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Business Education: A Remedy for the Talent Crisis?

As a result the talent pool available to employers here has grown dramatically over the past year, but not to the extent that we can yet declare the talent crisis is at an end. The UAE, in particular, still faces two major problems. The first is a shortage of the very best people in sectors such as finance, hi-tech and professional services, which has led to an ongoing ‘war for talent’, where organisations compete for a relatively small group of highly prized individuals. And the second is an over-reliance on expatriates caused by the still small number of locals working at managerial level in these areas.

In such an environment it seems likely that formal business education, which is already playing a major role in the next phase of growth for other fast-developing areas such as India and China, will become increasingly important in the Middle East. Its role is likely to be two-fold — firstly by providing an ‘up-skilling’ of the existing workforce both local and expatriate, and second through international business schools forging ever closer links with employers here to provide an constant pipeline of highly qualified professionals into the region.

“Business schools can play a strong role in strengthening management skills, including strategic planning, personnel and project management expertise, accountability and CSR,” says Simon Collinson, a professor of international business at Warwick Business School in the UK, which has a large intake of students from the Gulf into its distance learning MBA. “MBA programmes are also a good way to develop international awareness and an understanding of cross-cultural differences, both of which are vital in an increasingly global marketplace.”

Amongst the most ambitious projects is a campus for one of France’s top business schools, EM Lyon, who arrive in Dubai as part of Emivest plan to build a mini-replica of its home city of Lyon in the desert near Burj.

The school is ranked number one in Europe for entrepreneurship, and expect their emphasis on international culture to blend in well with the growing multicultural management skills required in the UAE hub. They will join a number of major schools that have already set up programmes in the region. Boston’s Hult, for example has become the first US business school to establish a full-time, fully accredited MBA programme in the Middle East with a dedicated campus located in the Dubai Academic City.

The UK’s Cass opened an executive MBA programme in the Dubai International Financial Centre last year which brings visiting academics to the emirate whilst top French school HEC is targeting the executive market with its ‘Creating Value through Strategic Financial Management’. The programme is intended for managers and directors in the region to help them understand the strategic financial concepts behind business.

Other international schools are reacting to the potential of Gulf economies by reaching out to major employers in the region. “Because Dubai and Abu Dhabi in particular are increasingly sophisticated employment markets there seems to be a growing awareness of the value of an MBA and how much the holders of the qualification can contribute to an organisation,” says Camila de Wit, Director of Admissions and Career Services at the Spanish school, ESADE.

“Despite this there is a need to raise the level of awareness some employers in the region have of business schools. At ESADE we have a specialist dedicated to business development in this region who works hard at strengthening relationships with recruiters as well as attracting talented MBA students. We believe that engaging more heavily with schools like ESADE is essential to satisfy the increasing demand for all types of qualified staff, particularly as we are attracting students from a very wide range of countries — ambitious individuals who can bring an international perspective to the region.”

The efforts of another major European school, Vlerick Leuven, have also led to a sizeable number of their graduates taking up roles in the Gulf. “One in ten of our MBA graduates from the 2005 to 2006 class now live and work in Dubai or Abu Dhabi,” says Peter Rafferty, the school’s director of international business.

“These are ex-students from as far afield as China, Slovakia, the USA and Canada who remain plugged into a network of graduates from over 30 other countries around the world.” Perhaps not surprisingly, given this focus on the region, it seems that the message about the potential value of business education appears to be getting through. “The recruitment fairs that we stage in Dubai are now some of our most popular,” says Hanna Khan, a director of the World MBA Tour, the world’s largest programme of business school information fairs.

“We’ll be bringing over 70 schools 
to Dubai this autumn and pre-registration figures suggest that the number of attendees will be up by as much as 50 per cent on the event we ran in 
the spring.”

Business education will certainly not provide any ‘quick fix’ for the challenges the professional and managerial workplace faces across the Gulf and for the foreseeable future the hunting of talent by firms such as my own from within a still relatively small pool of talent will go on. But over time it may help to ease the situation and create a new, more mature employment market throughout the Middle East.

Piers Webster is managing director of Middle East operations for specialist recruiters, MRL Group — www.mrl-group.com