Job Offer

Hi kinanhaffar,

Welcome to Expat-blog!

Hope members will advice you soon.

Wish you good luck
Christine

Hi kinanhaffar

Welcome to Expat-blog.

You have good experience so that do not accept salary less than 2000KD plus car and phone allowance

Thanks  for the advice, actually I'm trying to negotiate for what you mentioned.

Regards.

Preach it Moo!!

whats up willy ?

hey Moo, What do ya know!!

I know the IT industry, but am fairly new to Kuwait myself, so I won't pretend to know exactly the way things work here, however, I will make the following points.


Qualifications are not everything. This applies to any industry. Qualifications are absolutely worthless without relevant experience. Qualifications are only there to support your experience and your applications for jobs (and perhaps entitle you to memberships with vendors and various organisations).


Your experience and qualifications may or may not be relevant to the job you are applying for or the one being offered to you. This is important to bear in mind as you may be an expert in X, Y and Z but are being offered a job that requires skills in A, B and C. In this case, you need to either accept the fact that you are underqualified for the position and take the offer or continue your search for a position that more closely matches your experience, skills and speclialisation. This will maximise your value to your prospective employer.


Kuwait, along with various countries around the world, treats foreign applicants differently. This is also true for the USA, UK and other parts of the world. You will have to bear in mind that there must be some reason why an employer is offering a job to you and not someone else - and this may well be to save money. Hence do not always expect to be offered a package similar to someone else. You will rarely have insight into the employer's agenda and tactics.


With regards to my experience in negotiating my job offer in Kuwait prior to arriving here, I was offered a package that was not sufficiently attractive to entice me to leave where I was and move to Kuwait. However, within a number of weeks my current employer eventually contacted me with an offer that was nearly double the initial offer. It wasn't until after I arrived, though, that I later found the job I was meant to do was actually different from the job that was originally offered - hence their ability to offer a different package. In this instance it was a case of them wanting someone with particular skills rather than wanting someone to fill a particular post.


Hope some of this helps you.

Thanks for your help symboliser,

Well, regarding the experience, I have 9+ years in the IT field mostly in System Administration, and the position I am offered is IT Project Manager, so it is relevant to my experience.

There something I wanna ask about? If I want to rent an apartment, do I pay month-by-month rent? or do I have to pay in advance?

Hi there.

With regards to the experience: a project manager is not a systems administrator. I used to work for a consultancy where over 40% of our workforce were project managers. They came from different disciplines and I can tell you that project management is not a technical skill and has nothing to do with IT. If you are to be a project manager it helps to have knowledge of IT systems, but this does not make you a project manager. As I had mentioned before, you need to be careful that your skills and experience closely match the requirements of the ability to carry out the job fully, and not partially. This will have an impact on your success in your new role and will often have an impact on your negotiating power with regards to the package. The employer may know that they can hire someone with all the skills they need but it will cost them twice as much, or even more, so they may be prepared to take on someone with only a partial skill-set or experience and offer a lower package. This is all down to business sense and business risk.


With reagards to accommodation options in Kuwait, there may be other sections of this site that may be able to help. There is also a site called "Just Landed" with adverts of accommodation. However, from what I have seen since I have been here is that most apartments are unfurnished and are for a contract of one year. There are accommodation options that are by the day, week or month, fully furnished with apartment or room cleaning. These are more expensive, but not impossible. It is possible to rent a one or two bedroom apartment, unfurnished, for less than KD200 per month. For a fully furnished, serviced apartment on a month-by-month contract you will be looking at a possible minimum of KD500 per month. When you get here you will find that many of the places advertised on the Internet have agency "finders" fees attached to them (often 50% of the monthly rent value). It is common in most rental agreements to pay one month rent as deposit in addition to one month rent in advance. So for a KD500 per month apartment on a month-by-month contract you may need to fork out KD1000. I believe there are some places that will be able to rent out furnished and serviced rooms or even studio apartments at prices under KD500 per month.

Apart from housing, you will need to take into account transportation. Most people drive to work and you will quickly find that life in Kuwait without a car isn't worth living (especially for those that need to get to a place of work every day).

One final thing, check your visa, work permit, residency, etc requirements before you come over. You may need to get birth certificates, marriage certificates, driving license, university degree, police clearance certificates, medical certificates and anything else that is required to be certified by the appropriate authority (usually the foreign office) in your cuontry as well as the Kuwaiti embassy. You will struggle if anything is found to be missing or not appropriately certified.


Note to administrator:
Do we have an FAQ for the above? I would guess that some of these are common questions and would be handy to be on the site and easy to find (if they are not already there) and updated regularly.

Hello symboliser,

May be it is time to create a FAQ for the Kuwait forum. Do you want me to create it!!

Regards

Hey Yud. The "Guide" section doesn't seem very helpful. I would agree on creating an FAQ if the look and feel is user-friendly.

symboliser wrote:

The "Guide" section doesn't seem very helpful.

Why ?

This is a participative section, it depends on you

Any suggestion to make it better ?

Thanks again Symboliser;

Well, regarding my experience, I am managing most of our projects in my current job, although my title is Senior System & Database Administrator, and I am a PMP certified.

Regarding the accommodation, are you saying that for unfurnished apartment "One year contract", I have to pay the whole amount at once? i.e.: if the monthly rent is 250KD, do I have to pay 250*12=3000KD as a one payment?

Please advice.

Regards.

From what I have heard, you would have to pay 12 months in advance in Dubai. However, I have not come across this in Kuwait. The most you will be asked to pay up front is a finders fee to the estate agent (if applicable) +  one month rent + one month deposit.

Julien, "wiki"-style pages would be far more useful for the "info" or "guides". This way info can be edited and updated with a list of references (as in Wikipedia).