Revealed: How UAE senior managers get hired…

If you’re frustrated with your job search and wondering why you’re not getting interviews or job offers when others around you are faring better, try to look at the possible reasons.

Or, better still, look at what successful people are doing – in this case, candidates who have landed a new job and preferably are higher up in the hierarchy.

Making a great CV, a good cover letter and then emailing it to potential employers is only the beginning and will not set you apart in landing you a plum position.

Have you sent your CV to recruitment agents and are now waiting for a call? If yes, this is your first mistake.

A study by portal Cazar.com, a cloud-based recruitment company, insists that technology is changing the entire hiring process.

“Historically, employers relied on executive search firms to fill these positions, but the Internet has considerably changed the overall recruitment landscape. Most talent acquisition today is done online. However, some companies question whether this method is optimal when looking to recruit for senior positions,” claims the study.

The findings show that senior candidates now use the Internet to hunt for jobs. Over 98 per cent of applicants for management roles applied online.

Going online, senior candidates are selective about what to use and what not to. Let’s see what they prefer the most on the Web.

#1 Employer’s career site

Past studies show that quality candidates prefer to apply through an employer’s career site, and it seems that applicants for management positions have an even stronger preference to do so. A staggering 65 per cent of applications for senior vacancies came through the companies’ dedicated career websites.

Senior managers probably have a better sense of where they would like to work and are more selective about where they send their CV. Naturally, they prefer to build a direct relationship with these employers rather than going through a third party.

#2 Job boards

Job boards produced 29 per cent of applicants for senior roles, which is normal given the large volumes of job seeker traffic they receive. However, the overall quality of candidates they produce is particularly low when it comes to managerial jobs. In other words, job boards must produce vast amount of applications in order to yield a small quantity of quality ones.

#3 LinkedIn, referrals and social networking sites

LinkedIn was the third biggest source of senior applicants (3 per cent). All other application channels, including agencies and employee referrals, produced very small numbers (<1 per cent). In fact, some media such as Facebook didn’t register at all. “Yet, despite their low applicant volumes, we found these sources can’t all be dismissed, as some of them have produced many high quality profiles that ended in hires,” it said.

And this is how they got recruited

Having analysed where candidates applied, the study then focused on the candidates that actually got hired to see where they originated from. It appears that senior hires were sourced from a large variety of channels, some of which were unexpected given the relatively low number of applications they had yielded. And the top sources for management recruits are:

#1 Online Corporate Career Sites

“Company career websites were the top source, producing 38 per cent of new management recruits,” the study says. “This confirms the hypothesis that good quality candidates see a benefit in having a direct relationship with potential employers,” it adds.

#2 Internal Talent

The second most popular source that corporate recruiters used to find these hires was the company’s talent pool (22 per cent). Internal promotion was also a successful method for filling managerial positions. Companies that advertised job vacancies on their intranet found 14 per cent of their management hires this way, the study shows.

#3 Professional Networks

Professional networking and employee referrals combined made up 12 per cent of hires while job boards represented only 4 per cent of new senior employees, the study shows.

“Although some employers used executive search agencies for management positions, they only hired 2 per cent of their senior employees through them,” it says. That in effect means that, at least for top managerial positions, recruitment agencies may not be as successful today as they once were, and online hiring is fast catching up.

The most efficient channels

The study observed that certain channels had a high probability of producing new senior recruits. For instance, 37 per cent of applicants resulting from professional networking got recruited for a senior position. Employee referrals were also found to be very successful – 27 per cent of candidates that came through an employee referral got hired. When it came to internal applicants, 3 per cent of them got the job.

Job boards however, were much less effective – only 0.026 per cent of job board applicants made it to the hire stage. This could be partly due to the very wide audience these websites tend to have. For example, generalist job sites are known to attract a lot of middle executives, who may apply to senior jobs they are not qualified for.

This study took into account 619 senior hires made across more than 30 medium and large companies in Asia Pacific and the Middle East, operating within a wide selection of sectors including retail, construction, banking, transport and telecommunications.

The period of hire included a 15-month period during 2012/2013. The vacancies ranged from senior roles such as Director of Marketing, Financial Controller and Head of IT, to executive management positions such as Chief Executive Officer and Chief Operating Officer. A total of 350,174 candidates applied for those 619 positions.

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