Bayt.com, the Middle East's #1 job site, conducted a poll entitled “Internships in the Middle East and North Africa” in order to highlight the role of internships in career development. According to the poll, online job sites emerge as the top way to find relevant internship opportunities (62%).
More than half of poll respondents (55%) agree that internships are widely available in the Middle East. These opportunities give interns a chance to develop work competencies and professional skills and gain experience that would facilitate their academic, career, and personal development. Among potential interns,52% would accept an unpaid internship.
According to the poll respondents, relevant opportunities offer interns a variety of benefits including gaining work experience (15%), developing new skills and knowledge (9%), building a professional network (5%), exploring their field of interest and career potential (5%) and all of the aforementioned benefits (66%).
“Our Internships in the Middle East and North Africa poll highlights the importance of internships to employability,” said Ola Haddad, Director of Human Resources at Bayt.com. “Although the competition has intensified, there are an increasing number of opportunities available in the region. Our poll also reveals multiple ways that students can engage with employers from online to on campus and start their journey towards a fulfilling career path.”
The key benefits of hiring interns for the organization include identifying talent for future positions (31%), having extra help for small teams or departments (6%), completing less demanding projects at low cost (4%) and quickly filling temporary and seasonal positions (2%), while57% of respondents say that internships contribute all of the aforementioned benefits to their organizations.
A whopping83% of respondents agree that internships provide a viable route to a career after they graduate. Prospective interns use multiple channels to look for opportunities including online job sites (62%), company websites (12%), social media (12%), personal network (5%) and newspapers (4%).
According to the respondents, universities can play a crucial role in procuring relevant internships for students by partnering with companies to create more internship programs (43%), offering job search courses (25%), posting internship opportunities on online job sites (15%) and organizing on campus job fairs (10%).
The market for interns is getting more competitive, so employers are investing more than ever before. The majority of respondents (73%) say that they can find internships for their educational background.
Poll respondents outlined a range of factors that make internships attractive and help them decide. These include type of company/field of work (33%), possibility of full-time employment with the company (32%), type of projects and job responsibilities (25%), compensation (4%) and the ability to obtain university credit (1%).
Data for the Internships in the Middle East and North Africa2020 was collected online from8th February2020 and19th March2020. Results are based on a sample of3,155 respondents from the following countries: UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, and Pakistan.