Nearly 8000 new jobs created per annum in Saudi Arabia's IT job market supplementing an estimated 220,000-strong existing workforce

The total Saudi IT workforce is estimated at 220,000 professionals, and nearly 8,000 IT jobs are created in the local IT market every year, according to a new market survey conducted by Dubai-based Madar Research Group.

The findings of the survey further consolidate the position of Al-Falak, a leading regional IT and communications solution provider with over 22 years of experience in the industry. Al-Falak has a specialised Human Resources Division dedicated to recruiting, retaining and developing fully skilled professionals in information technology, engineering, communications, technical, operational, safety, other vocational and academic disciplines, administration and highly specialised areas.

"Saudi Arabia has laid the infrastructure for a strong IT-based industry and current developments show that the Kingdom is poised for a major leap in the field of IT. These developments combined with a renewed commitment by the authorities to provide greater employment opportunities to citizens are commendable. The market demand for IT professionals is exhaustive covering various categories and employers are looking for the right kind of expertise from a professional workforce. It is equally important that this workforce is adequately skilled and competent to handle the challenges within the IT industry," said Ahmed Ali Ashadawi, President and CEO of Al-Falak.

IT professionals in Saudi Arabia constitute the second largest IT community in the Arab world after Egypt, the survey reveals. The IT industry alone accounts for about 66 per cent of the market demand for IT professionals in the Kingdom. The hydrocarbon sector and services sector also have an equal share totalling to over 14 per cent of all IT jobs. With a government supported acceleration of IT penetration into Saudi society, besides IT and hydrocarbon, other industries and markets sectors are also likely to see an upsurge of demand for trained, highly skilled IT professionals. This will open up a host of new employment opportunities for qualified Saudi professionals.

Speaking about the Swedish experience in manpower training and development of skills of the unemployed in Sweden, Ashadawi said, "The Swedish government has granted a sum of US $150 million to set up a training programme for the jobless citizens. The non-profit organisation established for this purpose will be managed by representatives from the private and the public sectors and it aims to train 10,000 new professionals out of a total of 400,000 unemployed in the country."

Commenting on the imbalance between job opportunities and the growing number of qualified and highly talented Saudi job seekers, Ashadawi added, "National unemployment figures are estimated to stand at 8% at present. The government has already put into place various projects for training the large number of unemployed Saudis. However, the private sector must contribute equally to combating the problem of unemployment amongst the nationals."

"The long-standing and extensive investment policies of the Saudi Government have facilitated the penetration of IT into all sectors of the Saudi economy. The eReadiness of the average Saudi professional is already fairly high. Therefore, the IT sector is ideally suited for training and absorbing the unemployed nationals into the workforce," said Ashadawi.

"The Human Resource division of Al-Falak plays a critical part in our quest to deliver the highest possible standards of expertise and quality in the services we provide to our clients. The division focuses on skills in the areas of contract consulting, recruitment, executive search, hiring, and manpower planning and development," said Ashadawi.

"While we do not hesitate to tap into worldwide markets in our endeavour to source skilled professionals, we are committed to the Saudization drive by sourcing highly talented Saudi professionals and to absorbing them into our workforce. We would like to position Al-Falak as the front-runner in the drive to reduce the gap between the large numbers of qualified job seekers and the comparatively smaller numbers of new job openings every year," he added.

"Backed by our experience in providing manpower solutions to our partners, we are in a strong position to offer consultancy services in manpower planning and development. We can offer advice and assistance on all aspects of manpower planning, including the number, classification, experience, qualification and salary of skilled personnel. We can assist organisations in developing optimum operational methods for the deployment of staff, analysis of the organisation's human resource policies and the training and development of their human resources. This would be of direct benefit to companies seeking to automate their operations, while placing a premium on time and quality," said Ashadawi.