What Jadarat is
Jadarat (جدارات) is the national unified employment platform (المنصة الوطنية الموحدة للتوظيف) in Saudi Arabia. The Human Resources Development Fund (صندوق تنمية الموارد البشرية, HRDF), known by its brand name Hadaf (هدف), describes it on its page for the platform as a national platform that aims to be the main enabler of employment for the Saudi workforce, by unifying and simplifying the journey of job seekers towards a suitable job in public sector and private sector establishments.
The same page states that the Fund runs Jadarat, on the basis of Council of Ministers Resolution (قرار مجلس الوزراء) No. 241 dated 18/3/1445H. The Fund cites that resolution as the basis on which it runs the platform. We did not obtain the text of the resolution itself, so we cannot describe its scope, and nothing below attributes any provision to it.
Jadarat is a platform, not a programme
Two misreadings of Jadarat can arise, and the Fund’s page for the platform rules out both:
- A training programme. It is not one. Its function is to post vacancies and connect job seekers with them. It offers no training content, no stipend and no placement for training on the job.
- A portal for government jobs alone. It is not that either. The parties it serves include government and semigovernmental entities, and also private sector establishments together with the nonprofit establishments and foreign investment establishments that the page treats alongside them.
The practical difference is that Jadarat answers the question of where a step is carried out. It does not answer the question of what requires that step. A document that cites Jadarat as the source of an obligation has cited a channel where a rule was needed.
This confusion can show up in two ways. The first is an internal document that says registration on Jadarat is required without naming the programme that requires it, so that a condition attached to one particular product is taken as a general rule. The second is the belief that posting a vacancy on Jadarat creates an entitlement. Posting a vacancy creates none by itself.
Who Jadarat serves and what is posted on it
The Fund’s page names three groups:
- Saudi job seekers.
- Government and semigovernmental entities.
- Private sector establishments, and the establishments treated alongside them. For an establishment, the page requires registration with the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Development and a commercial registration (سجل تجاري).
The page also states that the user of the platform must be of Saudi nationality. On the direction of vacancies it gives a plain answer: asked whether the jobs advertised are directed exclusively at Saudi citizens, it answers yes.
The two establishment conditions apply together, not as alternatives. The establishment is registered with the Ministry and also holds a commercial registration. A description that mentions only one of them widens access beyond what the page states. This has a practical effect for an establishment that holds no commercial registration: the reference for its position is the platform’s page itself, not an analogy with some other case.
What Jadarat replaced
The Fund’s page states that Jadarat replaces the Jadara platform (جدارة), and that it was introduced to cover all sectors without exception. That is what the page says about itself, and nothing further should be attributed to it. The page names no other platform, so a statement that Jadarat replaced a platform the page does not name attributes to the page something it does not say.
This is the point at which the source can be overstated, by writing that Jadarat replaced Taqat (طاقات), or that Taqat was abolished. What we found comes to three things:
- The Fund’s page for Jadarat names Jadara alone as the platform it replaced.
- In one of the Fund’s products, the conditions named registration on Taqat in an edition from 2020, and name registration on Jadarat in the current text, in the same place in the same product.
- The Fund’s current programme guide for individuals names Jadarat and does not name Taqat.
The most that follows from this is that the function moved within the conditions of that product. That is not the same as an announcement that a platform was abolished. In the sources we reviewed, we found no announcement setting out the current status of Taqat, and we state none. The position that can be written today is that registration takes place on Jadarat, because the current documents say so. Writing that Taqat was abolished, or that Taqat became Jadarat, attributes each claim to a source that did not make it.
Where Jadarat appears as a condition
In the conditions of the Fund’s product that we reviewed, Jadarat plays the part of a registration channel, not a benefit. In the Employment Support product (دعم التوظيف), which the Fund offers to private sector establishments, the beneficiary must be registered on Jadarat. The additional support set for a person with a disability in the same product also depends on that person’s data being registered on the national unified employment platform. It is not earned merely because the person has a disability.
