by headhunters, agencies and corporations direct. If you see a new job on CJ and want to apply, it’s a quick click and it’s done.
Nice.
It’s a shame that CJ Middle East never got off the ground.
Personal contacts and word-of-mouth are probably more effective than ever today, thanks to LinkedIn and Facebook.
34 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST OCT 2014
YOU MUST RECRUIT