Interview for a small remote company based in Dubai - is it safe/legitimate?

[ttytry6y56]

I have a job interview for a role I applied for, they are a very small company (<10 employees) and their headquarters are in Dubai but they have UK employees too. It's 100% remote. There are no Glassdoor record of the company, but scrolling through their LinkedIn I can see the company was only set up around just over a year ago.

I've looked up my interviewer on LinkedIn and they are UK based, have a solid work history, degree, network, etc although no picture up.

I've only ever worked for large UK-based companies with London offices. I can be kind of naive, so just wondering if anything I've written has any red flags?

The job market is awful at the moment so I'm just grateful to have an interview!

What sort of work? if it's stupid money for a couple of hours a week, run. And call me old fashioned, but I don't work for any company whose office I can't visit if I want to.

What do they do?

It's marketing/copywriting based. From looking at their website they have quite a niche specialty, whereas I worked for bigger agencies with a much broader offering

Well you;ve nothing to lose by doing the interview. An interview is a two way process, where you can ask all the questions you have about the work and your employment.

When you say copywriting, it's not one where you submit stuff and they then decide to pay you if they can use it, is it? are they posting the salary and will you be employed or freelance?

UK based - have a look to see if they're on Companies House (altho that isn't a guarantee of integrity).

I suppose even the largest companies in the world were once under 10 employees so they have to start somewhere! Are there others working for the company who you can check out on LinkedIn? Would your contract with them be bound by Emirati or UK law? I would go into the interview with my eyes open and ask lots of questions about their set up.

Do they have a physical office in Dubai? Where is it? I live here and work vaguely in that industry. If you share some more details, I can tell you if it rings any alarm bells

I'd be an employee on an annual salary rather than freelance. I've looked through their LinkedIn and they seem to work closely with another, bigger agency with a good reputation (who has a London office) so I think they must be some kind of offshoot of that agency?

There's no Dubai or UK office, it's fully remote

So HQ is in Dubai, what's the set up for UK employees to be paid and is there an HR in the UK? and as pp said what contract law are you subject to?

I'd do the interview for the experience but I'd have a lot of questions, largely for how I stand if anything goes wrong.

Don't give them any money.
Can't hurt to do the interview and see how you feel.

Or ID docs. I'd be wary with it being fully remote and HQ in Dubai; where is the HQ if there's no office at all?