“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• How to be certified while in the Gaza Strip? d
• What are your views on these recruitment issues? b
• What is the difference between the WB and the IMF? h

All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.

Q1: How to be certified while in the Gaza Strip?

I graduated with a degree in Accounting & Business Administration from the #1 University in the Westbank and Gaza Strip, Birzeit University. I am now working in one of the largest four global audit and accounting firms as an auditor.
Since I like the business field so much i would like to expand my knowledge and experience , I am very very interested to apply for the CMA, CFM, CIA,and other certifications as much as possible.
But the problem here in the Gaza strip is that there are no centers to help me to apply to such certification exams. So i need your advice on how to pass these exams, especially that our situation in Palestine and Israel doesn't help me to transfer to the Westbank and Israel. I am all ready to help in spreading these certifications in Gaza strip after successfully passing such exams, especailly because I own an office in a very good location in Gaza city. I am waiting for your.

A. E. (Palestine)

Replying:

Dear Mr. E.

I am sure that all of us at skill-link.com and our tens of thousands of registered users and visitors are very supportive and sympathetic of the cause of the Palestinian people. We are also delighted to receive your message, the first one from our brothers and sisters in Palestine.

The certifications you mentioned, which are in the accounting and finance field, do not require you to enroll in a preparation center. In other words, their curriculum is devised for home study, supplemented by practical experience. The preparation centers however provide assistance, ie. instructors to explain / question students and a forum for a more disciplined study, since not everyone is able to just study hundreds of hours on his own. There are books and CDs that could be acquired (online or by regular mail) with exercises, tests etc.. that could better prepare a candidate. These are usually advertised on the web site of the organization administering the certification, or through searching google.com (for example www.rogercpareview.com).

The big problem is in sitting for the exam itself, since it is usually required by such organization to be physically present in a pre determined center. We cannot determine if any is or will be held in the Gaza Strip, however your best bet would be to check with the AmidEast in Gaza (click here for more information). Otherwise, you may have to travel to the nearest large city where such tests are administered regularly (Cairo for example).

With regards to the various certifications you mentioned, CPA, CMA, CIA, CIA etc.. you are not expected to study them all, pick the most relevant to you, the job market around you and what you really want to do. Getting one of those, already makes a point about your seriousness and level of knowledge you have acquired in the field. For instance, if you would like to proceed as an external auditor, then the CPA is more relevant, if you believe "internal audit" in a company is your next career step, then the "CIA" (Certified Internal Auditor) would do etc….

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Q2: What are your views on these recruitment issues?

I am 44years old ,a graduate of the American University in Cairo (AUC) with a B.A. in Business Administration, class of 1983. I have been working since 1982 in several multinational and private companies. For the last 10 years I have been working in the Arab Gulf, earning a highly rewarding financial package, where I acquired an international experience in FMCG to make me say I am a Sales, Marketing / Export Guru. Since I returned to Egypt in December 2000, I have worked on/off in a couple of companies, the highest package I have reached was 120,000 L.E.. per annum.( under paid).

I would appreciate your kind comments about the following questions:

1- What kind of package should I be asking for at this age with my relevant experience ? (taking into consideration the "dull" market conditions.)

2-How can a job hunter identify that a certain job advertising is genuine and the company is serious and not a resume collector?

3-Why don't recruiting companies insist that an advertisement for a vacancy be supported openly by the salary package or at least a range so they do not waste their time and the candidate' s time ? also recruiters in Egypt tend to copy vacancies from one another, is that true ? specially on the web sites. Of course I do not mean skill link.

4-I have noticed clearly that a lot of advertisements mention an age limit (some say max. age 40yrs, others say young age), this is considered in the developed countries , a discrimination. Employers in the U.S.A.. or Canada are not interested in your Age, religion, marital status , etc. they are after your knowledge and experience? What is your comments on that.?

5- My CV is registered with skill-link.com, surprisingly I would have expected that the Job Corner contain more jobs on the sales / marketing field. Correct me if I am wrong ?

Last but not least I appreciate the time you spent in reading this message.

B. B. (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Mr. B.

You raise a number of issues, that we believe are of relevance to a number of our visitors, and not only yourself. Now, we will try and address your questions one by one:

(1) What kind of package should I be asking for at this age with my relevant experience ? (taking into consideration the "dull" market conditions.)

