Emaar-LinkedIn partnership attracting world-class talent

26/10/2016 05:22 AST

EMAAR the Economic City (EEC), the developer of the King Abdullah Economic City (KAEC) on the Red Sea coast of Saudi Arabia, has ramped up its use of social networking platforms to achieve its goals to attract and hire top talent from across the Kingdom and abroad. In particular, EEC has noted that its investments in the use of LinkedIn>s Talent Solutions have helped the organization identify new recruits faster and streamline the company's executive search function.

Since joining LinkedIn in 2013, EEC has revealed that 70% of its job hires have been made through LinkedIn, hiring 79 mid to senior-management level employees from LinkedIn in 2015 alone. In particular, EEC's Saudisation rate has also climbed rapidly since partnering with LinkedIn, and today is almost double the required percentage for its field.

The Tadawul-listed developer has indicated that recruiting-focused advertising campaigns run on LinkedIn have resulted in a much higher growth of followers on the company's corporate page - over 300% year-on-year growth in the first year of use. EEC can now tap into this pool of followers when looking for potential candidates since they've already shown interest in the brand and have interacted with them in one way or another. "Traditionally we would rely heavily on business partners and executive search companies to find candidates, many of which might not be qualified or fit the culture of the city. Our recruitment department needed to optimize its talent acquisition process while at the same time extending our reach to both local and global senior-level talent," said Fahd Hamiddadin, Chief Commercial Officer at EEC.

Rabih Haidar, Head of Saudi Arabia, LinkedIn Talent Solutions, said: "LinkedIn wants to create opportunity for every member of the KSA workforce and be a growth engine for the Saudi Economy in line with the Kingdom's new vision for 2030. We are extremely proud that organizations such as Emaar the Economic City are realizing the enormous value of today's digitally-focused recruitment tools in connecting talent with opportunity. Through these collaborations, businesses in Saudi Arabia are ultimately better able to find, attract and train the best talent, build and strengthen their brand and connect with new customers."

Today EEC uses the full LinkedIn Talent Solution to attract and hire top professionals from around the world. By having access to the entire LinkedIn network and a strong pool of passive talent, EEC is able to reach out to potential candidates through InMails (LinkedIn's messaging tool) and start up a conversation with them. "While increasing our diversity, LinkedIn helps maintain the great level of competences pioneering King Abdullah Economic City's development,» said Hamidaddin.

Arabic-language capabilities have been particularly important to this talent drive with LinkedIn launching its Arabic platform in 2015. Since that time, its membership base in the Kingdom has grown by almost 100% to over two million individuals, with KSA currently the number one country globally whose talent is utilizing LinkedIn Arabic.

Saudi Gazette