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The Middle East continues to be an attractive region to work in due to the continued tax-free incomes, high quality of life and an abundance of opportunities. We have had a huge inflow of candidates in the past couple of years due to UAE’s Expo 2020, Qatar’s FIFA World Cup & KSA’s Vision 2030 amongst other national agendas. The oversupply of talent in the market has also led to a dilution of region-specific skills – nuances which made talent seamlessly adapt to new organisations. Therefore, identifying and recruiting top talent counterintuitively continues to be challenging. Finance and Accounting is a transferable skill-set and in theory, industry-agnostic. However, the oversupply of applicants continues to dictate client requirements – to hire someone specifically from their own industry. While there remain logical benefits to this, it often nullifies the abundant supply of talent. In restricting your search, you likely miss out on top talent in related/ other industries who could bring a fresh perspective to the role & organisation. 2022 also saw us record the highest number of counter-offers – this demonstrates that business activity was buoyant, clients chose to save time and candidates opted to cash in rather than moving into roles which nullified their intrinsic reasons for leaving. Effectively, there is more than sufficient evidence to justify that this is a temporary fix. As we enter into a super busy 2023, I am sharing some top tips to recruit talent.
1. Reality check your selection criteria - best person in the market or the best person for the job?
The best person in the market may not always be the best solution for you; they may not fit your team culture and rock the boat as soon as they start. The best person for the job however is someone who aligns with your immediate team structure, culture and company's goals. This person may not always come from your direct competitor or may be on job boards/ applying for jobs – it is therefore important to run searches which are skill-set/track record based and be proactive
2. Length of your recruitment process - how efficient is your decision-making structure?
If there are multiple stakeholders/decision makers involved in a hiring process, it is important to lay down a time-effective interview process wherein stakeholders are strategically grouped together (i.e. panel interviews). The longer the interview process, the higher the risk of losing the candidate to competition or their engagement waning. The interview process is also the first insight/ impression that a candidate gets into your decision-making structure/ capability to act decisively, and it plays a huge role how they perceive the opportunity and your business overall. Adding to this, a strong process often leads to candidates being more flexible in their expectations and ask, and vice-versa
3. Perception matters - how do candidates view your process?
While you assess a candidate's consistency through interviews, they are also carefully considering their recruitment experience with your company. When they know what to expect in terms of interview stage, backgrounds of interviewers, topics of focus and are given the opportunity to also clarify their questions through these interviews, they are highly likely to share this positive experience with their peers. This ultimately works wonders for your branding in the industry. Inconsistency in budget/ offer, interview process or job details could result in the exact opposite impact on your branding if expectations are not managed
4. Solid Plan B and C - are you planning ahead?
Having a healthy pipeline is incredibly important as you progress into advanced recruitment stages even if you are certain about locking your preferred candidate. In reality, you can never be a 100% certain about someone else's decisions/ future scenarios and not having a Plan B and Plan C could take you straight back to the drawing board if your preferred candidate rejects the offer. There is a wider impact of this scenario – when you approach the market once again for the same role when most professionals are already aware, you may find that candidates may approach this opportunity more sceptically i.e. what’s wrong with that business, why have they not been able to close this position yet?
5. Competitive pay and benefits - are you aligned with the market rates?
Often, clients take a short-term approach of hiring at parallel pay or a minimal increase in order to lock their preferred candidate who may already be near the top end of the client's budget. However, it’s extremely likely that you are creating a scenario where you cannot expect a high retention rate. We cannot control head hunters/ employers from approaching candidates while they're working with you but offering a competitive pay and reviewing it annually is a big step towards employee-retention. We have published a Salary Guide for 2023.
6. Counter offer or rehire - are you thinking long-term or short-term?
It has been statistically proven that candidates who accept counter-offers are back in the market in an average of 6 months. This is because there are often multiple factors that work in combination to trigger a job search – money, role, progression, management, work-life balance, flexibility and more. A counter offer may rectify one or few of those but often does not amend the holistic scenario which triggered your employee to seek another opportunity. Rehiring & retraining a role may be time consuming and often a relatively more expensive solution – however, hiring back someone who wanted to leave or hiring the wrong individual can prove to be even more expensive in the long run. Recruiting top talent in the Middle East calls for effective navigation through a really large talent pool, majority of which, may comprise of irrelevant skill-sets. At Michael Page, we have invested in sophisticated technology over the years to improve our database functionality. However, we believe that no technology can fully replace the human touch that recruitment requires. Our consultants strive to meet people in person as much as possible so that we can present people to our clients, not just their CVs.
If you’d like to have a chat about hiring talent, exploring new challenges or better understanding the market, please reach out to me on [email protected] or request a call back.
