80% of Saudi Jobs Are Never Posted Online – How to Access Them

Friends, last week I had a meeting with a Saudi recruiter, and the purpose was to understand the Saudi market. The perspective, situation, and direction that the Saudi recruiter gave me, I thought I should definitely share it with you. Inshallah, that will help you a lot to get a new role in the Saudi market.

In my discussion with the Saudi recruiter, one of the most alarming things to me was that 80% of Saudi jobs never even reach job portals. They never reach LinkedIn jobs. They get filled before that. So when I asked him about that, he told me a quote: “If opportunity doesn’t knock, make the door.” This was a very surprising thing for me. Then he explained it.

He said that the best option you have to show your visibility is LinkedIn. Your profile may be optimized, you may have the skill set, but perhaps your profile is not noticed. He said that whenever a job comes, first, the department manager or whoever needs to fill that role does their own work before coming to us recruiters. How do they do that work? They first look within their own network. For example, if I have a role and I need a resource for it, I will first look within my circle. I will look within my social circle — I will ask my friends if there is anyone with these responsibilities, this job, this skill set. If someone is there, my preference will be to take a reliable resource from there. Otherwise, I will take opinions from them or recommendations for resources.

Now, most people are like this — when you are entering a new market, you don’t know the people there, you don’t know recruiters, you don’t know companies, you don’t know managers. So then, how do we build visibility? That was my next question. Then he gave me a very amazing strategy. He said, “Look, your biggest noticeable factor is how you are contributing on LinkedIn.” Contributing means what are you sharing? How are you becoming part of impactful discussions? How are you presenting solutions? He gave me a long list.

My question then was: No matter how much effort I put in, no matter how many contributions I make, no matter how much I engage people, how will I become noticeable to the people in my targeted companies? Then he told me, “Look, I’ll give you a one-week assignment. Whoever wants to apply to Saudi Arabia, before applying, before going to the apply button, first go and see what your targeted companies are. For example, if you are in AI, see which companies are targeted. You’ll have to do a little research work. You have to identify your targeted companies and list them down.”

Let’s say we have listed five companies. Now, within those five companies, what do you have to do? You have to list out two people in your relevant role from each company. So, for five companies, I targeted two people from each company. Next, I have to send connection requests to those 10 people.

Now, a connection request can be sent without any notes or a message. Don’t do that at all. You have to send a connection request with a very small, precise, and to-the-point note. I’ll give you an idea of what the note is. If you want the templates of what message to send, I have some templates that I have tried myself, and they work. Follow me on LinkedIn and DM me, and I will share the notes with you.

Back to the point. Our goal is to make ourselves visible to market leaders or to those whom you think may have vacancies or in whose departments vacancies may come. You have to show them your visibility. How will you show visibility? You will connect. To connect, you will send a message with the purpose of connecting with them. For example, if I am connecting with someone in project management, I will send a message saying: “We share a common background.

I have this certification, I have this experience, and we have some common things. So let’s connect and share something of our common interest.” Or you can send like this: you can praise them for making great contributions. “I have this experience, and I love to learn from people. I love to learn from people with diverse perspectives.” This is how you should approach them. And after approaching, you should send them a LinkedIn request.

When your LinkedIn request goes with a purpose of connectivity or to increase your social circle, where you haven’t stated any personal need of yours, you haven’t said what purpose you are connecting for — you are just connecting for the connection and to learn from other people’s perspectives, learn from industry leaders, learn from their leadership — then they will accept your connection request.

So your first step is complete. You have connected with them. The second step, he says, is that once you have connected, you need to bring your visibility in front of them. How will you do that? You need to share relevant things from your technology. That means if you see a post on LinkedIn — let’s say your domain is AI. You would have joined some AI forums or groups. If you find something there that is valuable for others or for those who are targeted, you need to reshare it with your thoughts. Nowadays, there are countless AI tools. You can do this work through them without any effort. You need to share. That’s the first thing.

The second thing you need to do is to comment on others’ posts. People share their thought processes, share their experiences, share their challenges. You need to comment on them, and those comments should be very positive, thoughtful, and contributive. For example, if a person is sharing their perspective — let’s say someone has told you 10 leadership skill sets. You could pick one skill set and elaborate further on it. Or you could say, “These 10 are amazing, but in my opinion, there is another skill set that is very important and often missed.” That means you need to contribute. You need to contribute to people’s posts on forums, on articles, in groups.

You need to build connections, and after building connections, make yourself visible. Once your connections are built, you become visible. You will start appearing actively to people on social profiles. At that point, your visibility will start to increase, and you will open doors for yourself that were never even created for you before. That’s the strategy he told me, and I was shocked — I thought, do people really think from this perspective? Does the market work like this?

Jobs would be posted, people would post, recruiters would see, we would see, apply, interviews would happen, and selection would be done. But here, the game is a bit different. Jobs come either when your selection has already happened automatically, and you are posting a job as a formality, or you need a skill set that is not available among your peers. 80% of the time, you acquire these things through your connections. So the best thing is to make yourself visible. Social media — your professional social media is LinkedIn. Make yourself visible, contribute, and create meaningful impacts, and this will work a lot.