Best CV writing company and best CV distribution company in Dubai and UAE

Most CVs sent to UAE employers are never read properly by a person. Software filters some of them out, and a recruiter with a full inbox gives the rest a few seconds each. We Find Jobs has written and distributed CVs in the UAE for over 15 years. This page explains how we do both, what each service costs, and how we compare with the other ways of getting a CV written or sent.

CV distribution across the UAE by We Find Jobs

Why does your CV carry so much weight in the UAE?

Close to nine in ten UAE residents are expatriates. That one fact shapes hiring here. An employer in Dubai is choosing between candidates from dozens of countries, with degrees from universities the hiring manager has never heard of and job titles that mean different things in different places. The CV is the only document that puts everyone on the same page. Literally.

It also gets very little time. An eye-tracking study by the US careers site Ladders found that recruiters spend about seven seconds on their first look at a CV. In those seconds they find your current job title, your current employer, your dates and your location. If they cannot find those four things quickly, they move on.

Then there is the software. Banks, airlines, hotel groups and government-related companies in the UAE mostly hire through applicant tracking systems such as Workday, Oracle Taleo and SAP SuccessFactors. The system reads your CV, pulls out the text and stores it in fields. A recruiter then searches those fields by keyword. A CV built in a two-column design template often comes out of that process scrambled, with the phone number sitting in the middle of the work history.

UAE recruiters also look for things that recruiters elsewhere never ask about. Are you already in the country? What visa are you on? How long is your notice period? A candidate on a cancelled visa who can start next week is often worth more to a hiring manager than a stronger candidate who needs three months. If your CV does not answer those questions, the recruiter has to phone you to find out, and most will not bother.

So the CV has to do three jobs at once. It must survive the software, pass the seven-second look, and answer the local questions. That is what you pay a CV writer for.

What professional CV writers in Dubai do

People often think a CV writer fixes grammar and makes the page look tidy. That is the smallest part of the work. The best CV writers in Dubai spend most of their time deciding what goes in, what comes out and what goes first.

Professional CV writing by We Find Jobs

They turn duties into results.

Most people describe their job by listing what they were responsible for. “Responsible for sales in the Northern Emirates” tells a recruiter nothing they could not guess from the job title. A good writer asks questions until a number comes out. How big was the territory? What was the target? Did you hit it? The line then becomes “Grew Northern Emirates sales from AED 4.2m to AED 6.1m in two years with a team of five”. Same job. A very different candidate.

Not every role has a sales figure, and that is fine. A nurse has patient numbers per shift. An accountant has the days it takes to close the month. A site engineer has the value of the project and whether it is finished on time. Our writers know which numbers matter in which trade.

They write first for the search, then for the reader.

A recruiter using an ATS types in words like “IFRS”, “Primavera P6” or “DHA licence”. If those exact words are not on your CV, you do not appear in the results. It does not matter how good you are. Our writers read job adverts for your target role, pick out the terms that keep coming up, and work them into your CV where they are true. Every CV is then put through an ATS scan before it goes back to you.

After the software comes the person. This stage is where native English writers earn their fee. A hiring manager in Dubai may read forty CVs before lunch, and even if the reader cannot say what is wrong, they will notice awkward phrasing. Native English writers write all CVs at We Find Jobs. You can read more about how our team works on our page about our CV and resume writing experts and about the approach we take to create CVs that win interviews in the UAE.

They know what to leave out.

A twenty-year career does not need twenty years of detail. The last ten years have got the space. Older jobs get one line each. School results come off once you have a degree, and the line “References available on request” comes off for everybody. Cutting is hard to do on your CV because every job felt important when you were doing it. A writer has no such attachment.

If you want to try it yourself first, our guide on how to write a perfect CV for UAE jobs walks through each section. Many people start there, get stuck on the profile paragraph, and then call us.

How a UAE CV differs from a UK, US or Australian one

A lot of CV advice online targets London, New York or Sydney. Some of it works in the UAE, and some of it will hurt you. We read what CV writers in those countries publish, keep what suits this market and drop the rest. The table shows where the four markets differ.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

From UK writers, we take the short personal profile at the top: four or five lines that say who you are and what you want next. From American resume writers, we take the habit of putting a number in every bullet point and cutting anything that does not earn its place. Australian writers are strict about stating work rights in plain words, and we copy that for visa status, because it is the first thing a UAE recruiter looks for.

