Ten Qatar Employers Share Their Favourite Interview Questions

Several people have asked us for common interview questions in Qatar.

To answer this question, we went out and asked Qatar recruiters what their favourite interview questions were - and what answer they were looking for.

The Employers

In Qatar, you can find almost every nationality under the sun.

And though the backbone of the country's economy is oil, you'll find almost every industry here.

That's why we interviewed employers from several different nationalities and industries.

Hamida, for example, is an Indian lady who runs a recruitment agency. She wanted to know why people would want to come to Qatar.

Meanwhile, Patricia, the Canadian deputy dean of the College of the North Atlantic, was interested in how people could relate current research to real life problems at work.

The Answers

We weren't just interested in what questions people asked. We also wanted to know what answers they were looking for.

Several interviewers mentioned that they weren't just interested in what people said.

Some were looking for enthusiam (a 'twinkle in the eye' said Khalifa) while others were studying body language.

To view all the questions - and answers - click here.

To keep up with our job related articles, sign up here.

Are you an employer?

We are still collecting employer's favourite questions and answers. If you have any, please send them to us!

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Servant's Stories

Servants in Qatar have taken a bit of a bashing recently.

Local newspapers have focussed on how they can't be trusted, with some Qatar Livers jumping in to agree.

To top it all off, this newspaper cartoon was published, though no one knows whether it's more maid bashing or whether it is satirising the current attitude towards servants in Qatar.


In our latest article, we asked servants from the Indonesian embassy's shelter to tell us there side of events.

See what they have to say in Servant's Stories.

Westerners care for animals, not pets?

Our most recent article is a piece about pets in Qatar.

In it Fiona Murray questions Qataris about why dogs - with the exception of Salukis - are considered dirty in Qatar, and takes a trip to the Qatar Animal Welfare Society, recently devestated by fire.

The idea for the article was sparked off by an conversation I had with a Qatar Sheikh I met in the falcon souq.

He was sitting there, a hooded bird perched on a thick glove.

He was a friendly gentleman, but got quite angry over the issue of animal rights, especially where it concerned hunting.

"You Westerners care more about animals than people," he complained. "When there are people starving to death all over the world, why are you fussing about a few animals?"

Like many people in Qatar, he can not understand Westerners' fuss over animals.

But does he have a point? Are we more concerned about animals than people?

Qatar 2022 - First Ad

This is the first ad of the Qatar 2022 bid (which I found on Naz Qatar's twitter feed.) You can also follow the bid team's effort on Twitter at (or should I say @) Qatar2022Bid.

Job Interviews: Just how useful are they?

Talking the Talk Versus Walking the Walk

We're currently interviewing interviewers about job interviews (I really wanted to say that!), and are coming up with lots of interesting material for our next website article. (Favourite interview questions in Qatar, for our Qatar jobs section!)

However, to me it seems there is a fundamental problem with interviews. Essentially, that you are always testing what people can say as opposed to what people can actually do.

Like me, you probably know people who can really talk the talk - people who sound like experts, but who are completely useless at their job.

You may also know people who aren't the best talkers, but who do quietly get on with their job - and produce really good work.

Personally, I am far more interested in what people can do than what people can say.

We only employ freelancers to work on the websites, but I recently chatted to one of these freelancers before giving her an assignment.

She really had absolutely nothing to say. She said so little, I barely knew she could speak English. She had, however, sent in a really good piece of work as an example, so I took her a risk and gave her a piece of writing to do.

She's done about eight articles for us since then, and they have all been excellent.

Which makes me wonder - just how useful are interviews?

Win a Ticket to the "After Shows Party"

I Love Qatar are running a competition to win two tickets to the After Shows Party on December 3rd in The Majlis Ballroom of the Sheraton Hotel Doha.

It's a competition with a difference, as to enter you have to suggest the theme of the next competition.

Check out The Competition Competition for details.

Do you interview people in Qatar?

Qatar Visitor is collecting popular job interview questions in Qatar.

We are also interested in whether different nationalities are looking for different things in interviews.

Essentially we want to know:

What are your favourite questions in an interview?
What are you looking for in an answer?
Your nationality.
Your company.

If you want to let us know please email us on admin [at] QatarVisitor.com, direct message us via twitter (@qatarvisitor) or leave a message on Facebook. We'll include a link to your company website with any interview questions/answers we publish.

A Test for England - and Qatar!

Also see: Qatar 2022 Bid on the website.

The football match between England and Brazil will be a test not just for England but for the tiny Gulf country of Qatar too.

It's the biggest match ever held here, and Qatar has no experience of England fans.

Journalists are here to cover the match, and are already impressed with the sporting infrastructure.

