5 Tips for C&B Professionals to be successful in Middle East

First of all, it’s a great pleasure to start sharing my thoughts with this great community of LinkedIn. This will be my first post after all so I count on you to bear with me.

As a C&B Specialist in Middle East and after working almost two years in this region, I wanted to summarize five bullet points to be successful here.

Communicate
Communication matters. As always. The key to success in Middle East is having really strong communication skills. I’m not talking about speaking Arabic or any other language fluent; you really need to explain employees everything from scratch. In this region, employees rely on verbal communication and they believe in you if you contact them face-to-face.

Don’t count on data quality
I know that this issue depends on the organization setup, IT infrastructure, colleagues etc. but this region have issues with data integrity and quality in general. I always expect to face such a challenge but every C&B professional, who are usually into deep statistical analysis, should think twice and look more than twice which data they are playing with.

Be a tech savvy
This is a true advantage here. What I’ve seen in this region is that most of HR professionals, even in C&B, do not have advanced skills in statistical software, macros in MS Excel etc. If you are a bit tech geek and open to new technologies and tools, you may shine.

Be creative
This region is a true playground. When I talk to consultants, they love to work here because there’s a lot to do. The amazing thing is; the diversity, increasing volume of the business and lack of solid HR practices in the past allows you to be as creative as you can. Come up with “crazy” ideas, I bet somebody can listen to it!

Anticipate unexpected occasions
Anything can happen in one night. You can wake up tomorrow to a situation where your office in one country is bombed, a hyperinflation hits another country’s currency etc… So, expect surprises and be always ready to react quickly. It is stressful but will develop you a lot. Look at the bright side!

If you’re new to this region or consider working here as a C&B professional, I hope these five quick tips help you to imagine what’s expected from you.


Original post was published on Linkedin on August 6th, 2014.

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