There is no "single" answer to that question… it is not age or the number of years of work experience or the type of jobs held that determine the salary bracket. Lots of other factors play a determining role, starting from the "quality" of the experience, the character of the person, his/her achievements and track record, to the industry they are applying to and the type of company they are targeting. Also, at your age group / experience level, perceived managerial abilities are a key factor. While we know, you are aware of all of that, we thought it useful to clearly state it for the benefit of every body. Hence, there is a very wide range of compensation, add to this that compensation includes more than a salary, eg: incentive, bonuses, benefits (transportation, medical insurance, mobile allowance etc…).

For some guidelines on compensation, business development managers (ie. sales, marketing, export etc…) in the FMCG sector (fast moving consumer goods) in a country like Egypt are usually well compensated. A good candidate with strong functional skills, a well developed sense of the market and the right character could be earning LE 200,000 to LE 240,000 per annum in a managerial role of one of the business development functions we described. That is in a large or well established private sector FMCG company or a joint venture. The figure could increase by up to 50% in the case of really large companies and multinationals (such as CocaCola, Procter & Gamble etc…). Some of the people earning such salaries are Egyptians in their mid thirties.

2-How can a job hunter identify that a certain job advertising is genuine and the company is serious and not a resume collector ?

Most - if not all - non governmental organizations (ie. businesses) have no interest to advertise fake job vacancies… they do not really intend to spend money and time in collecting CVs for the sake of it. That applies to newspaper ads or retaining recruitment companies, since both of these cost money. In the case of job vacancies posted on corporate websites (and not recruitment portals), sometimes these are old and nobody bothered to remove them, and in other cases, they are seen as a zero cost method to know who is available in the market.. it is unprofessional …. But it happens for a fact.

In some cases advertised vacancies in the paper or recruitment mandates assigned to recruitment firms / portals are never filled, and that has to do with a number of reasons… such as setting unrealistic expectations from the company interested to hire (for example very high skills for a low salary) or insisting on a very particular set of skills with no flexibility with regards to candidates that meet most - but not all - of them. In some other cases, the company just changes its mind, for loosing a large contract, facing market difficulties or they just decide to promote from within.

Regardless of the above, we believe the worst is advertising blind job vacancies in the newspapers.. ie without the name of the company recruiting… this is an insult to all potential applicants… we believe no one with any amount of self respect should apply to them. If there is a confidentiality issue, then a recruitment firm could be retained to handle the matter discreetly.

3-Why don't recruiting companies insist that an advertisement for a vacancy be supported openly by the salary package or at least a range so they do not waste their time and the candidate' s time ? also recruiters in Egypt tend to copy vacancies from one another, is that true ? specially on the web sites. Of course I do not mean skill link.

We believe your question is with regards to companies recruiting and not recruitment companies … We tend to believe that the only case where a salary should be mentioned in an advertised ad (in the papers or on a web portal) is when it is unusually low, and hence applicants should be pre disposed to accept it, if all other conditions prove to be agreable…. And that applies to junior positions only, in areas such as sales and customer service etc…

Otherwise, both company and candidate may loose valuable opportunity by including the salary range in the advertised vacancy…. Why ? for many reasons, not least of them, that for the candidate the position would have so many other benefits and learning and incentives that he/she would accept it if only he / she knew about them… and this is only possible in a face to face meeting/interview. Also, the candidate may demonstrate so much skill and potential that the company (the potential employer) may be willing to offer him / her a higher salary just to hire him. We also witness many cases where the potential employer after meeting with the candidate offers him another more interesting position (not the one advertised), for example someone applying for a Sales Manager position ended up being offered a Regional Export Manager role…. All of these issues should not be closed by just advertising a salary.

We would like to also add, that retaining a qualified recruitment firm (skill-link.com or others) is best for both sides… at reduces time waist and embarrassment, since they would know what compensation range the candidate would accept and would pre clear it with the potential employer…

With regards to the last part of your question: "copying ads"; there aren't that many online recruitment portals in Egypt anyway… and to the best of our knowledge we are not aware of anyone copying from the other… if you have specific examples please let us know.

4-I have noticed clearly that a lot of advertisements mention an age limit (some say max. age 40yrs, others say young age), this is considered in the developed countries , a discrimination. Employers in the U.S.A.. or Canada are not interested in your Age, religion, marital status , etc. they are after your knowledge and experience? What is your comments on that.?