One wrote:

"This correspondent was left slack-jawed after being shown around one of its incredible sport development institutes earlier on Friday."

The country has also won praise for its sports academy.

From buying talent from abroad, Qatar has changed to recruiting the best talent, training and nurturing them, and returning them to their home country.

One thing Qatar can't do anything mcuh is the heat, at least outside the stadiums.

It's in the cool season, though unusually warm compared to previous years, yet Fabio has already joked that the best place to hold the match would be in an air-conditioned hotel.

There's also the reaction of the fans to consider when they realise they can only celebrate/commiserate the end of a match in expensive bars, where the price of a beer can sometimes approach ten pounds a pint!

She knew that they might take him!

The British community has been keenly following the heartbreaking case of the British mother whose son was abducted in Qatar.

Tricked into signing a custody form, she has now lost her young son to the family of her deceased husband.

One friend, who has lived in the Gulf for many years, tells me that the British embassy often warn British nationals seeking to get married of the possible consequences of divorce.

"You realise that if you ever separate, you may never see your child again," is the stark warning he said British nationals were given.

Unfortunately, when you are young and in love you are generally prepared to risk the consequences - if you can envision there will ever be any.

This case was slightly different, of course - it was not even the father claiming custody, but his family. Specifically, I believe, his grandmother.

Now one Qatari, though not wholly unsympathetic, writes:

"I think the mother is to be blamed. She was married to a Qatari for god sake. She knows our laws. She knew that they might take him."

You've been warned!

Qatar Martial Arts Actor

Aukment is a film starring Qatar martial arts actor, Ahmad Al-Suilaiti. I didn't actually know there was a Qatar martial arts actor, but I followed the link from Mr Q's blog post on Celebrity Qataris.

The film is actually based on Ahmad's own story. According to an interview on Qatar Happening, Ahmad ran away to Thailand to become a proffessional fighter and, as in the story, ended up joining a martial arts camp.

We're fascinated, and will try to find out more. In the meantime, enjoy the trailer below...

Qatar Visitor Friends


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Qatar Bloggers Event

ICT Qatar is holding an event for bloggers on Saturday 12th December.

The event will be held at ICT Qatar, and if past events there are anything to go by the food will be fabulous!

The event seems partly aimed at the corporate world, although I think they'll have a hard time getting the majority of Qatar companies into blogging. (And when they do they will probably be the boring company blogs no-one wants to read!)

However, the invitation does say bloggers, and even "individuals interested in blogging" should attend.

Apparently there are also some well known bloggers attending, although the flyer I have been sent doesn't say who. (I have tweeted and emailed for more info.) It could be some big names, as they had some impressive people speaking at their media conference - Darren Rowse? Shoemoey? (Update - speakers include Jeremiah Owyang, Ahmed Hamzawi, Ammar Mohamed & more - check out this page on ICT Qatar for more info.)

I think I'll do a John Chow, and just blog about the food...

Fourteen Reasons why you should leave Qatar

Before anyone accuses me of being overly negative, check out my 10 reasons to stay in Qatar. Although, worryingly, I can think of 4 more reasons to leave than to stay. Then again, I am British, and we are very good at moaning!

1. With a maid to clean and cook, you are becoming spoilt.

Or, instead of thinking how unfair it is that maids have to do all your cooking and cleaning, you spend all that valuable new free time you have moaning about servant problems.

2. You should also consider leaving if you are the maid doing the housework, and you are getting sick of spoilt expats.

3. Your children are growing up here. When you go home, it will not be their home, but at the same time they can never truly belong to Qatar. They will grow up without ever truly belonging to one place.

4. The driving and the drivers are nuts.

5. You are becoming racist. It's a strange thing, a thing which my wife pointed out to me, but many people seem to become racist here. Perhaps its human nature that a melting pot of human culture can lead more often to mutual disrespect than to mutual understanding.

6. You are sick of living by the sea but having no decent beach to visit. And while the Corniche is lovely, it drives you mad that you can't dive into that gorgous sea.

7. The weather may be okay now, but in the summer it is just way too hot.

8. If you could make as much money, or even nearly as much money, at home. Alternatively, you would make less money, but when you figure in living costs it would be the same.

9. The H Tax - (housing, according to Johnson) - the large amount of their pay some employees have to spend on housing. Although, to be fair, this is coming down.

10. The traffic is going to get worse - much worse! Did you realise that there are ten thousand new cars being added a month to the roads? Expect gridlock well before Qatar's planned train system arrives. And expect road chaos while the train system is being built.

11. If someone else with the same (or fewer) skills and the same (or less) experience as you is getting paid more because they are a different nationality.

12. If you are an Asian man and are sick of being turned away from malls because of the colour of your skin.

13. English breakfast...

14. QBS.