Middle East BlackBerry blanket ban could damage recruiters

Fri, 13 Aug 2010

A ban on the use of BlackBerrys in the Middle East could have a dramatic effect on recruiters’ ability to do business, according to Maria Brown, associate director for Middle East & North Africa (MENA) at Reed Specialist Recruitment.

Governments in the region have raised concerns over the ability of security forces to intercept email communications, claiming that this poses a potential security risk if they cannot access correspondence from suspected terrorist organisations.

Earlier this month the United Arab Emirates government announced that BlackBerry’s internet-enabled services will be banned in the country from 11 October, while Research In Motion (RIM), the Canadian company which makes BlackBerry smartphones, has agreed to hand over user codes which will let Saudi authorities monitor BlackBerry Messenger activity in a bid to stop the Kingdom from imposing a BlackBerry ban.

Brown told Recruiter that the Middle East has a high number of BlackBerry users and any ban will hit professionals’ ability to do business on the move.

“It will cause a lot of upheaval. You can walk into any hotel and see a few dozen business professionals working on their BlackBerrys. If those options are not available, it is going to affect all areas of business and their ability to do business on the go.

“Being permanently attached to your desk will have a negative impact on candidates and clients. Someone is going to have to be in the office for us to get the decisions that we need to move forward. That will add a time element to the process.”

While RIM has issued a statement saying that it will not agree deals with specific countries, yesterday the Indian government gave RIM until the end of August to address security issues before they too impose a country-wide ban, a ban that Ben Hutton, consultant at IT recruiter Vertex Solutions, which has an office in Mumbai, says will mean that candidates, employers and recruiters will turn to alternative handsets such as phones that use Google’s Android operating system.

“There are still landlines. There is Android technology. Android is the open source platform that Google uses. It is the main competitor to Apple’s iPhone. Apple does not let any other manufacturer make phones that can run on the iPhone platform whereas Google’s platform, which runs on Java, has Inkmobile and Sony Ericsson making Android phones. You can get Android phones for £30-£40. There are other ways around the ban.”

Annil Chandel, country director of IT recruiter Huxley Associates’ Indian operation, told Recruiter that he did not think there would be a ban but the use of BlackBerrys in the country is growing.

“The general use of BlackBerrys in India is not as high as it is the Western world. Its use is growing however and is becoming more widespread. At the moment, BlackBerrys are generally used by managers but not at developer level.”