UAE can offer good opportunities to staff laid off by Meta, Twitter, Amazon

Many talented technology professionals who were laid off by global giants including Meta, Twitter and Amazon in the past few weeks will be attracted to UAE as the local jobs market is experiencing the strongest growth in six years.

The recruitment professionals believe that UAE can offer these IT professionals various job opportunities, especially with the growing number of startups and fintech companies. In return, this will also benefit startups to choose from the best talent as the market sees a shortage of skilled IT personnel.

The three US-headquartered technology giants recently announced that they were laying off around 25,000 employees in order to cut costs.

The UAE market is also facing a shortage of skilled personnel with IT skills as around half – 48 per cent – of local businesses see a shortage of skilled professionals as one of the main threats to their businesses, according to Equinix 2022 Global Tech Trends Survey.

It said the most in-demand tech employees are IT technicians, cloud computing specialists and those with an AI/machine learning aptitude. Other skills shortages include security engineer, data protection, security software development and security analysis.

Nicki Wilson, managing director of Genie Recruitment, believes that there will be a strong talent pool of tech skills worldwide and there are a lot of companies in the UAE that want those ‘buzz brands’ like Meta, Twitter etc. on a candidate’s CVs.

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“Candidates that have this type of experience are often seen as top-tier candidates by companies… Big tech firms are often positioned as being stable, but this is not always the case. It is unsettling to walk into work one day to find that you and thousands of your colleagues have been made redundant overnight. Many SMEs pride themselves on staff wellbeing and development and it may change perceptions on who are the best organisations to join,” added Wilson.

In order to attract a talent pool in the field of new-age technologies, the UAE government has announced a host of measures including Golden Visa 100,000 for coders, the establishment of 1,000 new digital companies over the next five years and massive support and initiatives taken to support the local start-up and fintech ecosystem.

Deepa Sud, chief executive officer, Plum Jobs, said with fierce competition in many people’s home countries, Dubai will always remain an attractive place for still being able to earn a tax-free salary and enjoy a high standard of living in a safe environment.

“The development of data centres in the region such as Microsoft, Oracle, Amazon and the growth of Khazna, will ensure that large-scale investments will increase opening up more scope for technology talent in the region,” she said.

“We have adjusted a lot in recent years to understand how to hire for technology within the consumer space and it is lucky that we did. A huge amount of our clients are hiring candidates with technology, data, digital, performance and social media expertise,” she added.