- RIYADH: As many as 48.5 percent of the respondents across the Middle East and North Africa said the company they work for adheres to a localization hiring policy, while only 34.5 percent said "no" and 17 percent were unsure, according to the new online poll series on "Localization Hiring Policies in the GCC"' conducted by the Middle East's number one job site, Bayt.com.
When asked if their company's localization policy is audited by any government entity, 43 percent of the poll takers said yes, while 39 percent stated no and 18 percent seemed unsure. Furthermore, 43.6 percent of respondents said between 0-5 percent of locals work for their company; another 13.3 percent claimed between 5-15 percent; 8.6 percent said between 16-25 percent; whereas 12 percent stated that between 26-50 percent; 9.7 percent said between 51-75 percent and 12.8 percent said between 76-100 percent of their colleagues within the same company were locals.
The respondents were then asked about "the average seniority of local citizens" working with them. Over 20 percent said that most locals join in at an intermediate level and 21 percent stated at a senior level, while 23.7 percent said locals get hired at an entry level. However, 15.3 percent said that local employees were spread across all levels in their company, while only 19.7 percent were certain that there were no locals working within the same company.
The results of the poll also showed that while a staggering 47.5 percent admitted their company had a hard time recruiting local talent, 49.2 percent stated their company plan to hire more local talent.
In terms of career trajectory, a good 43 percent of the poll takers claimed locals get promoted a lot faster than others, while 21 percent believed that to be untrue and stated both locals and non-locals had the same career trajectory. However, 36 percent surprisingly said locals got promoted a lot slower as compared to others in their company.
Amer Zureikat, VP sales, Bayt.com, said: "Bayt.com is widely recognized as the number one job site in the Middle East, and we are devoted to studying and evaluating data that can help our community of both employees and employers. Localization is a topic of much urgency in discourse currently in HR circles around the GCC, and we are pleased to have made great inroads with this survey in understanding the patterns and issues related to talent localization and proud to provide the most effective, efficient and sophisticated channel for talent localization activity in the GCC today across all industries, career levels and job roles."