What we do not copy is the rule against personal details. Equality law in those three countries prohibits including photos, age, and nationality. The UAE works differently. Employers here sponsor your visa, so they need to know your nationality and your current visa position before they can even cost the hire. Leave those off, and you look like someone who has copied a template from abroad.

There are a few other local details. Add a UAE mobile number if you have one, since many recruiters will not dial an international number for a first call. Mention a UAE driving licence for any sales, site or field role. State your notice period. And if your degree certificate is already attested, say so, because attestation can hold up a visa for weeks. Our article on writing a professional CV for the UAE job market covers these points in more depth.

CV writing for Abu Dhabi and Sharjah

Dubai and Abu Dhabi are 140 km apart and hire in different ways. Dubai’s job market is mostly private companies, free zone firms and regional head offices. Abu Dhabi has far more government and semi-government employers, including the big energy, aviation, healthcare and investment groups, and many of them recruit through their own career portals.

That changes the CV. Portal applications are read by software first, so keywords and clean formatting matter even more than they do in Dubai. Job titles should match the titles the employer uses, since a “Contracts Engineer” searching in a portal that calls the role “Contracts Specialist” may never be found. Private companies with 50 or more staff also have yearly Emiratisation targets, so UAE nationals should make their status obvious at the top of the first page.

Professional CV writers in Abu Dhabi also need to know the licensing bodies. A doctor or nurse needs a Department of Health licence there, while Dubai uses the DHA. Teachers deal with ADEK in one emirate and the KHDA in the other. Submitting the incorrect licence on the CV may result in rejection during the initial screening. You can see the Abu Dhabi service on our CV writing page for Abu Dhabi.

Sharjah is different again. It has a large manufacturing and logistics base, several universities and lower salaries than Dubai, and many people live in Sharjah while working in Dubai. If you are open to jobs in both emirates, say so on the CV. We cover that in our CV writing on the Sharjah page and Dubai roles on our CV writing on the Dubai page.

How CV distribution works

Job boards only show you the vacancies that employers chose to advertise. A large share of jobs in the UAE are filled another way. A manager asks HR whether they have anyone on file, HR searches the CVs already sitting in the inbox, and somebody gets a phone call. No advert is ever posted.

CV distribution puts your CV in those inboxes. We email it directly to the HR departments, hiring managers and recruitment firms in our database. They read it and file it, and they call you when it fits a role they need to fill. The replies go to your own phone and email, so you speak to the employer directly from the first contact.

Direct CV distribution to UAE employers and recruiters

We Find Jobs introduced this service to the UAE more than 15 years ago. Nobody else was doing it then. Other firms have since copied the model, which we take as a compliment. What they could not copy is the database. The best CV distribution companies in Dubai all depend on one thing: a list of employers they built themselves, and ours has had more than 15 years of work put into it.

Who it suits

Distribution works best for people whose skills are needed by many employers. Accountants, engineers, sales staff, nurses, teachers, IT support, HR officers, drivers and hospitality staff all fall into that group. It also suits people who have just arrived on a visit visa and have a fixed number of weeks to find work. Sending 40 applications a day by hand will not cover the market in that time. A distribution run will.

It suits newcomers from abroad too. If you are still in Manila, Lahore, Cairo or Manchester, you do not know which UAE companies hire people like you. We do.

Who should think twice?

We would sooner tell you this before you pay. If your CV is weak, distribution just shows a weak CV to more people, so get it rewritten first. If your field is very narrow, with perhaps thirty employers in the whole country, you are better off writing to those thirty yourself. And if you are job hunting quietly while employed, tell us before anything is sent.

No CV distribution company can promise you a job or an interview, and you should distrust any that does. Hiring decisions belong to employers. What distribution changes is how many of them see your CV. You can read the full details on our CV distribution page and in our piece on CV writing and CV distribution in Dubai.

Why We Find Jobs is the best CV writing and CV distribution company in the UAE.

Every company on the first page of Google says it is the best. We think We Find Jobs is the best CV writing service in the UAE and the best CV distribution service in Dubai, and we will make that case with things you can check for yourself.

