Explain why you are applying for this particular job. If you are going to mention personal interests and hobbies then try to link them to the skills and experience required for the job. For example being captain of your university football team suggests that you have good leadership skills. Organizing a large social function would [...]
» read moreA recent study from Chadwick Martin Bailey and iModerate Research Technologies shows that 60% of Facebook fans and 79% of Twitter followers are more likely to buy brands that they follow through social media. You can assume that many recruiters also are more likely to follow, and most importantly contact you if they find your [...]
» read moreIt is very important to say that no one should feel embarrassed about redundancy (or being laid off in the US). Particularly in these turbulent economic times there is no stigma attached to it. You can be sure that the people who are going to read your CV may well have faced redundancy themselves or [...]
» read moreIncluding the titles of your past jobs and of roles you’re looking for is effective in making your CV stand out in relevant computer searches. These titles can be included in the professional profile paragraph of your CV and in the employment history section respectively.
As previously stated, recruiters are usually focused on a particular job [...]
Assessment centers are sometimes run far from your home address. They may be held in a central location so that they are more accessible for the majority of people attending. Assessment centers also generally start early in the morning. Ask if the employer will provide you with hotel accommodation the night before. Having a very [...]
» read moreDespite the fact that many job vacancies are advertised on the internet and in the press there are still many more jobs available than are actually unadvertised. Advertising is expensive for recruitment agencies and for employers and therefore they may choose not to advertise a particular job but instead rely on unsolicited CVs sent to [...]
» read moreIt might seem that job interviews are all about answering questions but in fact most interviews conclude with ““Do you have any questions?”
Now questions about holidays, working hours and overtime have their place but they are certainly not the questions you should be asking at a first interview.
Much better would be to think about [...]
The Holy Month of Ramadan started today.
Writing about Ramadan in the Middle East is rather like writing about Christmas in the West. A subject with so many facets that it’s the equivalent of writing an article about the meaning of life.
But if you’ve never been in a Muslim country, and you know little more than that Ramadan involves [...]
One of the consequences of the belt-tightening going on around Europe at the moment is that governments are revisiting the retirement age for their citizens. The French are raising the retirement age to sixty two over the next eight years – the barricades are up already as the heroes of the 1968 insurrection brandish their [...]
» read moreI love flying, and equally I love observing the minutiae of the airline industry – branding, marketing messages, the customer experience, and the way that power has shifted within the industry over the past few years.
A couple of weeks ago, Emirates, the Dubai-owned airline with more planes per head of its citizen population than any [...]
The other day, I was having dinner with a friend. He’s a former soldier who did his officer training at a prestigious military college. When he left the Army he went into IT. At the age of fifty, he’s still working in the same field here in the Middle East. He’s concerned that as he [...]
» read moreLast week I was having dinner with a friend from one of the GCC countries. As is usually the case with this particular friend, we spent a couple of hours solving the problems of the world, and the Middle East in particular. We talked about the huge potential within the people of the GCC, and [...]
» read moreA few months ago, I wrote a piece for this website called Saudi Arabia’s Katrina. It was about the aftermath of the floods which took many lives in Jeddah in November 2009. I compared the event to the original Katrina because of the game-changing consequences of the flood: public outrage at the incompetence and alleged [...]
» read moreWhen I was at primary school, my gnarled old English teacher (actually, he was probably in his forties, but he looked gnarled to an innocent nine-year-old) would delight in rapping us over the knuckles for the use of what he called sloppy English. One word he would pounce on was “nice”. Why? Because over the [...]
» read moreGo to just about any country in the world, and if you seek the comfort of the familiar, you will find a MacDonald’s. Your Big Mac will taste the same in Omaha as it does in Pago Pago. Stay at the Marriott in Jeddah, and your customer experience will be similar to what you would [...]
» read moreIn truth, this isn’t really a postcard from Qatar, but when I think of the subject of this blog, Doha Airport instantly comes to mind.
You see, I have a dark secret, unknown to those who know me in a business context, but all too well known to my friends. I’m partial to the odd cigarette. [...]
I’m now in my seventh month in the wonderful Kingdom of Bahrain. It’s a captivating place. Not because of the beaches, because there aren’t many. Nor because it has a host of glitzy tourist attractions and ersatz souks like Dubai, because it doesn’t. Nor even because it has a pristine desert environment interspersed with charming [...]
» read moreDriving into Riyadh the other day from King Khaled International Airport I saw an amazing sight. Not amazing to the casual observer who does the trip every day. But I normally visit the city by road, and it had been a couple of months since I’d last flown in.
On the right hand side of the [...]
“Many of our school leavers enter the job market feeling that they have nothing to offer employers. They write CVS which reflect this lack of confidence – name, school, grades and contact details – that’s it!” These are the words of a Saudi friend of mine who should know. He runs a recruitment company in [...]
» read moreFrom Laurel and Hardy though to Fawlty Towers, the spectacle of human beings being driven demented by the breakdown of order, systems and technology has always been great box office. On the dramatic side of the media fence, disaster movies in which the heroes survive against the odds leave audiences wonder how they would cope [...]
» read moreAs I write this in Bahrain, it is Saturday. In Bahrain and the UAE, Friday and Saturday are notionally days off. Not so in Saudi Arabia and Oman, where the days off are Thursday and Friday. In Qatar, the working week varies depending on which organization you are dealing with. Kuwait has recently decided to [...]
» read moreWhat’s the single biggest issue which year-on-year preoccupies the governments of the Gulf states? The price of oil? Political stability and the rise of radical Islamism? Economic stability and the impact on the Middle East of the global downturn?
None of these, I would argue. The oil price obviously affects the current account balances of the [...]
Natural disasters involving substantial loss of life almost inevitably spark off recriminations among the bereaved and traumatized. Even events of irresistible force, such as earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanoes, lead to questions about the extent to which the resulting human catastrophes could have been prepared for and at least minimized.
Although not on the scale of Hurricane [...]
It is very important to say that no one should feel embarrassed about redundancy. Particularly in these turbulent economic times there is no stigma attached to redundancy. You can be sure that the people who are going to read your CV may well have faced redundancy themselves or know someone who has. So my first [...]
» read moreOne of the enduring habits of the British abroad is the instinct to form clubs. In the Gulf, the Brits are true to form. Where clubs are allowed, they spring up. Where they aren’t allowed, at least on a formal basis, they spring up anyway. So if you’re a rugger bugger, you’ll always find a [...]
» read moreBirdies and Donkeys
I’m one of these sad individuals who look for a golf course wherever he travels. Until about fifteen years ago green courses in the Middle East were a rarity. Aramco in Dhahran had a brown course, and I remember playing a course on rocky terrain overlooking the Haj Terminal at Jeddah’s King Abdulaziz [...]
Apes and Dames
This is the first of what I hope will be a series of postcards from places in the Middle East where my work takes me.
When you think about working in a foreign country, you do your best to research the important things: social do’s and don’ts, weather, food, transport and so on. If [...]
Unemployment in the UK is topping 2.5 million and rising. Even at the top of the tree, people who would move effortlessly from one highly-rewarded job to another every few years are looking over their shoulders anxiously.
» read moreLights…Camera…Action! Yes, here comes yet another movie star, Brad and Angelina, Madonna, Tom Cruise, Nichole Kidman. Each and every one an attractively packaged ‘product’ designed to appeal the widest possible audience.
» read moreIn Saudi Arabia, the term “western”, tends to mean something or someone emanating from the UK, the US, continental Europe and the antipodes. In the eyes of westerners, western expertise means best practice.
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