Built on a natural harbor, Dubai is a former fishing/pearling town, founded (when the ruling Al Maktoum family settled at this point) in 1833. While it’s always drawn expatriates, Dubai – and the Al Maktoum family struck it lucky and struck it rich with 1966’s oil’s discovery. Frantic development and influxes upon influxes of foreign workers and tourists followed. After Arabic and Persian, English is now the third most widely spoken language in the city. The Shopping Capital of the Middle East, as its known, has a proliferation of enormous hotels, mind bogglingly big malls and, for now at least, similar sizes of construction sites.
The surrounding Arabian desert, city’s architecture and monuments are awesome. Enticed by these and the city’s fabulous shopping and beaches more and more tourists are discovering Dubai, including vacationing GIs, visitors from neighboring Arab states and countries, Europeans and many cruise stopover visitors. Dubai offers great dining and trendy nightclubs are plentiful, whether you want to socialize Asian, American or European-style.
While Dubai does display an impressively modern image, there are still some important dos and don’ts. Public displays of affection should be avoided. The same goes for public consumption of alcohol (or ay kind of consumption or smoking in public during Ramadan -
www.holidays.net/ramadan/). Don’t photograph Muslim women and don’t sit in such a way that the soles of your feet point at anyone.
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Background
Dubai is one of the seven Emirates (states) that joined together in 1971 to form the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The other members are Abu Dhabi (the capital), Ajman, Fujairah, Ras Al Khaimah, Sharjah and Umm Al Quwain (each Emirate is named after its main city).
Favourable business conditions and shrewd investment decisions have led to Dubai becoming one of the Gulf’s most successful and rapidly expanding economic environments and Dubai is now firmly established as the business, financial and commercial hub of the region. It is a prosperous and diverse market and the employment growth required to match its expansion provides excellent opportunities for both clients and candidates.
Indeed, Dubai has the fastest growing population in the world and is home to an exciting, diverse, multi-cultural blend of young, dynamic, professional people all enjoying the unrivalled quality of life the Emirate has to offer. People are drawn to the City as much for lifestyle reasons as for the outstanding employment prospects on offer.
As with the other Gulf states, oil and gas underpin the Emirates’ economy. However, across the Gulf economic diversification has been encouraged, to the extent that non-oil business now accounts for over half of gross domestic product. Major projects include petrochemicals, downstream oil refining, telecommunications, aviation and tourism. The UAE as a whole has the highest per capita income in the Arab world.
Current recruitment environment
Currently, all of the Emirates are developing their economies rapidly, in particular the capital of the UAE, Abu Dhabi. However, Dubai continues to take the spotlight through its bold plans for growth and the scale of its construction projects. Their plans, promoted by the ruling Al-Maktoum family and supported by enormous oil revenues, are to turn Dubai into a global commercial hub to rival other major financial and trading centres in the world.
Whilst in recent years much publicity has been focused on the world class hotels and dazzling residential complexes that are shooting up, the government has also made significant moves to attract foreign businesses to base themselves in Dubai. Key to this is the development of a multitude of free trade zones covering every industry. These allow 100% foreign ownership and tax free earnings, along with state of the art offices and technological infrastructure, offering an extremely tempting business environment. Perhaps most important of these free trade zones is the Dubai International Financial Centre which, with more open rules of entry, is now attracting investment banks, insurers, fund managers and private equity firms to the region. The centre aims to be home to 250 international financial firms by 2009.
In addition the free trade zones, Dubai businesses are rapidly diversifying and becoming more international in their focus. Regional banks are expanding due to the boom in consumer and corporate banking, and numerous companies are taking advantage of the property, leisure and retail explosion.
In these fast-moving times the government is mindful of the need for the region to be considered a transparent, well regulated and safe place to do business. To this end, local regulation has been closely based on and US models and there have been major initiatives in recent years including the development of the Dubai Financial Services Authority and the Securities and Commodities Authority. This has been reflected in the ongoing requirement for compliance specialists where there is major shortage of experienced professionals.