We have been here for over 15 years.

CV companies come and go in Dubai. A website goes up, runs adverts for a year and disappears, and the clients who paid have nobody to call. We Find Jobs is a genuine service that has run in the UAE for over 15 years, including the pandemic years. Our office is in Dubai Media City. Our phone line, +971 55 429 4595, is answered from 9am to 6pm Dubai time. You can read about the company on our About page.

We started CV distribution in this country.

We were the first company to offer CV distribution in the UAE. That head start matters for a practical reason. A distribution database goes stale quickly because HR staff change jobs and company email addresses die. A list bought last year is already full of dead addresses. Ours has been updated and cleaned for over 15 years, covering more than 200,000 employers and recruiters in the UAE and about 700,000 across the GCC.

Our writers are native English speakers.

Many CV writing companies in Dubai send the writing to the cheapest freelancer they can find. You can usually tell from the result. Ours are written by native English writers who know UAE job titles, UAE licensing bodies and British spelling, and each CV is scanned for ATS before delivery.

CV writing for the UAE job market

Writing and distribution come from one company.

Most firms do one or the other. A writer hands you a PDF and wishes you luck. A distribution firm sends whatever you give it, good or bad. We do both, and the VIP pack joins them up. Your CV is written, your LinkedIn profile is updated to match, and the finished CV goes to more than 200,000 UAE employers. That takes about ten days and costs AED 400.

You get a report.

With many distribution services, you pay, wait and never find out what happened. Our Diamond pack ends with a full report when the distribution is finished, so you can see what was sent.

Other people say so.

More than 650 clients have left positive reviews of We Find Jobs on Reviews.io, HiDubai and Yello. These are sites we do not control and cannot edit. Close to a million people follow us on social media, LinkedIn included. The business has also received awards from Corporate Vision, MEA Markets and The Business Concept.

Our prices are on the website

You should not have to send your CV to a stranger to find out what a rewrite costs. Ours costs AED 150, AED 200 or AED 300 by seniority, and every distribution pack has a fixed price. They are all listed further down this page and on our services page.

How we compare with the alternatives

A job seeker in the UAE has about five ways to get a CV written and in front of employers. Each has a place. This is how they differ.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

A word on recruitment agencies, because people confuse them with us. UAE labour law bars agencies from charging job seekers a recruitment fee, so the employer pays the fee instead. That means the agency works for the employer. It will put you forward if you match a vacancy on its books this month, and it will call only if you do. This is a good service, and you should register with agencies. But ten agencies might have 300 open roles between them, while a distribution run reaches employers who have not briefed any agency at all.

Free CV builders are useful for a first draft. The trouble is what they produce: sidebars, icons, skill bars and two columns, which look smart on screen and fall apart inside an ATS. They also follow American rules, so they tell you to remove your photo and nationality.

Even among the best CV writing companies in the UAE, there are gaps. Some do not publish prices. Some have no UAE phone number. Several opened in the last few years and have a handful of reviews, and very few both write the CV and distribute it. We have done all of these things and have for over 15 years. That is our case for being counted among the best CV writers in the UAE, and you can test each point before you spend a dirham.

Packages and prices

These are our CV distribution packs. The numbers are the employers and recruiters each pack reaches.

Swipe the table sideways to see every column.

CV distribution packs for the UAE and the GCC

CV writing on its own costs AED 150, AED 200 or AED 300. The price follows your level, because a director’s CV takes a writer much longer than a graduate’s. LinkedIn profile writing uses the same three prices. Details are on the CV writing page.

Which pack should you choose? If you only want Dubai or Abu Dhabi and your CV is already in good shape, Silver is enough. Most people who want the whole country take Diamond. If your CV has not been touched in years, VIP is the sensible one, since buying writing and Diamond separately would cost more. Royal is for people who would move to Riyadh or Doha for the right offer.

How to check a CV company before you pay

Use these seven checks on any company, including us. They take about fifteen minutes, and the best CV writing companies in Dubai will pass all of them.

1. Ask who will write the CV.

Find out whether the writer is a native English speaker and whether they have written for your industry in the UAE. A company that cannot tell you who does the writing is usually sending the work abroad for a fraction of what you paid.

