I understand there are a lot of jobs in Saudi Arabia with foreign (often American) corps. What companies operate there, and what do they hire for? Only engineers (sadly, I’m not)? Are there places for bright young people who, well, don’t have a specialized skill set aside from advanced writings skills and technical training?
Try www.jobsataramco.com, however Aramco usually requires some sort of advanced degree, unless you do something few do.
A doper, **Paul in Saudi ** works in Jeddah. I’m not sure what he does, but in the Pit he says he hasn’t gotten paid for last month. You might try an email him.
I hear the Army is hiring…
There are any number of construction companies working in that region, but most of the big employers are in Iraq at the moment. This is one such company.
There are a ton of jobs in the Gulf, ranging from teaching ESL (what I did in Qatar) to management of various stores and inventory, logistics, etc. Obviously most westerners working in the Gulf are in the petroleum biz in one way or the other.
The unskilled labor is primarily from the Indian Subcontinent, Iran, poorer Arab nations, Afghanistan & Southeast Asia. I found meeting these people as interesting as meeting the minority native population (Saudi is a bigger country with its own domestic labor force, supplemented by foreign grunts and western techies.) You can’t get these jobs and trust me, you don’t want to! The contracts are virtual indentured sevitude, run for 2 years and pay crap. Sometimes they ‘forget’ to pay at all for months at a time; keep in mind these are countries which only formally abolsihed slavery within the last couple of generations.
If you think you can live in a Muslim society for 1 to (more likely) 2-4 years (looks like the standard petro job was a 3.5 yr commitment), and if you already lead a more or less suburban, car-oriented lifestyle, you may find it to your liking. If you need to be able to walk to the corner bar, deli and coffe shop… eh, maybe not.
Crime is very low, food is good, health care is provided (I don’t have this at home!), 90% of what you’d buy at home is availble easily etc etc. Wages are good to great (for white folks doing technical stuff; for the unskilled swarthy folk, life ain’t so great). As far as nightlife/lifestyle, it varies greatly. Abu Dhabi, Dubai & to a lesser extent Manama are party towns of a sort. White sand becahes, opulent malls, Britsih DJs, aggressive Russian hookers. Qatar’s somewhere in the middle, a warm bath. Saudi and Al 'Ain are places I wouldn’t suggest unless you’re in a 12-step alcohol skipping program, and you’ve either brought your spouse or had your gonads removed. Pork is out, so kiss your Spam goodbye for a bit.
If you’re female, Saudi doesn’t have much work for you outside of teaching ESL to other women. The other Gulf States do, and the fact of the matter is you’re probably safer from rapine and wolf whistles there than at home, although you could end up rather socially isolated.
The income is tax free, and between that and subsidies on energy, food and the like you can actually save money there a whole lot faster than you can at home. There are also cheap (by American standards) flights out of the Gulf from everywhere from East Africa to Thailand if you’d like to use your vacation time to travel to other cultures.
Do you think you could live somewhere where it gets to be 135 degrees or more? The air conditioning is up to stun indoors, so that’s not the issue, but the fact that you can’t really go jogging part of the year might be.
Some of the non-oil jobs you may qualify for are listed here. If you have a college degree, you may also consider ESL, although on the whole I think Gulf employers prefer people who also had ESl experience elsewhere & are more likely to expect formal training in the area than in some of the other ESL markets out there.
Hope that’s helpful.
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