UAE school leavers are being helped to climb the career ladder early, with new platforms matching them directly to structured internships and job-shadowing placements at companies.
The focus on technology and artificial intelligence in today's workplace has left young people well placed to start their careers early, potentially skipping university and its associated costs.
The UAE's Net Employment Outlook for the fourth quarter is up 41 per cent, a rise of 24 points from the third quarter, ManpowerGroup figures show. Early-career hiring – recruitment of school leavers, interns and recent graduates – is on the rise at nearly half of UAE organisations.
However, candidate mismatches and shortage of skills continue to hinder recruitment at some companies.
“Employers are growing their teams, creating more opportunities for early-career talent and improving the efficiency of their recruitment processes, even as skills shortages continue to influence workforce decisions,” said Bryn Luro, country manager of ManpowerGroup Middle East.
Navigating new opportunities and acquiring the necessary skills can be difficult. This mismatch has created an opportunity for platforms that connect pupils directly with employers.
Sparq, an online platform that helps UAE pupils with internships and job-shadowing placements, grew out of founder Gaurav Gulati's struggle to find structured opportunities for his children.
“Sparq was actually born initially from our own experience, as we have two teenagers,” said Mr Gulati, the company’s founder and chief executive. “We had to get them internships and job shadowing over the years.
“It was all about network and about who you knew to get them the right placements at the right institutes. There's no real one place where all of this exists. That's a real problem for the vast majority of students in school and early years of college.”
Matchmakers
The platform matches UAE pupils to internships and job shadowing at companies, based on an individual's profile and ambition.
Sparq replaces informal channels such as WhatsApp groups and spreadsheets, letting companies track and report on internship programmes and also giving students structured feedback instead of a flat rejection.
Mr Gulati said the tool could help the UAE retain some of its young talent that might otherwise leave the country looking for opportunities.
“If students go out for universities and then come home for the summer, there's no one place where they can find structured internship opportunities,” he said. “You then run the risk of losing that talent to Europe, the UK or the US.”
Carolyn Ross, a business director at Ferox Recruitment, said early workplace experience, like internships and job-shadowing, was essential for young people entering professional roles.
Her company focuses on pairing businesses with workers who share the same ideals and ambitions.
“You're only going to learn from being in the office,” she said. “They need to be sitting next to people, listening to them, watching how they like being involved.”
Ms Ross said young people should focus on networking to build up contacts and take advantage of the UAE’s burgeoning exhibition scene where there are often free events.
“Ventures like Sparq are incredibly important in today's market because it's now a longevity-legacy type of recruitment,” she said.
“Clients of ours will actually want to consider fresh grads and younger generations so they can teach them.”
Gems Education Group chief executive Dino Varkey recently told The National that he expected companies to start recruiting directly from high school, rather than from universities.
This shift also aligns with Dubai's Education Strategy 2033, which aims to match high school pupils with potential employers to ensure they gain real-life work experience while opening vocational opportunities for school leavers.
Job flow is back
One recruiter described 2026 as a volatile year for the broader jobs market. However, after a lean second and third quarter, the market is now opening up with new employment offers.
Nathan Kearney founded Executive Search and manages a graduate scheme with De Montfort University Dubai.
“We essentially take local business and marketing graduates and bring them in to be junior recruiters with us,” he said. “It allows them to build relationships, not just for ourselves but also with clients. It means they can build relationships faster and better.”
He said the UAE had moved through three distinct hiring cycles in 2026, which are normally spread across three or four years.
“Prior to the conflict [US-Iran war], we had high job flow and a low candidate situation, so there were some great average salaries being paid,” he said.
During the second and third quarter of the year, he said, there were “mass exits and mass redundancies, no jobs around but plenty of candidates so people were taking whatever salary they could get”.
That has since reversed. “Now the job flow is back to what it was in Q1, but a lot of people have exited the market, so the candidate pool isn't there,” Mr Kearney said. “That's pushing average salaries back up. We've had the most jobs registered in 2026 in the last week alone.”
