GULF STATES - ECONOMICS and FINANCE - 90,000 People apply for over 200 jobs at ikea in Dubai.

Dubai - and its brands - continue to maintain strong appeal among job seekers that very few other cities can match.

To prove the point, thousands of people recently applied for just over 200 jobs at the opening of the UAE's largest IKEA store, which opened its door for public on Wednesday.

Al Futtaim Group, one of the largest family-owned businesses in Dubai, owns IKEA franchise for the UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Oman.

"Al Futtaim Group and IKEA are quite popular. But we were still taken aback when we had 90,000 application when we opened vacancies for this store. We had a fantastic support from our central HR team of Al-Futtaim. Together with our IKEA team, we had to go through all those 90,000 applications and had 36 assessment factors," Vinod Jayan, managing director of IKEA for UAE, Qatar, Egypt and Oman, said at the inauguration of IKEA's latest outlet in the UAE on Wednesday.

"And to top it all, trainers spent 550 hours training the co-workers. We have more than 200 new coworkers here (in the new...