Adverts for Gulf jobs track Monster rise

Postings placed on website are 178% up since October.

Job postings in the Gulf region have risen by 178 per cent since last October, says the regional head of Monster, the largest job-search engine in the world. Sanjay Modi, the managing director for Monster in India, South East Asia and the Middle East, said the website was able to track the amount of monthly job opportunities posted to the site and monitor employment trends in each country.

"Over the past seven months we have seen a huge growth in the number of job postings that are visible on our site in the Gulf," Mr Modi said. The figures may help to curb the unemployment rate in the GCC. The unemployment rate in the UAE is 4 per cent - 12.7 per cent for Emiratis - at the end of 2008, according to the most recent figures available from the Ministry of Economy. Mr Modi said the top five industries looking for workers included the finance sector, product engineering, construction, information technology and the oil and gas sector.

"By the nature of their business in the Gulf, they are large employment generators," he said. "The impact that the Gulf market will see in terms of opportunities will be in these five sectors showing a positive growth." There are about 3,600 job postings in the Gulf region on the Monster website, Mr Modi said. More than 1,900 CVs from the Gulf are added daily to the website's database, which contains about 2.2 million applications.

Overall, Mr Modi said the website was seeing new job postings aimed at all employment levels: entry-level; middle management; and experienced. About 37 per cent of people applying for new jobs had more than 10 years professional experience. "There is a fairly experienced working population here looking for new jobs," Mr Modi said. "Normally, you won't find more than 15 per cent of senior management on the website but it seems to be very unique to the Gulf market.

"It could be a factor because employers here would tend to give certain preference to experience." Of individual Gulf countries, Saudi Arabia appears to be looking to hire the most with a 119 per cent increase in job applications. Qatar is second with 23 per cent and the UAE has seen a rise of about 5 per cent. "The UAE market is predominantly a services-driven market," Mr Modi said. "It might take a little bit longer to come back as well, as some of the projects in the construction industry could have brought the confidence level down to a wait-and-see approach."

By comparison, the Saudi Arabian market has a number of large construction and energy projects that require a significant amount of experienced workers, Mr Modi said. @Email:[e-mail]