Gulftalent

Site's statement

Jobboard Finder’s opinion

Summary: Created in 2005 by the current managing director, Yasser Hatami, GulfTalent is among the top five job boards in the UAE. The generalist job board allows jobseekers and recruiters from all over the Gulf area to fulfil their employment needs. That’s why it attracts 1.36 million views a month. On social media, many people follow the site on Twitter (1 952), on Facebook (23 171 but there are no updates since June) and on Linkedin (54 473).

Design: On the homepage, the backdrop image is of the infamous Saudi Arabian skyline, with its giant buildings and bright lights. The search engine (keywords and the country) appears just over it, and featured locations are just below. You can also look through the various fields and consider boosting your CV. The featured companies really are hiring but the dates seem a bit off. Depending on the page you visit, you can also see the job site’s success in figures (the number of CVs in the database, the number of hiring companies, etc.).  A handy service provided by GulfTalent is the salary comparisons, the courses and the articles (insights). For the salary comparisons, the countries and the level of experience are compared, the different percentages going toward transport or housing (for example) are indicated. For the courses, you can select one from a specific field and you can see the date, the location and the organisation. Once in the job listing, the filters are the country, the city, the job role, the seniority and the industry. The logos are visible but the job offers are not particularly customized (even if they are clear). Each one has a description, requirements, about the company and jobs in related industries on the side.

The job board objective: GulfTalent aims to provide the best visibility and the most information for its users. Those who would like to invest more (recruiters and jobseekers alike) can get more out of the site.

Recruiter observations: In the CV database (which you can browse for free), the age, job title, nationality, location and the CV (without contact information) are all visible for each candidate. The candidates can be filtered by location, gender, age, city, preferred work location, nationality, country of experience, industry, function, degree subject, experience, seniority, expected monthly salary, visa type, language fluency, driving license, activity and new registration. To create an account, you need to go through the team.

Jobseeker observations: Jobseekers must create an account to apply to job offers. The nice thing is  that the site has a resume parser so you don’t need to rewrite all of your information when creating an online CV. The bad news is that it can be difficult moving on from the CV page. Luckily, you don’t need a complete profile to apply to job offers.

The job offers: Most of the job offers are in the UAE, and there are 4 066 in total. The industries with many job offers include construction, hospitality, healthcare, engineering, accountancy, retail and IT.

Reactivity: It took less than a day for the team  to answer us with a very detailed answer.

Special features: The employment and salary trends in the Gulf (from 2016); the cost of living report (at a cost); other recruitment papers; the courses by field; the university outreach services; the journalist services (which is just a newsletter); event listing services; the public holidays for 2019 and 2020 for 9 different countries; the TV coverage (from back in 2014); the articles (the last one was written in June of 2018); the explanatory images in the FAQ; the cute animated character on the error pages; the different CV plants (to boost visibility).

Verdict: GulfTalent is simple to use and has great filters. It’s a shame the missing information in the CV is not highlighted better. Recruiters can definitely find what they need in the CV database though.

Written by Ali Neill

As the job board tester and blog editor for the Jobboard Finder, Ali works on job boards from all around the world and keeps a close eye on the recruitment trends thanks to a number of sources, including the website's social media pages.