A week in Dubai

I've just returned from a business trip to Dubai, my first trip in 10 years. The place was unrecognisable. Where the road out from the old town stopped and the desert started 10 years ago, now it's just the start of hundreds of new business tower blocks, apartment buildings and expensive hotels.

It's amazing that a city can grow so fast in a decade and even with the recent property crash, buildings are still going up.

So, it would seem an area where jobs are still being created at some pace - finance, construction, IT in particular but media is also an important sector. Dubai is possibly not seeing the insane growth levels and rampant business investment in new projects and new property developments as it was 4-5 years ago but it is all relative. Now people are looking to Abu Dhabi for the most rapid growth and highest levels of investment not just being invested in construction, banking and business but also in media and arts with the Louvre and Guggenheim projects underway. Just for the Louvre the estimated investment starts at €83m plus the €1.3bn deal with the Louvre Paris.

From a recruitment perspective, there does seem to be a shortage of high level talent entering the market, or so I was told by people within a number of business sectors. This could be because the massive growth has outstripped the supply of executive level talent or perhaps the recruitment techniques employed by companies to source new staff have just not been able to reach or attract the calibre of personnel required from the places they have been looking.

There are many attractions to living and working in Dubai - salaries are often much higher than those for comparative roles in Europe or the US as well as being tax free and there is the year round heat and overall a very high standard of living. It does also seem that more people now are staying longer in Dubai. It's therefore becoming a less transient place and people that have relocated there at first on a temporary basis have set up home and are in no hurry to leave - other than to escape the real heat and humidity of summer for a month or so.

There are clearly also frustrations in working in such a place. It would seem that there is a considerable level of bureaucracy that makes certain decisions and actions quite arduous and drawn out, business structures can be quite different from those in the West and the way of life is not for everyone but there has to be pros and cons for everything.

For people interested in work opportunities in the UAE and what relocating would entail, please get in touch.

Liz Pepper (liz.pepper(at)pepperstark.com)