Candidate blog: Friends and colleagues fled from Dubai after the financial crisis, but I decided to stick around. I have no regrets

If you're an expat financial professional working in Dubai, you're no doubt accustomed to having to justify your choice of career location to colleagues and friends lured to the opportunities in London, New York or Asia. But I truly believe the Middle East is the best place to be.

In 2008, people were flocking to region from all over the world only to leave a year later when things started to look up elsewhere and Dubai's star shone less brightly.

What employers in the region want is commitment, and a real understanding of how the Middle East works. I've been through the highs of Dubai, and taken some hard knocks during the financial crisis, but I've stuck it out.

I fell in love with Dubai on my first visit – I spent a semester of my MBA here and knew it was a place I wanted to work. Lifestyle is a big selling point, but there were a number of career reasons for wanting if you work in investment banking or private equity.

For a start, if you're relatively junior – an analyst or associate – your involvement in transactions in a nascent financial services market is much greater than it would be in more established locations. There's also less sector specialism, which means you have the chance to work on a diverse range of transactions. With this comes quicker progression up the ranks and usually better pay (the fixed part at least)

Not all my experiences here have been positive. My career in the UAE started in 2007 with a private equity fund. It started well - the fund managed to achieve financial close even in tough times, but after the 2008 financial crisis, deals were hard to find and finally with a lot of pressure from limited partnerships the fund wound up in 2010.

We were given three months to find another job for ourselves, or pack up and go back home. Most of my colleagues did the latter, but I saw the writing on the wall early on and had been looking for a new position for a while by the time the job cuts hit.

My reasoning was simple – I didn't want to waste the three years I'd spent building relationships and truly getting to grips with the culture by just heading back home. It's not been an easy ride; new roles have dried up since 2009, and it's rare that conventional methods of job-hunting (sending out CVs, applying to vacancies) are successful.

The advice I'd give to anyone looking for a new role in the Middle Eastern financial sector – particularly private equity – is to network as much as you possibly can.

I spent six months looking for a new job, attempting to build relationships with recruitment consultants, applying for online job adverts and using online portals, but I eventually ended up finding a role through a chance encounter with a professional acquaintance who alerted me to a great opportunity.

The point of this is that it's easy to buy into the hype about Dubai – that it swelled too rapidly and is now quickly becoming a place for washed up financial professionals – but the reality is that if you really understand how the place works, you can carve out a great career for yourself. London and New York can wait.

The author is a senior private equity professional currently working in the Gulf