In other areas of corporate governance, internal audit is going through something of a transition. Although generally well established in the region, many organisations now recognise the need to become more sophisticated in their approach with a greater operational and risk based coverage. In many cases this requires re-staffing with more appropriately experienced professionals. Whilst, to a certain extent, the local market, particularly Big 4 firms, can offer these resources, recruitment from outside the region is also a necessity.
Risk Management in all its forms is also a discipline that is understaffed. The rapid expansion of the banking and financial industry requires credit risk analysts and managers to deal with new business, whilst growing investment banking and capital markets activities have prompted the need for market risk specialists. Operational and enterprise wide risk management are also relatively undeveloped in the region and are now being addressed by many organisations.
With the current economic growth in Dubai expected to continue until at least 2010 and the ongoing progression of corporate governance in both the Dubai and wider Middle East markets unlikely to slow, there will continue to be some exceptional opportunities. For many the lifestyle in Dubai alone would make it an attractive location, but it is fair to say that this is now complementary to a challenging and really positive career move.
Salaries in Dubai
One of the most immediate and attractive aspects of working in Dubai is that fact that there are no personal taxes levied against income from employment. This is not as an incentive to attract foreign investment, it is simply a result of a long established policy, as direct taxation is against the traditions of the entire United Arab Emirates. This means that if you work in Dubai you will enjoy and benefit from your entire salary; you will have considerably more disposable income than you are used to, you will be able to enjoy the benefits of the offshore financial world; and you will be able to afford an affluent lifestyle.
Without taking the tax benefit into account, salaries in Dubai are usually similar to or greater than those paid in western countries. In the past, remuneration packages were split into various elements: basic salary, car provision or allowance, housing provision or allowance, medical cover, education for children and air tickets for home visits. Today, employers tend just to pay a salary that covers all these expenses, although in some cases there are performance-related or other bonuses.
Working hours & overtime
The working week in Dubai tends to vary between 40 and 48 hours, depending on the particular company’s policy. Office hours are usually from 8.30 or 9.00am to 5.30 or 6.00pm. There are no differences in time keeping between summer and winter, however, in the month of Ramadan, the working day is reduced to six hours. Legally this should apply to all staff, but many companies only apply it to Muslims, who fast during daylight hours.
Friday is the Muslim rest day and, if your company has a five-day working week, the other day off is usually either Thursday or Saturday. Saturday is the more popular choice for international companies, as taking Thursday off would mean a reduction in the number of operational days in common with much of the rest of the world. Conversely, other companies insist on Thursday, as the school ‘weekend’ is Thursday and Friday.
Employment permits / visas
For a foreign national to work in the UAE, an employment visa or permit is required. These are issued by the Immigration Department, following approval from the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs. Employment permits / visas allow the holder to enter the UAE once for a period of 30 days and are valid for a period of 2 months. When the employee enters the country on the basis of secured employment, the sponsoring company should then arrange to complete the formalities of residence stamping.
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Geography:The second largest of the seven emirates which made up the United Arab Emirates, Dubai is located on the southern shore of the Arabian Gulf. It has an area of some 3,900 square kilometers. Outside the city itself, the emirate is sparsely inhabited and characterised by desert vegetation. The other emirates are Sharjah,. Ajman, Umm Al Quwain, Ras Al Khaimah and Fujairah.
Economy: Oil contributes just 20 per cent of economic production. Trading, manufacturing and services - including tourism - now dominate the economy.
Key Attractions:
A taste of Arabia with cosmopolitan lifestyle
Year-round sunshine
Uncrowded, clean, sandy beaches
Crime-free environment
Tolerant and welcoming society.
Getting There:
Dubai is less than eight hours from Europe and the Far East
Some 80 airlines provide direct links to more than 120 cities world wide
Efficient immigration, baggage handling and customs formalities
London is seven hours away, Frankfurt six, Hongkong eight and Nairobi four.