Tim,

I have no doubt that your intentions toward your colleagues in the US are entirely honorable. As well as this the information you provide is fair, balanced and truthful. It is what is left unsaid or unmentioned that concerns me.

You have placed yourself as the central point of contact for recruiting in North America. Even though you are self appointed you will have to bear some responsibility in the future for the new joiners who are bitterly disappointed. Your response will be to say that you have told them everything and that they come of their own volition but I don't think you have.

Your friend Gillegan makes a good point when he says the experience is different for everyone and I'm sure you would agree. A guy who joins from Korean Airlines, living overseas and with a wife and child born overseas will have a markedly different opinion to one from the mid west, employed at home with teenage kids to educate and having to wait three+ years to command.

That being said your account of the package should make it easier for this kind of prospective employee to decide that it isn't for him. However to blithely state that the traffic in Dubai are no worse than any big city is a deception. The traffic is certainly one element, but what about a statement on the safety of Sheikh Zayed Road. This is the most unsafe motorway in the world and us and our families use it on a daily basis. There is no active policing because the police fear losing their residence in the UAE because most are from Yemen, Oman and Pakistan and don't have futures at home.

Dubai is a thirld world city covered in a first world sheen. People have been arrested in public for kissing. You can't provide a truthful picture on crime in the UAE because the press isn't free and in any case that information wouldn't be made available because it would hurt the image of Dubai.

No doubt Prune has it's rabid element, but the central 80% of what the EK guys say there is true. I hope that your experience remains as positive. The problem with any contract job overseas (and ours is renewable three yearly as a visa to stay in the UAE) is how to get home. What jobs will be available to the guy returning from the wild east to take in the US that give them similar lifestyle?

It's not so much that you provide information to your friends, it's the fact that you are the self appointed boss of NA recruiting. Like the EK recruiters you provide almost all the information. Just not the stuff that really changes peoples lives.