The registration condition does not stand alone. It is one item in a list that has to be taken whole. The Fund requires the beneficiary of that product to be Saudi; to be aged between 18 and 60; not to be a student according to the Ministry of Education; to be neither a government employee nor an employer; to be registered on Jadarat; and to be registered with social insurance (GOSI) by the same establishment and not by any other.
One error in this area is to quote the registration condition by itself, as though it were the condition. It is one of six conditions, and all six have to be met together. A person registered on Jadarat who fails another condition does not qualify.
The phrase “employment support” can also be used in a wider sense, as a collective name for a family of government programmes rather than the name of one programme. The conditions above belong to the one Fund product of that name, not to the family as a whole. We do not hold a list of the programmes that require registration on Jadarat. Employment Support is the product whose conditions we reviewed, and we do not extend them to any other programme. For a particular programme, the conditions are those set out in that programme’s announcement.
Where Jadarat sits in an establishment’s hiring
Jadarat is a channel for advertising and reach. It does not change what comes before it or what comes after it. A large number of job seekers in a market says nothing by itself about an establishment’s ability to hire, and an establishment that reports a shortage of candidates in such a market may have a problem with reach, with its hiring standard or with its advertisement. Which channel each hire actually came from is a separate measure: source of hire.
That marks out what an advertising platform can address and what it cannot. It can improve reach. It cannot correct a standard written against something other than what the role requires. Where the fault lies in the standard, the vacancy stays open on the widest channel available, and the days it stays open count towards its time to fill. The standard against which an applicant is measured is drafted through job analysis and through the role’s competencies, not through the channel used to publish the vacancy.
One question can be asked before a vacancy is published. Have candidates already reached this vacancy and then stopped at a particular stage? If they have, the problem lies after reach, and publishing on a wider channel can add to the number who stop at that same stage. If nobody has reached the vacancy at all, the channel is where to look.
In the sources we reviewed, we found nothing attributing to advertising on Jadarat any effect on a ratio or a classification that concerns the establishment.
Jadarat and the other products of the same Fund
Part of the confusion comes from the fact that the body that runs Jadarat also offers the electronic training programme Doroob (دروب) and a number of support products. Having one administrator can suggest that the products share one set of rules. They do not.
Jadarat deals with a vacancy that is advertised and a job seeker who reaches it. A training programme deals with content that is studied, whose cost the Fund bears, in full or in part, for the groups it targets. The effects differ accordingly. Nothing in the Fund’s pages we reviewed treats registration on one as registration on the other. The conditions of each are taken from that product’s own terms, and neither is used as evidence about the other, even though both come from the same Fund.
The general form of the error in this setting is to group names together because they share a source, and then to carry a condition, a duration or an amount from one of them to another.
Cases at the edge of Jadarat’s scope
- A vacancy open to people who are not Saudi nationals. It does not use Jadarat as its channel, because the platform’s page states that the jobs advertised on it are directed exclusively at citizens. No ruling on that vacancy itself follows from this. Whether and how such a vacancy may be filled is a separate question with its own sources.
- An establishment that meets the registration conditions and does not advertise. Registration does not produce candidates. It makes posting possible. An establishment that registers and then waits has made no procedural error; it has stopped before the procedure was complete.
- A registered job seeker expecting an effect in a support product. Registration is a condition of that product, and the application is a separate act made through the product’s own route. Meeting the condition is not the same as applying.
- Nonprofit establishments and foreign investment establishments. Both are named on the platform’s page among the establishments treated alongside the private sector, so describing Jadarat as a platform for the public and private sectors alone is inaccurate. The registration conditions apply to them as they apply to any other establishment.
Before a procedure is built on Jadarat
The account above follows the Fund’s page for Jadarat as it stood when we reviewed it, and that page carries the date of its last update. A platform’s conditions and screens change by decision of the body that runs it, so none of the above should be presented as a live reading of what is displayed today. The registration screens on Jadarat, its procedures and its processing times are operational details that change, and the reference for them is the platform itself at the time of use. An establishment that wants to register or post a vacancy should check the platform directly when it does so.
One point does not change with the screens. Registration on Jadarat is a condition met within particular programmes, not an entitlement in itself. A person who registers and then waits for an effect has completed one step and has not yet made an application.
This is an explanation of the concept, not legal advice.
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