ME online recruitment at high: Monster

Middle East online recruitment in September escalated to its highest levels in the past 12 months, according to The Monster Employment Index.

The findings of the index show that major economies like KSA, UAE and Qatar showed ongoing positive momentum in hiring trends in sectors like retail trade/ logistic; BFSI and their related occupation groups like finance and account.

Online opportunities expanded in 11 of the 12 industry sectors monitored by the Index between April and September 2011. Of this, retail/trade and logistics sector showed online recruitment activity jump 87 per cent. Compared to August, online demand was up 15 points.

Advertising, market research, public relations, media and entertainment (up 70 per cent) registered substantial net gains over the recent 6 month stretch, mainly attributed to a steep Index-leading August-September rise. BFSI (up 25 per cent) maintained robust longer-term growth trends in September despite some nominal slippage between August and September.

Online job scenario improved in IT and Telecom/ISP (up 4 per cent) and hospitality (up 3 per cent). Both sectors saw jobs rebound between August and September to set up the positive longer term trends.

The only sector to record a net decline over the six-month stretch ending in September was production/manufacturing, automotive and ancillary (down 8 per cent). 

The occupation six-month trend shows that available opportunities exceeded the April level in nine of the 11 groups monitored by the index.

Finance and Account (up 86 per cent) led all occupation groups in six-month growth in demand. Group’s online recruitment activity jumped 39 points above the August level. Sales and BD (up 35 per cent) saw the most notable improvement in the six-month growth. The longer-term growth trend for the group turned positive for the first time since April’11.  Sales and BD professionals also witnessed the strongest month-over month growth among all groups in September.

Marketing & Communications/Arts/Creative (down 5 percent) professionals saw a 24 percent growth in online demand between August and September. The six-month growth rate continued to be negative

Geographically, online opportunities expanded in four of seven countries over the period of six-month. Available online opportunities in Bahrain (up 49 per cent) exceeded levels six months ago by a significant 49 per cent despite a second consecutive dip in monthly growth in opportunities. The UAE (up 1 per cent) entered a stage of monthly decline as available online opportunities contracted an additional 11 points between August and September, whereas, Oman (down 24 per cent) experienced the steepest six-month as well as month-on-month decline among countries.

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