LinkedIn can absolutely help you to find a great job in Dubai, providing of course you know how to use it. In this article, I’m going to take you step by step through the process of searching for and applying to great Dubai job opportunities using your LinkedIn profile. Towards the end of this video, I’m going to take you behind the scenes and show you exactly what the job poster sees—whether that’s an HR manager, a recruiter, or a hiring manager—when you apply to their role using LinkedIn.
LinkedIn to apply for jobs in Dubai.
This is really crucial information because if you know what the job poster sees, it’s going to enable you to set your profile up in such a way as to help you get better results. At the end of the day, when you apply for roles in Dubai using LinkedIn, you want to get called for interviews. If that’s not happening, you need to do something different. So let’s jump into my LinkedIn profile, and I’ll take you step by step through the process of using LinkedIn to apply for jobs in Dubai.
Search for jobs on LinkedIn
Here we are in my personal LinkedIn profile, and I just want to mention before we begin to search for jobs on LinkedIn: it’s a good idea to make sure that your profile is fully up to date. I would advise that you have an eye-catching LinkedIn background image, something like this. Make sure that your profile picture is fully up to date and somewhat engaging, and make sure that you have a headline that tells hiring managers or recruiters exactly what it is that you do and how you can help them. I’ll tell you why this is really important later on.
To begin applying for and searching for roles, we’re going to go to the top of our profile and click on the jobs button. There you go. Now, LinkedIn is going to show us a whole list of potential vacancies that it thinks will be a good match based on how we have our profiles set up currently. But we’re not going to click on any of those yet. Instead, we’re going to go over to the left and click on job alerts. Here it says we have no job alerts yet—that’s fine. Click on search for jobs.
Job Opportunities
Now, LinkedIn has listed almost 16,000 jobs that we could apply for right here, right now. But clearly, we’re not going to be suitable for even a tiny fraction of those job opportunities. The more we scale this down and the more targeted we are in our approach, the more likely we are to get callbacks based on our job applications. This is really important. So we’re going to filter these results now and tell LinkedIn exactly what we’re looking for and exactly what we would be suitable for.
Searching for jobs in Dubai
The golden rule when searching for jobs in Dubai is: only apply for the roles for which you are a great match. We can use the filters at the top of the screen here to begin to scale these results down. We’re going to use the search bar right at the top here to type in the name or the title of the role that we are ideally targeting. For the sake of this example, I’m going to type in “marketing manager,” so let’s look for roles that are suitable for marketing managers.
United Arab Emirates to Dubai
I’m also going to change the location from United Arab Emirates to Dubai. You’ve really got to think this through. If you’re happy to work anywhere in the UAE, then that’s fine. But if you’re only looking for jobs in Dubai specifically, you should set this to Dubai. Otherwise, you’ll have results come up for Sharjah, Al Ain, Abu Dhabi, and unless you’re willing to live in those areas or commute there every single day, then I would just scale the search results down to jobs that are in Dubai.
Just by changing the location to Dubai, it’s narrowed our search down to around 600 results. But again, we still need to scale this down, and we can use our filters to do that. Let’s click on “all filters” right at the end here. Now, you can see all the ways in which you can narrow your search results down in order to find the very best and the most suitable roles for your experience. The more targeted you are, the more likely you’ll be suitable for the role and the more likely you’ll get called back for an interview.
To begin with, I’m going to leave the “sort by” filter as “most recent.” I like to apply for roles that have been posted most recently—they’ll have fewer applications, they’ll be fresher, and they’re more likely to still be open and available. “Date posted,” I’m going to keep that at “any time,” but you could look for roles that have been posted in the last 24 hours or the last week. Right now, let’s keep it relatively wide.
“Experience level” is really important. If you’re a junior, you do not want to be applying for executive-level roles—you’re just wasting your time. You need to decide exactly where you fit. For this example, we’re going to use kind of the mid-to-senior-level roles—we’re going to search for roles within that kind of parameter.
You can select the companies that you’re targeting. When I coach people in their Dubai job search, I do advise that they look to draw up a list of 10 to 20 target companies, and then you could search for the roles that these particular companies are advertising. But we’re not going to do that right now—we’ll keep it quite wide.
Full-time work or Part-time work
Next, you can tell LinkedIn if you are looking for full-time work or part-time work. A few more options here: do you want to work in the office, or would you be happy to work remotely? “Industries” are a really important filter. It’s tempting to think that your experience is transferable across any industry, but I would say that when looking for jobs in Dubai, if you have specific industry experience, begin by applying for roles within that industry.
