Dubai: The number of professionals in the Middle East who are on the lookout for new employment opportunities has posted a “tremendous” increase.
According to a job site, as more people across the region are looking to change companies or careers this year, their registered candidate profiles went up to 26.7 million recently.
In 2016 alone, more than 3.9 million jobseekers posted their CVs online, representing a 17.3 per cent increase in the number of people looking for new work.
‘[We] witnessed a tremendous growth in online jobseeker registrations,” Bayt.com said on Sunday. The site had earlier found in its survey that about nine in ten people in the region (98 per cent) are actively looking for new work.
“It is evident that jobseekers in the region are determined and inspired to seek more career opportunities,” said Suhail Masri, vice president for employer solutions at Bayt.com.
Within the UAE, about the same number (97 per cent) intend to move to another company or land a new job this year. Most of them (62.36 per cent) confirmed that finding better opportunities is at the top of their career goals this year, followed by improving skills and productivity (24.73 per cent).
A closer look at the figures, however, would reveal that there’s a huge gap to fill in the job market. Bayt.com’s figures show that while there are 27 million jobseekers out there, only 124,877 jobs opened in one year, leaving candidates about 10,000 vacancies to browse on any given day.
The job vacancies span all industries, sectors, career levels and locations in the Middle East and North Africa. The industries that had the highest number of job openings in 2016 included the engineering and construction, as well as the information and communications technology.
Other industry sources have predicted, however, that more jobs will open up this year as the number of companies planning to expand their headcount in 2017 has increased.
According to Hays, about seven in ten (72 per cent) of employers in the Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) region plan on recruiting additional staff in the next 12 months, compared to the 37 per cent who did so in 2016.
“We are already seeing very healthy demand for sales, account management and marketing staff which is encouraging and suggests a lot of companies are now going on the offensive with regards to hiring additional headcount,” said Chris Greaves, Managing Director of Hays, Gulf region.
“Additionally we are receiving about 10 enquiries a week from companies looking to recruit who are setting up their business in the UAE, predominantly in Dubai.”