The laws about age, gender etc… are very clear and strict in the advanced world, specially in North America…. However one cannot deny that age is a factor, even if not admitted in public… similarly in our society there are jobs where women are not suitable, whether we like it or not. So employers for the sake of convenience or to minimize trial and errors spell out their requirements. Take for example a large company where the age of the managing director and the management team is mid thirties, recruiting a new manager (say for sales or finance) in the 30 to 40 bracket would be definitely bee more suitable to everyone then a manager in his fifties… even though this particular person may be very suitable in other entity where the average age is much higher… take for example the case of a Human Resources Director for LINKdotNET and MIBANK.

In some cases gender and age matter… whether we like it or not.

Putting religion as a criteria is totally unacceptable, unless the vacancy is in a religious institutions… otherwise it is shameful. In out experience with hundreds of companies recruiting through skill-link.com, we see this in 10% or less of the cases (it works both ways for both religions under a false pretense of "fitting in").

5- My CV is registered with skill-link.com, surprisingly I would have expected that the Job Corner contains more jobs on the sales / marketing field. Correct me if I am wrong ?

The job vacancies that are in most demand by skill-link.com clients are those related to sales, marketing, account management, export etc... In that aspect you are correct. The point you are missing, is that skill-link.com is not a pure vacancies advertised portal. Lots of companies prefer to directly conduct searches on our database or request our Recruitment Officers to conduct such searched to be more pro active and precise… not all are interested to display a vacancy and wait for those that will respond. Actually, the ratio is 8 : 1 (non advertised to advertised). Also, Egyptians are found to be lazy, they do not visit the site regularly and hence miss some good opportunities… similarly, others that do not meet at all the required qualifications, have the bad habit of just applying… both cases are annoying… hence direct search in some cases proves more efficient. Let alone some cases of confidentiality, where the company in question does not wanted to be publicly known they are recruiting or that they are replacing their Chief Accountant etc...

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Q3: What is the difference between the WB and the IMF?

I read on skill-link.com's Interest Zone recently that the annual meetings of the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund are taking place for the first time in an Arab country, in Dubai this month. I also know that skill-link.com periodically displays job vacancies and junior professional program announcements for those two institutions. Could you tell me what is the difference between them ? if any ?

H. S. (Amman)

Replying:

Dear Mr. S.

Thank you for being a regular follower of skill-link.com and its online magazine, the Interest Zone. Actually your question is interesting, a large number of professionals and even business graduates confuse the two organizations, or are not very clear about which does what. The International Monetary Fund (IMF) and the World Bank (WB) were established in 1944 and designed to achieve different but complementary ends.

The IMF was designed to defend the international monetary system which meant in effect helping governments overcome balance-of-payments problems. It was established to promote international monetary cooperation, exchange stability, and orderly exchange arrangements; to foster economic growth and high levels of employment; and to provide temporary financial assistance to countries to help ease balance of payments adjustment. The IMF lends money to countries which are in deep economic trouble - Mexico in the 1980s for example, Mexico again in 1995, South East Asia and Russia in the late 1990s, Argentina in 2001. Egypt has regularly benefited from the IMF support.

The World Bank - its full name is the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development - has the role to invest in specific programs to promote development. Today these often include financial support for social networks to protect the poor from some of the worst effects of the economic problems the IMF is trying to overcome.

Since its education funding began, in 1963, the World Bank has provided some US$31 billion in loans and credits, and it currently finances 158 education projects in 83 countries. The Bank works closely with national governments, United Nations agencies, donors, non-governmental organizations, and other partners to help developing countries in their efforts to reach the goals of Education for All. The World Bank has also committed more than US$1.7 billion to combating the spread of HIV/AIDS around the world. Providing poor people with basic health and nutrition lies at the heart of reducing poverty and promoting economic growth. The World Bank commits an average of US$1 billion in new lending each year for health, nutrition, and population projects in the developing world. Bank funds are helping to combat malaria in 46 countries and tuberculosis in 30.

The World Bank Group consists of five closely associated institutions, all owned by member countries. Each institution plays a distinct role in the mission to fight poverty and improve living standards. These institutions are:

· The International Bank for Reconstruction and Development
· The International Development Association
· The International Finance Corporation
· The Multilateral Investment Guarantee Agency
· ICSID The International Centre for Settlement of Investment Disputes

The Bank employs approximately10,000 people, including economists, educators, environmental scientists, financial analysts, anthropologists, engineers, and many others. Employees come from about 160 different countries, and over 3,000 staff work in country offices.

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Note from the editor: 
Employer names and inquiry sender names were withheld for confidentiality

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