Hiring becomes a resilience signal as firms split over supply-chain preparedness

Whether a GCC industrial firm is still hiring is one of the clearest tells of whether it planned for this year’s shipping-cost shock. Companies that built contingency plans after covid and the war in Ukraine kept recruiting through the latest disruption. Those that didn’t build plans froze headcount, and, instead of securing new supply, ran down the stock they already had, says Zeina Karrit, founder of Unicorn Talent GCC, a boutique executive-search firm specializing in the Gulf’s digital and industrial transformation. “Prepared companies saw the risk coming and kept hiring. Unprepared ones froze, then started reacting after the damage was done,” she tells EnterpriseAM.

Why it matters: Hiring has become a resilience signal in a sector where the disruption is still playing out. This isn’t the Gulf’s first supply-chain shock, and Karrit’s read is that the firms treating it as a recurring risk rather than a one-off are the ones still growing through it. She expects the gap between prepared and unprepared firms to widen through 4Q and into 1Q 2027, with the firms that fell back on existing inventory taking the heavier hit.

The perception that GCC hiring has stalled and firms are shedding staff doesn’t match what Karrit sees. Hospitality and real estate have felt the impact most directly, but across industrial, manufacturing, and supply-chain roles, hiring has largely continued.

In Saudi Arabia, a second squeeze is coming from compliance. “A green Nitaqat rating is no longer enough on its own,” Karrit says. “What increasingly counts is whether Saudi nationals hold real roles in the right functions, and whether those roles are registered accurately. A year ago the overall rating carried most of the weight; now regulators and clients are looking more closely at where Saudis actually sit in the organization.”

REMEMBER- The April Nitaqat Mutawar cycle made function-level quotas the binding constraint. That means a company can be green on its overall Saudization rate and still trigger a violation in a single department.

Competition for those nationals is fierce, and keeping them now takes more than pay. “A 5% raise or office perks won’t hold top talent with options across the Gulf. What increasingly does is long-term incentives, such as deferred bonuses, retention plans or equity where the company’s structure allows it,” she says.

Saudi cities now compete for that talent head-on. Candidates who once looked only at Dubai and Abu Dhabi now weigh Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Oman too. She puts this down to Saudi Arabia’s social reforms since 2019, Riyadh’s build-out as a financial hub, and carriers like Riyadh Air drawing in global talent. She sees the Kingdom as a large market where demand for experienced talent still outstrips supply, and points to European firms in particular expanding there despite the current disruption.

What’s next: Karrit expects the divide to harden as AI adoption compounds the pressure. The firms that make it into the next phase are the ones with the vision, infrastructure, and talent to absorb the shifts at once, while the rest get cleared out.