It could be manufacturing, it could be retail, it could be real estate—start with the industry that you have the most experience in, and then begin by selecting maybe a few others that you believe you have transferable skills for. So if you’ve worked in marketing in manufacturing, it might be suitable to apply for roles in retail or maybe real estate as well. But the trick is: don’t go crazy—don’t select every industry. Start small and widen your search parameters later.
“Job function” is another really important one. Your experience and your skills will be more suitable in certain job functions than others. I’m just going to click “marketing” here. Now, “title”—I’m going to again be really narrow here and start with “brand manager.” You could select “head of marketing” if you’re looking to jump up a level. “Marketing specialist” is maybe a little bit junior for us, but just select the titles that you are most suitable for.
Based on our filters and our criteria, LinkedIn has 14 open vacancies for us, and I would say that’s pretty good. That’s a good number to begin with, and you can begin to look through these jobs, explore a little bit about what the job is and their requirements, and apply for the ones that are a great fit. But what we’re going to do now is, at the top of this list, we’re going to hit “set alert.”
Now, LinkedIn will tell us every time a new role becomes available based on our criteria, and that way, you can really keep on top of new jobs that become available and apply for them while they’re still fresh.
Dubai jobs using LinkedIn
Okay, so now that you know exactly how to apply for Dubai jobs using LinkedIn, I want to show you exactly what a job poster sees when you apply for one of their roles. This is an actual screenshot taken from my days as a Dubai recruiter, and it shows you the sections of your LinkedIn profile that get shown to the hiring manager when you hit “apply” on a LinkedIn job. If you get these sections right, it will drastically improve your chances of getting called for an interview.
The first section that I just want to draw your attention to is your profile picture. The job poster sees your profile picture—you need to make sure that it’s up to date, that it looks professional, and that you look engaging and approachable. They also see your name. Now, a lot of people don’t put their full name on their LinkedIn profile or just put their initials—that’s a mistake. Make sure you put your whole name just to avoid any confusion.
Now, let’s talk about your headline. Your LinkedIn headline is really important—this is where you tell the reader exactly what it is you do and how you do it. If you flick to my profile here, you’ll see that my headline says, “Creating resources and solutions to help make your job search easier.” So straight away, if you land on my profile, you know that I’m someone you can talk to about your Dubai job search to get advice, resources, and solutions.
You need to think this way when you are writing your own headline: what is it that the reader needs to know? So if you’re applying for a regional marketing manager role in the luxury industry, it should say something like, “Regional marketing manager with extensive luxury experience in the Middle East.” That will tell the reader immediately that you are potentially a great fit for this role.
LinkedIn will also show the reader your last two to three roles, and you just need to make sure that you highlight your most relevant experience in those roles. So if you’ve got experience in the luxury industry and you’re applying for a role in the luxury industry, make sure that’s mentioned in the experience section of your LinkedIn profile—just so that at a glance, the reader can see that you have relevant experience.
“Education” is another important one. If the role requires a certain degree or certain professional qualifications, make sure they’re on your LinkedIn. Now, the reason I’m showing you this again is so that you can optimize and set up your LinkedIn profile to give you the best chance of being called back for an interview.
Okay, one last tip for applying for Dubai jobs using LinkedIn: when you find a role that you are really suitable for, LinkedIn will often show you exactly who posted that role. You’ll see there, just at the bottom of that blue arrow on the left, exactly who posted this particular opportunity.
Now, if you use a free trial of LinkedIn premium or you’ve signed up for LinkedIn premium, you’ll be able to hit “send InMail,” and you can put a message directly into the LinkedIn inbox of the person who posted the role. This is a great opportunity because if, for example, that job gets 250 applications, it’s quite likely—or there’s a good chance at least—that your application won’t get seen.
However, if you put a well-written message into their inbox, you can quickly draw their attention to your particular application, let them know that you’ve applied, and maybe point out a few elements of your experience or maybe one or two particular successes that might be of interest to them.
Conclusion
So there you have it—this is how you apply for jobs in Dubai using LinkedIn. If you do it well, you will really increase your chances of getting called back for interviews. Like my LinkedIn profile says, if you need help with your Dubai job search, just shoot me a message, connect with me, or follow the link in the description of this video where you can just schedule a time straight into my calendar. In the meantime, good luck with your Dubai job search!