Dubai, the capital of the emirate of Dubai, one of the seven emirates in the federation of United Arab Emirates, is one of the most developed city in the Middle Eastern region and the world. One of the key business hub of Western Asia and a major transport hub of the world, Dubai economy relies on revenues from trade, aviation, financial services, tourism, real estate, services, IT and supply chain.
Home to some of the World’s largest companies, every year Dubai attracts millions of talented and skilled manpower from various parts of the world. Due to its cosmopolitan nature, Dubai is home to people from almost 190 nationalities and English is the most spoken business language.
Economy of Dubai:
Dubai is home to some of the world’s largest companies including Emirates NBD, Emirates, Aramex, Emaar, Souq (Now Amazon), Du, Dubai Holding and Nakheel Properties. Besides this, global giants like EMC, Oracle, Microsoft, LinkedIn, CNN, Infosys, Reuters, Novartis, Cleveland and Glaxo Smithkline has significant presence in Dubai.
The government of the Emirate of Dubai also promotes a strong and healthy ecosystem for Entrepreneurs and Small and Medium Business Owners and this initiatives resulted in incubating of hundreds and thousands of startups and SMBs in various domains. Ranked among one of the top for ease of doing business and one of the safest cities in the world, Dubai constantly attracts foreign investments and talented workforce from various parts of the world.
Classification of companies in Dubai:
Any entity can be either classified as mainland company or a freelance company, a mainland company is a company registered under the chamber of commerce of the emirate of Dubai and will be either classified as LLC (Limited Liability Company), PJSC (Public Joint Stock Company) or Joint Venture Company while in the freezone the company can be either defined as FZC of FZ-LLC.
To promote the entrepreneurship ecosystem, the government of the emirate of Dubai established different freezones or tradezones based on the activities for the companies to manage their business. These freezones offer 100% ownership to foreigners and tax holidays for the companies. Currently more than 150,000 companies are incorporated in various freezones of the dubai.
Freezones in Dubai:
Dubai Airport Freezone: Home to thousands of companies ranging from aviation to consulting, from oil and natural gas to chemicals and from financial services to insurance
Dubai Design District: A free zone dedicated to international design, luxury brands and fashion
Dubai Healthcare City: A freezone dedicated to healthcare groups, pharma companies and healthcare insurance companies and TPAs
Dubai International Academic City: Freezone dedicated to educational activities and universities.
Dubai Internet City: Freezone dedicated to IT, Innovation, Information, Digital and Internet Services
Dubai International Financial Centre: Dedicated to financial companies and banks
Dubai Knowledge Village:
Dubai Media City
Dubai Gold and Diamond Park
Dubai Multi Commodities Centre (DMCC)
International Media Production Zone
Jebel Ali Free Zone
Dubai Production City
Dubai World Central (Dubai South)
Dubai Studio City
Starting a career in Dubai:
Dubai has a huge demand for skilled manpower in different sectors and every year companies in Dubai invites foreign workers to fill up their various positions. These companies attract the potential workers either through recruitment agencies or by advertising in a recruitment website.
So if you are one among them who are looking to start a career in Dubai than you have to follow these steps:
Know your job Market:
Before making a move to Dubai or exploring the companies to look out for, one should make a detailed research about the job markets and in demand skills. While some skills are not much in demand, there are some areas which are bound to grow many folds owing to Dubai expo 2020. Some of the domains which are bound to grown in 2020 and beyond are:
- Legal
- Finance
- Marketing
- Procurement
- IT
- Hospitality
- Telecomm
- Tourism
Some of the huge in demand skills are:
- Digital Marketing and PR
- Operations and Project Management
- Sales and Business Development
- Product Building and Management
- Automation, AI and Future Technologies
- Modern Construction and Green Building
- Core Engineering
While applying for jobs, one should also look out for the combination of big companies as well as promising start ups.
Reaching out to companies:
Most of the large companies advertised their positions on major job portals or use recruitment agencies while small organizations either uses third party services or uses referral network or hire through their own website. Before hiring a potential employee, organizations do give the prominence to lot of factors including local experience in the market, professional certifications, references, experience type, projects undertaken and education and interviews the candidates either through face 2 face or by Skype or a combination of both. Most of the employers prefer candidates who are stationed in the city either on a visit visa or residence visa.
Job Portals in Dubai, United Arab Emirates
LinkedIn
Naukri Gulf
Monster Gulf
Bayt
Indeed
Dubizzle
Gulf Careers
Researching the companies:
Most of the companies in Dubai has great online presence and can be found over the internet. Most of the freezone maintain their own directories of companies and one can easily get a list of those companies along with the key personal name and email ids via their portals. Employers in Dubai are quite active on LinkedIn and one can get connected with them over the internet and start the communication.
Recruitment Agency:
A considerable amount of employers also work with Recruitment Agencies for hiring their manpower, some of them are:
- Jivaro Partners
- Nadia Recruitment Agency
- Michael Page
- Al Shaya
- ESP International
- MCG & Associates
- Robbert Murray
- BAC Middle East
- Manpower Middle East
Networking and Support Groups:
Networking is the key to getting a job in any region and one can find appropriate networking or support group through MeetUp. Some of the meetups are:
Dubai Job Hunt
Networking for Job Seekers
Entering in Dubai:
For working in Dubai, one need a job visa however, one can enter Dubai by applying a visit visa for thirty days or ninety days but working on visit visa is illegal in Dubai and one should convert their visa to job visa before starting their employment. Most of the employers PRO will offer this service free of cost. In Dubai, almost every cost of employee residence permit will be sponsored by the employer.
Citizens who don’t need a visa for 90 days
Job seekers from the following countries are allowed to remain in the UAE for 90 days after their arrival before leaving the country or applying for a work visa:
- Austria
- Belgium
- Bulgaria
- Croatia
- Czech Republic
- Cyprus
- Denmark
- Estonia
- Finland
- France
- Germany
- Greece
- Holland
- Hungary
- Iceland
- Italy
- Latvia
- Liechtenstein
- Lithuania
- Luxembourg
- Malta
- Norway
- Poland
- Portugal
- Romania
- Slovakia
- Slovenia
- Spain
- Sweden
- Switzerland
Citizens who don’t need a visa for 30 days
Citizens from the following countries also don’t need to get visas in advance, however visas issued on arrival will only be good for 30 days. That being said, citizens of these countries may extend their visas up to 60 days:
- Andorra
- Australia
- Brunei
- Canada
- China
- Hong Kong
- Ireland
- Japan
- Malaysia
- Monaco
- New Zealand
- Russia
- San Marino
- Singapore
- South Korea
- United Kingdom
- United States
- The Vatican