Dubai Employment Tips

Personal Assistants are in high demand throughout Dubai. For many people that are looking for career opportunities in this area, the idea of becoming a personal assistant may seem like a great choice. It is important to understand that the reason why these positions tend to pay 10,000 to 25,000 AED a month is because the job duties are much different than the title implies.

In the United States, a personal assistant is little more than a secretary or housekeeper. In Dubai, a personal assistant is a highly skilled and educated business partner. If you are considering this line of work in Dubai there are a few key elements of your resume that should be looked at carefully before you apply for advertised positions.

Educational requirements for most of the higher paying Personal Assistants in Dubai require a business degree. Human resources, business management, and business administration are all good choices if you are considering a career in this sector. In lieu of a bachelor’s or master’s level degree; three to five years experience in one of these positions may be an acceptable substitution. Preference typically goes to Personal Assistants that can speak both English and Arabic fluently. While still in the United States it would be wise to seek at the minimum a basic understanding of the Arabic language before applying for positions in Dubai.

While few people in the United States would think of attending college and learning a second language just to be a Personal Assistant, this title is much more respected in Dubai than in the U.S., and the pay is easily comparable to most management positions in the United States.

Turner Broadcasting System is part of the Time Warner family of business, and was original started by Ted Turner. Time Warner employs over 38,000 people around the world, with over 8,000 of those employees being in the United States, where it originates. Time Warner is the owner of HBO, Cinemax, CNN, TNT, Court TV and Cartoon Network in the United States. This leader in news and entertainment announced last week that it will be opening an office in Dubai.

It was decided that an Arabic free-to-air version of its globally popular Cartoon Network would begin soon, so it is no surprise that Turner would open the supporting business operations in Dubai. The company’s executives have also announced their plans to open an animation academy.

Turner Broadcasting System has plans to reach out to local animators in an effort to develop a wider range of Arabic content for the network. This, coupled with Time Warner’s past history of being a large scale employer in the markets in which is operates will be a great change of pace for the media sector that has reported slow growth over previous years.

Turner Broadcasting is an employer with a long history of awards for its cultural diversity and excellent employee relations. In the United States, Turner Broadcasting Systems provides exceptional salaries, advancement opportunities and benefit packages to their workforce, and it can only be assumed the same will be found in Dubai. It can also be expected that other broadcasting companies will follow Turner and look to establish a media presence in Dubai, creating a wide array of employment opportunities for those with a media or advertising background.

Insight Discovery and Pink Slip Dubai recently conducted a report that shows that companies in Dubai are taking advantage of the slow down in hiring employees. Employers saving large amounts of money by reducing or eliminating expatriate hiring practices, promoting from within, and offering significantly lower salaries than in previous years.

This survey involved interviewing numerous Human Resource managers and recruiters throughout the UAE, and the responses were all very similar. For those looking to come to Dubai from western countries, the desire to come to Dubai was there but the demand for expatriate recruitment was not.

This would seem like bad news for anyone in the United States or Europe that was looking to relocate to Dubai, a trend that has been growing significantly over the last decade. However, there is a silver lining to the results of this report. The job market in 2010 is looking much stronger than in 2009, and there are certain aspects of business that companies are still looking for expatriates to recruit. Over two thirds of the recruiters and human resource professionals interviewed felt the job market as a whole was on the upswing.

Mainly, the investment in infrastructure has created a need for highly skilled professionals including project managers, MEP managers, construction managers and managers within the financial and IT sectors. So while the opportunities for less experienced workers from western areas may have a grim outlook, those professionals that have proven track records in their sector in executive level positions are still in high demand.

Many companies are reporting IT security threats due to the increasing volume of smart phones and mobile broadband devices. Unlike PCs, which are tied into the company’s IT system, these privately owned devices are being used by employees to streamline their workday. While this technology is making it very efficient for employees at a firm to access critical information when on the go, it proves to be a very difficult security risk that IT departments in companies around Dubai are struggling to control.

Not helping the complex security issues is that IT attacks are changing just as fast as the technology is changing. While in the past most IT attacks were on a large scale, now the trend is moving towards targeted attacks, where the person trying to break into the company’s system is using creative measures of communication to target one particular employee or manager that they think may have access to pertinent information.

These two problems tie in together as networks become less secure as employees use their mobile broadband devices that are not locked down or able to be tracked as the company’s internal PCs can be. Because the mobile technology is gaining in popularity throughout Dubai, many companies are looking to hire IT specialists that can develop the systems that will keep the company’s sensitive data safe despite these recent threats.

IT experts in Europe and the United States will have a great opportunity to secure high level IT positions in Dubai, as these areas have been dealing with mobile broadband and these type of IT risks for quite some time.

For the last two years, the Atlantis hotel has been the only operating hotel on the infamous Palm Jumeirah isle. There have been dozens of other hotels and resorts planned, but the lack of funding and economic woes brought those projects to a grinding halt. The outlook was grim for the 30 planned luxury hotels, especially considering that Dubai’s hotels experienced an extreme drop in occupancy rates due to a lack of tourism.

The combination of lack of confidence in travel and luxury spending coupled with the unwillingness of the financial industry to back projects considered a risk due to the global economy has made the Atlantis seem like it would be standing alone for quite some time. However, recent news has been good news for Palm Jumeirah and the hospitality sector as a whole.

Several projects have construction that is back up and running, with plans to be open before the end of the year. Included in the upcoming openings is the One&Only The Palm, which will open on October 10th. This 90-room hotel will be the only boutique-style venture on the island. Zabeel Saray will be opening in October as well, which features 410 Turkish-styles rooms and villas. Several other large-scale projects, including an all-inclusive resort, are slated to open in 2011.

If you have been thinking about finding a tropical oasis for your next career move, the Palm Jumeirah is the place to be. Regardless of the financial outlook for the rest of the world’s travel hotspots, there is no doubt Palm Jumeirah will be the destination location the majority of travelers will be planning to visit due to its unique and diverse luxury offerings.

While all sectors are reporting forward movement in regards to construction and new business ventures, none have the amount of growth that is expected in healthcare this year. Hospital projects are one of the few types of construction that are not affected by the financial crisis, and there is no sign of the growth of healthcare in Dubai slowing down.

It was recently reported by the Chamber of Commerce and Industry that over 17 new hospitals will be built in 2010. This will create 2,325 beds that are currently unavailable in Dubai hospitals. Needless to say, the amount of doctors, nurses and medical assistants that will be needed to fill these positions is more than Dubai’s medical sector can provide on its own.

However, this is not a one-time recruitment effort that will be underway in the upcoming months. The Chamber of Commerce and Industry also reported that they expect the demand to for hospital services to explode in growth by 2025, when they suggest an additional 165,000 beds will be needed. Healthcare costs are estimated to reach $60 billion USD by 2025.

The major driving factor behind this extreme expansion of healthcare in Dubai is largely due to the increasing numbers of people with Type 2 Diabetes and obesity related health concerns throughout the region. Medical professionals with experience in these areas of medicine in particular can expect high salary compensation for their experience and educational efforts. The need for expatriates with health care backgrounds will likely never be as high as it will be over the next few years, so it is highly recommended anyone from the western countries interested in relocating to Dubai make contact with recruiters now to get in on the ground floor opportunities that are available.