2. Check the price is published

Good CV writing companies in Dubai put their prices on the website. If you have to send your CV first to get a quote, the quote will depend on how worried you sound.

3. Read reviews on sites the company does not control.

Testimonials on a company’s own page prove nothing. Look on reviews. io, HiDubai, Yello or Google, and read the three-star reviews as well as the five-star ones.

4. Ask how the CV is tested for ATS.

The answer should mention a real scan and a plain single-column layout. If the sample CVs on the site use two columns, coloured sidebars or skill bars, walk away.

5. Look for a UAE phone number and address.

Call the number during office hours. A company with a Dubai address and a person who answers the phone is a company you can go back to if something is wrong.

6. For distribution, ask for the numbers and the report.

Ask how many employers the CV goes to, in which emirates or countries, over how many days, and what report you get at the end. Vague answers mean a small list.

7. Be suspicious of job guarantees.

Any company that guarantees you a job is lying to you. Only an employer can offer a job.

Senior CVs, LinkedIn and the wider Gulf

Director and C-level CVs

Executive CVs follow different rules. Nobody hires a chief financial officer from a keyword search. The CV is read by a search consultant and then by a board, and they want scale before anything else. What was the revenue? How many people reported to you? Which countries? The first half page should answer those questions. A senior CV can run to three pages, and it should name the deals, turnarounds or market entries you led. We write these separately from standard CVs, as explained on our C-level CV writing in Dubai and the UAE page.

LinkedIn

UAE recruiters search LinkedIn every working day, and they check your profile after reading your CV. If the two do not match, they notice. Dates that differ by a few months look careless. A missing job looks like you are hiding something.

LinkedIn profile writing by We Find Jobs

The headline matters most because it is the line recruiters see in search results. “Seeking new opportunities” wastes it. Senior Accountant | IFRS | VAT | Dubai” gets found. Set your location to the UAE city you want to work in, even if you haven’t moved yet, and say in the summary when you can relocate. Our LinkedIn profile service brings your profile in line with your new CV.

Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the rest of the GCC

Plenty of UAE job seekers are also open to Saudi Arabia, where the giga-projects are hiring engineers, project managers and hospitality staff in large numbers. Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain hire in smaller volumes, mostly in energy, banking, healthcare and education. Each country has its own nationalisation rules, so say on the CV which countries you would move to. The Royal pack covers all six states. We have a page for each country: Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Kuwait, Oman and Bahrain, plus one for the UAE.

Mistakes that get UAE CVs rejected

We see the same problems every week. Most take ten minutes to fix once you know about them.

• A two-column template from a design app. It looks acceptable and the ATS cannot read it.
• Phone number and email placed in the Word header. Many parsers skip headers, so the recruiter has a CV with no contact details.
• No visa status. The recruiter assumes the worst and moves to the next CV.
• A selfie or a cropped wedding photo. Use a plain passport-style picture in business clothes.
• One CV sent for every job. An accountant applying for audit and for credit control needs two versions with different first halves.
• Job descriptions copied from the company’s HR manual. Recruiters have read those sentences a hundred times.
• A file called “CV final new 2.docx”. Name it with your name and job title.
• Gaps left unexplained. A year off for family or study is fine if you say so. Silence looks worse.
• Four or five pages. Cut it to two.

One more, and it is the most common of all. People write their CV once, when they arrive, and never update it. Three years later they are applying with a document that stops at the job before last. Update the CV every time you change role, win a big account or finish a course. Then it is ready on the day you need it. Current vacancies are on our jobs page if you want to see what employers are asking for right now.

Questions people ask us

More reading from We Find Jobs

We have written about most of these subjects at greater length.

• Best CV writing services in the UAE and best CV writing services in Dubai, for a closer look at the writing service in each market
• Why job seekers choose We Find Jobs for CV and resume writing
• Best CV and resume writing services in Dubai and the UAE
• The top CV and resume writing services in Dubai and the UAE
• Best CV writing and CV distribution in Dubai and the UAE

This article was written by We Find Jobs about its own services. Prices are in UAE dirhams and may change. No CV writing or CV distribution service can guarantee a job or an interview call.