Expats seeking work in the UAE fall victim to illegal CV scams

UAE law states that an employer, not the employee, is responsible for bearing all costs associated with recruitment. Matthew Staver / Bloomberg News

They pour into your inbox with alarming and annoying frequency, are probably always immediately deleted and are almost certainly a complete waste of your time and bandwidth.

Unsolicited, unwelcome and sometimes unlawful, the stream of CVs and employment resumes of hopeful, often desperate jobseekers in the UAE, has become a daily, if not hourly, menace.

Mohammed Ahmed is visiting relatives in Sharjah on a tourist visa and would love to work for an employer in the UAE. Back home in Karachi, Pakistan, he says he is “a senior merchandising and marketing manager” for a textile company, with 15 years of experience under his belt and a monthly take-home salary that is the equivalent of Dh4,000.

“I also have a car as part of my job back home, as well as a bonus scheme, but possibly I would not need that in the UAE,” he says of his job-searching endeavours here. “I would be happy working here – in Dubai, Sharjah, Abu Dhabi, it doesn’t matter where, ideally for Dh6,000 a month.”

Also desperate for work in this country is a married 28-year old Indian, known as Sreeraj J, from Kerala. Like Mr Ahmed, he is in the UAE on a visit visa and trying his chances by getting his well-written and presented CV out to as many potential employers as possible.

“I graduated in 2010,” he says, “with a bachelor’s degree in technology engineering. And I am wanting to find work in the Emirates as a systems analyst – I have much experience in IT. If I do not find work here I will have to leave the country and return to India, but not for another few weeks. I am hopeful.”

Indeed, the CVs that both men have circulating in cyberspace right now are impressive. Well written, using proper grammar and spelling, they are professionally laid out and well presented.

But while they look nice and contain all the information an employer might be looking for when recruiting new members of staff (including the applicants’ email addresses and mobile phone numbers), the odds that they will reach a potential employer are very slight.

Both CVs ended up in the work emails of employees at The National, two of about dozens received by our journalists almost daily. Those seeking work are looking in every field, from civil engineering to sales, accounting and legal work.

While the applications use an almost identical format, they are sent in mass batches from email addresses that change every few months. Some of these appear to be registered in Eastern Europe.

When contacted, both men explained that they had supplied their details and employment histories to a Dubai-based business, saying they paid a Dh500 fee for sending out their CVs via email to what they were assured would be a carefully screened and selected list of companies that are looking for employees with their particular skill sets – a pledge that is against the law, since it means they are effectively acting as unlicensed labour agents.

In a telephone interview, a representative of the company, which describes itself as being primarily in “website design”, told The National that it had an exhaustive list of email addresses of UAE organisations, but refused to disclose how it had obtained these.

The representative also refused to discuss the procedures for new recruits or any other part of her business, but did say that if anyone was irritated by the constant bombardment of unsolicited job applications from her clients, they “could always unsubscribe”.

Mr Ahmed also approached another CV-writing and distribution service in Dubai, which he described as “a very big office with many people. They are good company”.

This firm claims to have a “writing team with 10+ years’ experience” who will prepare a CV “as per Gulf market standards”. Saying that “an impressive CV can help you stand out from crowd”, it warns that the “Gulf job market is more complex compared to your home country, where in this international market 70+ nationalities work as hiring manager and you would certainly need a different approach with your CV. An expert can guide you through successfully”.

Mr Ahmed freely admits that he parted with even more money here – money he can ill afford to waste. “I was charged Dh300 for my first meeting with them,” he says, “and I paid Dh750 for them to send out my CV. I also have to pay them one month’s salary once I find a job through them.”

Quite how a CV distribution service would know that a client was successful in securing employment is unclear, but Mr Ahmed insists that he has been told he must return to them with three postdated cheques once he finds a job – a demand that is also against UAE law.

When The National contacted this company by telephone, a member of staff denied Mr Ahmed’s account of their demands. “Who knows why people make these things up? They say things to make our companies look bad.”

The company insisted that the only charges levied on people using their services related to the printing of paper copies of CVs (at Dh1 per page), which were then sent out to prospective employers.

The experiences of these two men, both of whom have parted with relatively large sums of money for a service that is unlikely to net them any kind of job, contrasts sharply with the approach taken by large, bona fide recruitment agencies.

“It is illegal in the UAE to charge any person for these services,” said a representative of Charterhouse in Abu Dhabi. “The law states that an employer – not the employee – is responsible for bearing any costs associated with recruitment, including fees for visas.”

Employment law in the UAE is necessarily strict and the rules are very clear. While nobody from the Ministry of Labour was available for comment on the matter of demanding fees and the first month’s salary from jobseekers, its website provides access to a PDF of the UAE Labour Law document (Federal Law No.(8) of 1980), last updated in 2001.

Article (17) states: “No natural person or body-corporate is allowed to work as an agent or supplier of non-national employees unless he has a license to do so.”

Further down, Article (18) makes it clear that “it is not permissible for any licensed labour agent or supplier to demand or accept from any worker whether before or after his recruitment, any commission or material reward in consideration for arranging such recruitment, nor may he obtain from him any expenses except as may be decided or approved by the Ministry of Labour and Social Affairs”.

The article also states: “The relations between such employees and the employer shall be direct and without any interference from the labour agent whose task and relation with them shall cease to exist as soon as they are introduced to and employed by the employer.”

In other words, once any person is gainfully employed, there is no way any agent can legally demand payment of any kind unless it is from the employer.

If what the two jobseekers The National spoke to say is correct, these service providers and others like them are not only proving to be an online menace, but are frequently breaking the law.

Having your CV polished and written up by a professional can be a good idea and it is legal to charge a small fee for that service, but not to charge for sending that CV to potential employers, especially when they are not interested in offering you a job in the first place.