Dubai jobseeker alert: Top questions employers ask; most advertised job

Employers in Dubai and the rest of the UAE are steering away from the ‘general’ types of questions – what are your strengths, where do you see yourself in 5 years, etc. – and introducing a new set of questions that test the candidate’s creativity and flair, a new report shows.

If you are on the lookout for a job in the UAE and are trying to make sense of your initial job search, this recent data can help you narrow down your options.

A report from dubizzle, a UAE-based classifieds website, reveals the most common questions that the country’s employers ask candidates.

“The most popular question asked of an accounting jobseeker was: ‘Do you have experience as an income auditor?’ while for sales, most employers enquired about previous sales experience in the UAE and GCC,” dubizzle’s 2015 job report highlights.

For healthcare professionals, the most common question posed was “are you a female HADD/DHA-licensed or exam-passed nurse?”

For electrical engineer, employers wanted to know if the candidate had passed the Dubai Municipality test and for administrative jobs, the most commonly asked question was: “Are you based in Dubai?”

Job postings for infographic designers ask for certification or a degree in a relevant field, and real estate positions seek a valid Rera card. Certifications are also a prerequisite in medical healthcare and engineering as some common questions.

For example, it’s good to know what kind of jobs are advertised the most; ones that have many candidates applying for; who all are your competitors and the kind of question that the employers are most likely to ask you.

Most popular job in UAE

It’s raining accountants in the UAE. According to the report, accounting is the most popular job sector in Dubai in 2015, with more than 38,000 individual ads posted and a staggering 10 million applicants vying for the roles.

That works out to about 263 candidates per advertised accountancy vacancy.

The secretarial and sales sectors follow, with more job ads posted (42,000 and 77,000, respectively) but fewer applicants (5 million for secretarial posting and 4 million for sales jobs).

That works out to an average of 119 applications per secretarial job and just about 52 applications per sales vacancy.

More than 33,000 jobs were posted last year in real estate, with just over half a million (522,000) applicants while the transportation sector followed with fewer ads (22,000) but more applicants (825,000), the data reveals.

Abu Dhabi jobs

In Abu Dhabi too, accounting was the most listed sector in the job section but unlike Dubai, it was followed by hospitality/restaurant jobs, secretarial, sales and medical/healthcare jobs.

Finance and accounting, however, have taken a dip in January of this year. The latest Monster Employment Index for the country shows the sector has been UAE’s lowest growth occupations last month when compared to the same period in 2015.

Considering the year-over-year growth (January 2015 and January 2016), the Monster Index shows that finance and accounting, marketing & communications/arts/creative and customer service were the worst performers among the occupations that the index tracks.

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