PRESS RELEASE: MTestHub Appoints Industry Veteran Partha Roy Chowdhury as Strategic Partnerships Advisor – MENA Region to Drive Skills-First AI Hiring Across the GCC

DUBAI, UAE — October 2026 — Bringing over 30 years of global talent acquisition, employment media, and HR-tech leadership to guide Middle East employers into the AI-driven recruitment era.

Official Executive Statement

When I first landed in the UAE in the early 2000s, I brought over 15 years of global media planning and target-audience communication experience into a region undergoing massive industrial expansion. High-tech manufacturing plants, oil and gas infrastructure, transportation networks, and modern healthcare facilities were springing up rapidly across the GCC.

Yet, true to Philip Kotler’s classic observation, out of all the "4Ps," “PEOPLE” proved to be the most inelastic & complex challenge. While global technology providers built advanced facilities, finding and retaining talent with matching skills was an entirely different ballgame—the MENA region was often a low priority for top global talent, leading to high turnover. To bridge this gap, I established the MENA region’s first specialized Employment Communications Media Agency, creating strong employer brands across 11 industry verticals.

In the second decade, as digital and social media overtook traditional print channels, I helped regional HR teams navigate the digital shift—assisting early teams at regional job boards and social networks in understanding and establishing their presence across the GCC. I also helped create Enterprise ATS engines from scratch, and as my later focus turned to healthcare recruitment, I mastered the strict PQRs (Pre-Qualification-Requirements) frameworks of regulators like DHA, MOH, DOH, and SCFHS. This further led to co-creating specialized matching platforms like TalentFind (TFM), embedding medical PQRs into AI engines to align clinicians with regulatory standards.

Yet over these two decades, two persistent flaws have largely remained unchanged: (a) hiring teams rarely know their true shortlist criteria and keep producing vague job descriptions, and (b) the candidates present keyword-stuffed CVs that fail to prove actual competency. We all know - in traditional recruitment, more than 9 out of 10 shortlisted candidates are never hired, thus wasting vast organizational resources, and the worst—the final pick is also usually a compromise. The advent of half-baked AI & AI practitioners has only compounded these mistakes, and I daresay—the result is there for all to see.

Now in this third decade, we are witnessing a very rapid rush into artificial intelligence, but the market is far from using AI correctly. To date, people have not learned to use Microsoft Excel to its capabilities—AI is a far cry. Moreover, the AI training companies proclaim at the top of their lungs that ‘no domain knowledge is needed.' Within 28 days, they guarantee anyone can become a Shakespeare, a Picasso, or even an Einstein. But if that were true, why aren't Picassos littered across enterprises? Every business owner knows something; business success requires deep domain expertise in every role, combining specialized knowledge to create true differentiators. It’s your people who run your businesses—garbage in, garbage out.

This is why I see a clear role for myself again. I spent six months evaluating MTestHub before agreeing to join as Strategic Partnerships Advisor – UAE. You definitely need one demonstration of the MTestHub platform to appreciate the deep work that has gone behind creating this powerful AI tool & platform. It moves past hastily written JDs and 2-page CVs to identify true role fit before an interview takes place.

MTestHub solves a genuine market need by replacing subjective ‘resume-first’ guesswork with objective, skills-first’ validation through AI-driven job simulations, adaptive evaluations, anti-cheat proctoring, and much more. And the best part is, you don’t pay anything if you can’t hire through MTH.

— Partha Roy Chowdhury - Strategic Partnerships Advisor – MENA Region, MTestHub, can be reached by email at partha@mtesthub.com, and via LinkedIn at: https://www.linkedin.com/in/partharoychowdhury/