Finding a job after graduating from university is not necessarily the easiest thing to do. Fresh graduates all over the world need to be well prepared for the real world, ideally before they graduate. Do MENA universities prepare their students well enough for them to confidently enter the job market and fend for themselves? What challenges do university graduates face the most when trying to find a job? What about graduate employers? What skills are they looking for in graduates?

Bayt.com surveyed fresh graduates across the MENA region to reveal their beliefs and concerns about the job market in terms of employment potential, expectations, and skills. Here is what MENA graduates had to say.

Key findings:

• Most of the fresh graduates have completed their most recent education qualification in their own country of residence.
• The most commonly studied subjects include engineering (17%), accounting/ finance (16%), business/ commerce/ economics (14%), and information technology / computer science (11%).
• Respondents appear to be generally satisfied with the quality of higher education they received (81%).
• Advertising/ Marketing/ Public Relations (20%) and Military/defense/police (20%) emerged as the industry that hires the highest number of fresh graduates.
• When asked which skills they believe are required to excel in the workplace, respondents mentioned computer skills (59%) as most important, followed by Academic and technical skills, interpersonal/ team skills and linguistic skills (34%).

Data for the 2019 Bayt.com Fresh Graduates in the MENA survey was collected online from 18th April 2019 to 13th May 2019. Results are based on a sample of 1,582 respondents from the following countries: UAE, KSA, Kuwait, Oman, Bahrain, Lebanon, Jordan, Iraq, Palestine, Syria, Egypt, Morocco, Algeria, Tunisia, Libya, Sudan, and others.