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Never mind the "success stories" you see on Linkedin, job hunting - especially in Lebanon - has become a nightmare, and that's not just in advertising, it's the whole she-bang. Clientage (wasta), favoritism, fake job ads (meaning jobs already prefilled), AI (correctly adopted or not does not matter), over-education, age/race/religion/sect issues, and the list goes on endlessly. Patrick Chemali (no relation) has drawn an excellent chart about doing business in Lebanon (here), basically it tells you what you need to know. But since the situation has truly gone backwards.
Even before the crisis, someone was offered a very financially unimpressive job offer to which he said "but I have a masters' degree" - unmoved the HR simply said "ma 7ada allak tekheda!" (no one told you to get it). Of course, one hears appalling stories: A girl working for 250 USD a month had her salary deducted because she asked for a day off to attend her grandmother's funeral. And stories like these abound, inside advertising agencies, and speak not of freelancing where there is none. The Gulf is full of people being let go in massive numbers, and all companies are squeezing their budget spending, relying on AI instead of actual people.
The other day on Linkedin someone wanted a logo, a selling line (even if the person in question labeled it "phrase"), all the deliverables (meaning card, envelopes, stationary), all for a (measly) 400 USD. The issue is that there are people ready to do all this for that price. Something which normally took agencies ages in gestation (I remember those 40 page-documents we used to send which detailed how logos would be used and adapted and how they would look on different backgrounds, the do's and dont's etc....). But there you go, 400 USD and Bob's your uncle.
A major hotel chain - with several hotels in the Gulf region - has let go of all of its regional marketing team keeping only the positions in France to manage everything from there. The former team, despite their extensive experience - and this is literally a full year ago - still did not find alternative positions or employment.
Someone told me yesterday that he knew people getting recruited in senior positions in the Gulf (in this case it was Dubai, UAE) for the same salary he started off with in 2003: 2300 USD. And the squeeze continues, and no, these are not imagined numbers or falsified tales.
This is what is happening, if you shield your face like an ostrich it does not mean this will alter the current reality.