Critical advice before you bring foreign labor to the Middle East
Critical advice before you bring foreign labor to the Middle East
Say you’re a business owner or an executive in the Middle East who is in need of new specialists you are unable to source locally. This has put you in a situation where you have to find the suitable employees from abroad, but the process can prove to be more challenging than expected.
The first problem you are going to face is finding the right candidates. Over are the times you had to wait for potential candidates to react to your job posting in local newspapers. Although the Internet has greatly streamlined the process of finding competent specialists, it can still be quite a headache. Even if you find the right person you have to check their background and the validity of the information they have provided. Meaning you have to know which sources and documents are reliable and which are not. Furthermore, many countries in the Middle East (like Saudi Arabia) have introduced laws which regulate the amount of expatriates you are allowed to employ. Not following these rules may end up in fines or other disciplinary actions against your company.
The easiest, and usually the cheapest and fastest solution is to use the services of an employee outsourcing or recruitment company, who will take care of the whole process for you – from finding the right candidates to dealing with all the involving paperwork. They usually already have a database of potential candidates where your perfect employee might be hiding. Even if they don’t they have experts who are able to find you exactly what you are looking for. You most certainly will spare yourself from a lot of hassle and save your valuable time.
The second most notable problem with international recruitment is all the bureaucracy and legislation. In order to get a visa, working permit or a residency permit for your potential employee, you have to go through a lot of infuriating bureaucracy, spending a lot of time trying to get hold of all the laws and rules. The ever changing legislation is often available only in the local language which makes it even more difficult to keep up with.
Hiring a valuable specialist from abroad means you might have to consider the possibility of them wanting to move to the country with their family. It is a lot of paper-work to bring only one employee to the country and it is a whole different story to bring a family. If you often find bureaucracy intolerable, you will not be pleased with the process of bringing a new employee from abroad. It makes all the sense to turn to a recruitment company or an employee outsourcing service provider. Not only do you save yourself from tons of extra work but you will ensure that you are acting in accordance with all the laws and regulations.