Our Associate Consultant’s, Anna and Rachel, recently had the opportunity to travel to the Middle East and meet some of our main clients within the region. Below are their thoughts on their trip.
A couple of months ago we had the amazing opportunity to visit Kuwait and Qatar, both are places we would never have thought we would be able to say we had been to!
As this was both of our first times visiting the Middle East, it was an exciting and eye-opening experience, filled with client meetings, busy roads, and hot weather.
Firstly we visited Qatar, and after leaving London wrapped up in coats and scarves in the cold of mid-October it was a shock to step into the 35 degree heat! Whilst here we had the excellent opportunity of being taken on a guided tour through the newly built Katara Plaza/Galeries Lafayette building and visualising the site where some of our candidates will be working. We also had the chance to meet a few members of the team who we are in contact with most days, so was nice to be able to put a face to a name and get to know them on a more personal level.
Our next stop was Kuwait which was equally as hot but slightly more traditional and less built-up than Qatar. Two of our main clients are based out of Kuwait and we not only had the opportunity to meet both of the HR teams but we also had the pleasure of meeting candidates that Anna had placed out in Kuwait who had already started. This was a particularly exciting part of the trip as it was great to be able to meet people who we had guided through the hiring process and helped secure a new job in a new country.
Shopping is hugely popular in the Middle East, particularly Kuwait, and we had the chance to visit the 2nd largest mall in the Middle East. We were lucky enough to be taken on a tour of the mall which we appreciated as due to the size there were many different areas to explore e.g. luxury, souk, kids and food. Even late on a Tuesday evening the mall was extremely busy and we were told that most people visited at least a few times per week!
The main reason for our trip was to visit the clients, to engage with them and gain more understanding about what they look for in candidates to help us bring the right people into the process. But also more importantly, we were there to experience the Middle East. It was great to see the countries, have a taste of how their culture differs from the UK, and ultimately enable us to speak to candidates from across the world with more understanding about the countries we are encouraging them to move to.
