Has the job market in the GCC gone weird and toxic? 

There’s something strange and unsettling happening in the world of job hunting, according to those seeking new roles since the employment market dip of early 2026. Not only has job advertising itself become chaotic due to the overuse of AI, but hiring managers and even agencies are acting – well, weird. 

This is showing up in a range of ways, from ghosting and goalpost shifting to downright untruths about the roles supposedly up for grabs.

Recently, Libby Bannister, a senior business development manager, applied for a senior partnerships executive role in Dubai at a well-known global media company, sourced through one of the world’s largest recruitment firms. The salary of 30k a month was attractive enough that she turned down other opportunities to pursue it.

Eight weeks of interviews followed, including a three-day go-to-market strategy exercise. Then, after a two-week wait for traveling management, the salary was suddenly dropped from 30k to 17k – and the role was handed to a different manager overseeing a “luxury” position instead. The process restarted from scratch with another face-to-face, the same strategy work redone, and then a role-play exercise pitching the agency’s services.

Days later, she was told she’d been unsuccessful.

“They completely wasted my time and put me through such a tough interview process for nothing,” Bannister says. “I’m disheartened, angry, and feel let down.”

Speak to anyone who’s worked in the UAE, and you’ll likely hear an eye-popping recruitment story of their own.

For British expat Claire, her first interview in Dubai will remain one of the most memorable. 

“I was interviewing for a General Manager role, and the person conducting the interview was the current GM. The problem was that he had no idea he was interviewing his own replacement. One of his colleagues later pulled me aside and said, ‘You’ve probably realized by now that he doesn’t know he’s losing his job.’ A month later, when I joined, he had to hand over the role to me. It was one of the most bizarre situations I’ve ever experienced, equal parts hilarious and shocking.”

SCREENING ALGORITHMS

This kind of scope creep – and the broader lack of transparency – isn’t unique, according to Emma Dale, career coach and Co-Founder of Prospect.

“You see, hiring managers change what they’re looking for partway through the interview process, wasting everyone’s time. Sometimes a role suddenly goes on hold or can no longer proceed at all because the budget has been pulled. Salary opacity is a recurring complaint, too, with candidates going through multiple rounds only to discover the budget was never realistic for the seniority level being sought.”

And getting to that first interview is its own battle. 

Dale says it’s increasingly hard even to land a conversation, with AI screening applications and little to no human judgment involved.

Screening algorithms are proving no more objective than the humans who built them – a Stanford-led study published in Nature magazine last October found that AI tools consistently generate and rate resumes for older men more favorably than for women, even when starting from identical information – a bias researchers traced to how the underlying models represent age and gender across occupations more broadly.

Both sides are drowning in noise, too, as mass applying becomes as easy as mass posting, while ATS (Applicant Tracking System) systems still reject strong candidates for formatting quirks or unconventional job titles – resulting in automated rejections that make applicants feel dismissed rather than considered.

SCOURGE OF GHOSTING

The biggest and most common complaint is ghosting. The scourge of the online dating scene, this unseemly behavior is now on the rise in recruitment.

“Frustratingly, ghosting is now happening much later in the hiring journey,” says Kristina Vaneva, an employee experience professional and author of Beyond Employee Engagement. “I myself have been ghosted on several occasions, after five rounds of interviews and time-consuming case studies.”

She adds: “The region is an attractive global talent hub, and single role postings often attract several thousand applications. Many talent acquisition teams simply don’t have the bandwidth to manage that volume effectively. While ATS and AI screening tools have streamlined sourcing, many companies haven’t built automated feedback loops – so while technology filters people out, it doesn’t keep them informed. The candidate experience turns cold and transactional.

“I’m not excusing this behavior. But when recruiters are measured on metrics like time-to-hire and cost-per-hire rather than candidate experience, rejected candidates become a low operational priority.”

WATCH FOR A SIMPLE TEST

Vaneva advises job seekers to watch for a simple test – does the company practice what it preaches? Candidate experience, she argues, is the truest preview of employee experience, and if a business doesn’t value your time, clarity, or well-being before you’re hired, it rarely starts afterward.

Other red flags include disinterested or unprepared interviewers, a sign of a culture that doesn’t respect people’s time, and negative energy or high staff turnover, both worth clocking in on how a team talks about its own work.

Rebecca Hodgson, a business impact advisor who’s watched GCC recruitment evolve since moving to Dubai in 2009, has seen the practice at its best – and its most cynical. “I’ve experienced GCC recruitment at its optimal and its most frustrating,” she says. “I was once asked for three references before my application progressed, only for those contacts to be approached about the same vacancy. That isn’t due diligence, it’s sourcing.”

It’s a gap she believes the industry needs to close structurally, not just individually. 

“A GCC-wide recruitment standard and accreditation mark could set a shared benchmark for references, candidate data, and transparency,” she says. “Great recruiters work this way – they understand your value, protect your network, and open doors instead of borrowing yours.”

GET TARGETED RATHER THAN SCATTERGUN

For candidates hitting repeated rejection, Prospect founder Emma Dale’s advice starts with diagnosis, not despair. 

“Repeated rejection often isn’t about competence at all. It’s about positioning, timing, or market conditions,” she says. 

She encourages job seekers to get targeted rather than scattergun, asking whether they’re applying for roles that genuinely play to their strengths, since being focused works far better than a “spray and pray approach.”

Just as important, she says, is identifying where in the process things are breaking down. 

“If you can’t get interviews at all, the CV is likely the problem. If you’re getting interviews but not offers, it’s more likely how you’re presenting yourself at the interview that needs work.” Her most common observation at the interview stage is that candidates who undersell themselves. “They spend their time talking about what they do rather than the impact it makes on the business.”

Her message to HR departments and recruiters is more blunt. 

“Fix your feedback loop,” she says. “Even a two-line rejection note is better than silence. It costs almost nothing, and it’s the single biggest driver of candidate resentment.” 

She also urges transparency about salary from the outset, arguing it “saves everyone’s time and signals genuine respect for the candidate’s seniority” – and serves as a check on AI’s growing role in screening. “Don’t let AI make the first cut alone. Use it to support human judgment rather than replace it.”