Qatar rail jobs represent great opportunities for Australian engineers

The first contracts for one of the largest engineering jobs in Qatar in recent years were awarded this week and the news is a reminder to Australian engineers that rail projects in Qatar will deliver a great many engineering job opportunities.

In all US$36bn of contracts will be awarded as Qatar seeks to transform its rail infrastructure in the run up to the FIFA World Cup in 2022.

Egis Rail and Jacobs are among the early winners, taking the project management and engineering contracts for the red and gold lines. Hill will manage the third green line.

Leighton, who have the contract to build a battery operated tram system to move students around Doha Education city, are hopeful that this role will open up opportunities on the main Doha Metro.

Elsewhere in Qatar, Lusail City’s light-rail transit system is expected to be finished in August 2016

Rail forms a key element of a massive expansion in Qatar. Construction activity involves four central projects: those planned for the World Cup; the $11bn Doha Airport (in two sections from 2012 to 2015.) Thirdly, $8bn Doha Port, to be completed in 2016 for phase one, with total completion in 2030.

All this is in addition to the $25bn of rail expenditure.

Across the GCC region, rail projects are plentiful. In Saudi, Construction has begun on the first high speed passenger line between Makkah and Madinah which is expected to be complete by January 2014. New railway and expansion rail jobs currently in process in the kingdom include North-South Rail, the Land-bridge Project (between Riyadh and Jeddah), and the GCC Railway, which is set to connect the six GCC members - Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, UAE, and Saudi Arabia, and Oman.

75% of Qatar’s revenues for this investment  come from it’s oil and gas sales, bolstered of late by increases in LNG exports, the revenues of which will leave the country with a comfortable budget surplus, regardless of their plans for all of this additional sustained expenditure.

All of this paints a fairly clear picture: if you’re thinking of an expat life style but you had ruled out the Middle East (based on perceptions of what it would be like to work in the region) you should take another look at Qatar.

Qatar plays host to large numbers of Commonwealth expats; and growing numbers of foreigners are working in Qatar to save money in the tax-free environment, and maintain a standard of living and wealth comparable to home. The kicker? Qatar has the highest per capita income in the world.

What’s not to like?


See immediate open Qatar Rail jobs.

Your Facebook page poses professional problems right now (even without those photos.)

 

When Mark Zuckerberg updated his Facebook status from single to married this week, he probably wasn’t thinking it could affect his chances of getting his next job. And in the case of the internet billionaire, it probably won’t. But as Facebook becomes a standard tool for recruiters, even the most innocuous details could lead to missed opportunities, ethical mis-steps and ultimately legal trouble.

The amount of information we choose to publish about ourselves on the web is increasing rapidly. The uptake of sites such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn and personal blogs is becoming more and more prevalent with a current estimation of 900 million Facebook users, 250 million Twitter users and 150 million LinkedIn users.
When individuals choose which social media they want to be a part of, do they also need to draw the distinction between business and personal social media? Is the line between them becoming blurred? The answer is yes and no.

LinkedIn profiles have always been positioned as a business networking tool, and businesses have recognised the benefits and started to publically embrace the opportunities that sit with Facebook, Twitter and Blogs through their external product and service branding strategies. So, there is a definite business connection to Linkedin but recruiters need to be careful with what potential candidates say about themselves on Facebook and Twitter as these are still highly personal domains and can cross legal implications for recruiters, for example, religious views.

What are the ethics when it comes to organisations looking at candidates social media profile? Are we saying that some media is ok and some are not? Should a user even be concerned that they may be judged on what their profiles say about them? For example, young recently married women are notoriously unpopular with small business owners who fear the disruption and expense of a pregnancy. The law is there to prevent these questions being asked at interview, but it’s not there when the owner is checking Facebook. Unscrupulous employers can sidestep the spirit of legislation, with a lot of help from the job seeker.

Research from psychological studies have started to report it is possible to make accurate judgements about individuals on the personal attributes they exhibit just by looking and analysing their Facebook profile. The content of the profile can say a lot about the individual such as the photo’s displayed, the type of status updates and their likes and dislikes.

These pointers can be used as indicators on which to extrapolate and interpolate against the mainstays of identifiable qualities that make up good employees such as:

• Emotional stability
• Concienciousness
• Extroversion
• Intellectuality
• Agreeability

The Facebook profile can exhibit much information not only by the content on the page but the impression conjured by reading between the lines. It is not only what’s on the page but what’s not on the page that can bring about these additional insights.

Facebook privacy profiles are there for a reason, and must be respected by those hoping to carry out due diligence on individuals. However, a study from CareerBuilder has shown that 45% of employers admitted to looking at candidate social media during the hiring process.

Due to the popularity of the social media space, the line that divides acceptable use of social media to make judgements is inevitably going to change position over time. That said, it is very important to manage the way individual profiles are built and presented as they may be used to make value judgements about who we are and how good an employee we’d make.

It’s not just about hiding obviously sensitive material – those shots of your bachelor party in the Electric Pink Pussycat Club probably need to come down – it’s also about the details that identify aspects of your life where the law has been set up to offer you protection.







Trevor Burne is Managing Director of Talascend. He blogs about Australian engineering jobs, and issues affecting Australian Engineers.