It’s all very well opening new offices in the Middle East, but recruitment agencies should give careful thought who to send out there. DeeDee Doke spoke to recruiters on the ground for first-hand experience

Melanie Catt had worked for specialist recruitment group SThree for three years when she was handed an opportunity many recruiters dream of — a job as a business development manager in Dubai to help her brand, Pathway Resourcing, build its business in the Middle East.

It was an opportunity she grabbed with both hands. “I had holidayed in Dubai three times in the year before I transferred, and on the last visit I realised that Dubai was a place where I would enjoy living, and would also provide me with an excellent career opportunity,” Catt told Recruiter.

She thinks her track record at SThree in the UK — first at the IT Job Board and then Pathway — paved the way for her flight to the sun. “I think my directors felt I had proved myself in London and had the right skills and knowledge to build the business development function in the Middle East,” she says.

In her year and a half at Pathway in London, she adds: “I had built several strong relationships within the financial sector and had won key accounts for the agency.”

Catt is representative of the high-performing breed of recruiter being dispatched to the Middle East now to plant their recruitment companies’ flags in the sand. Like Pathway, a number of companies are choosing to send employees who already work for them, to ensure that they are already entrenched in their own corporate and operating culture before having to learn a new external culture.

For the first phase of expansion into a region, “we are tending to bring people from within Reed. We can ensure the talent is proven, and that they are working to Reed International standards,” says Maria Brown, associate director — Middle East, of Reed Specialist Recruitment.

Brown opened Reed’s Qatar office a year ago and is working her way across the Middle East, building well-thought of businesses and creating offices that embody what she calls “the wonderful, stable Reed family culture”. Having the familial culture in place helps team members settle in, “so the support structure is there”, Brown says, and her consultants can focus on doing their jobs.

Her team consists of “British, Polish, Pakistani, Lebanese — I have a huge mixture,” Brown says. “Everybody we’ve brought in has been successful… and wonderfully happy. And everyone is still with us.”

MPS Group International (MPSGI), parent company of Badenoch & Clark, Judd Farris and Modis, is in an “exploratory position” in the Middle East at the moment as it looks to open offices in Qatar and in the United Arab Emirates. Like Reed, MPSGI expects to transfer existing employees to those locations — consultants and managers who know their sectors and know the clients once the group is able to launch its presence in the region.

“We are going into disciplines there that we know very well with known clients. The unknown bit is the country,” says John Melbourne, MPSGI’s senior vice president for international operations. “Because we’re growing organically, it’s really important we get our own people out there initially rather than recruit people in a location we don’t know.”

Although the Reed and MPSGI strategies are common, other recruiters are looking beyond their current staffs to develop their brands in the Middle East. Recruitment-to-recruitment firm McCall is experiencing “buoyant” recruiting conditions in the Middle East, where it has been supplying recruiters for the past two years.

“Many companies would like to import the skills needed from within their own company but there is only so much a business can take out without affecting revenue or team stability,” says Elaine Penketh, director, McCall International. “Also, not all employees want to relocate, however tempting the weather and non-taxation system may be, so they must look outside their internal pot.”

Expanding into different sectors may also mean that a firm needs to recruit from outside, Penketh adds. “Companies expanding into the Middle East are also widening their offering — some who operate in one market in the UK may seek to maximise on other markets more prevalent in the Middle East, which means they need to hire outsiders.

“Having candidates who are experienced in the region is without doubt worth the premium salaries these companies will pay, so candidates currently in the Middle East will always be considered as well as high billers wanting to import their skills.”

Potential job-hoppers should be warned, however. Laws governing the employment of expatriates in the Middle East can prevent a recruiter from changing jobs there. “Letters of non-objection” from the current employer are required by some governments to allow an employee to move to a new job.

But recruiters who do up sticks and move to the Middle East should have no chance to be bored. Penketh says that everyone in an agency needs to be able to multi-task and produce.

“All employees, regardless of level, are hands-on,” she says. “Consultants need to be proven high billers. Managers need to have all-round skills from sales to delivery and be able to work in the business, as well as on the business.”

“And,” she adds, “as the market tightens in the UK, the region is being inundated with candidates — but no one will take on staff unless they fit in culturally, as well as having the ability to hit the numbers.”


who should go?

When choosing workers to staff a new office abroad, bosses should look for signs of cultural intelligence, urges Lynne Powell, an HR researcher at Northumbria University’s Newcastle Business School.

Powell is researching the development of cultural intellingence in preparing staff to work overseas. Her work includes looking at how companies recruit people who have the potential to work abroad, and how organisations can make life easier for new starters.

In Powell’s definition, cultural intelligence is “appropriate knowledge, mindfulness and behaviour, which enables us to effectively interact with people from diverse cultural backgrounds in all kinds of setting”.

Job knowledge and past performance are not enough to determine whether someone will succeed in a foreign environment, Powell says: “If you’re looking at [personality] traits, a lot relate to communication and the ability to work with other people. Are they motivated to engage with new and different cultures?”

Pathway’s Melanie Catt agrees that adaptability is crucial. “In sales you must be able to tailor your personality, and this is true more so than ever in the Middle East,” she says. Expatriates who
move to the UAE “with the ‘Brits Abroad’ mentality will struggle to really fit in and gain true respect from their clients.”

Understanding the culture of one’s company and working well with colleagues is key to job success anywhere. But the recent ‘sex on the beach’ episode in Dubai, which led to the British woman involved losing her job and potential deportation, points out the impact that out of hours behaviour can have.

Asks Powell: “Will your employee be a shining star — or cause an international incident?”