“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• What can you tell a frustrated architect? e
• Should I accept this offer in the Gulf? b
• What sort of salary range I should expect? c

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: What can you tell a frustrated architect?

As I always believe that (Less is More), so I'll try to be direct and straight to the points that I wants to reveal.

First let me orient you with my professional situation in simple words, I'm an Architect experienced with lots of computer graphics and visualization skills and IT tools, and my current position as stated in my CV on skill-link.com is Senior Architect/3D Visual Artist.

Second, with no doubt I have to express my admiration towards your web site and all it's zones with all that very informative topics regarding the job market and recruitment.

So lets move to my concerns which I'll better present in points:

1.I've registered with your site for about a month now and till this moment I have neither been contacted with a skill link officer nor had the ability to search your jobs database, do I have to wait more? is that normal?

2.When you check my CV in your database you will notice that I'm mostly involved with 3D computer graphics, so we are talking about digital art, and when talking about ART, so it's about image not about words, meaning words won't be the key player like the image or any illustration media weather it's a CD, DVD, Print outs.....etc., so I believe that job seekers working in such a field or any field related to digital computer art must have the chance to express there work samples, which I can see you face a very lack in information regarding such fields on building your CV database bank program and in it's simplest ways like showing samples of our work (we Digital artists) in our online CV, just check this my personal page on the internet and you will know what I mean.

3.Why all of a sudden for the past 10 years all of job posts that I can see around and specially in your web site and the likes are all about the kind of jobs: Managing Director, Corporate Manager, IT Consultant, Auditor Manager, Marketing Manger, HR Officer, PR Specialist and the list of that very shiny bright words can go for ever....as if there is not place any more for us poor Engineers, Designers, Technical specialists, Doctors.. meaning the technical professionals....and as if Egypt has all of a sudden had turned to a very dynamic businesses developing country and that it's the land of choices and opportunities for such a kind of fields...does the Egyptian market really needs all those professionals in the fields I mentioned ????.....and why do I get the feeling that there is not place any more for technical people in all aspects of ART, Design, Media, Engineering and so on??

I Can Understand the need from such professions in a very well established economics like the western countries...but here in Egypt ????????? .....I'm really frustrated about the market and it's needs of certain profession now days....and please shine me and advice me before it's too late.....do I have to change my career to one of those bright shiny professions of Marketing, HR, PR....etc ?????

4.Industrial Designer, Architectural Illustrator, Interior Designer, Special Effects Designer, Fashion Designer, Web site Designer, Multimedia Developers, all that graduated from Faculties of Fine arts and any profession that deals with Art Creativity....real creativity would those people by any chance alive in our market the coming 10 years...or they better start change there careers from now????? please try to light and spot on this professions in your upcoming articles of skill link

5.why do I get the feeling that your portal targets special classes in our society??? and that salaries averages???...really strange?? ...I wonder how much these salaries represent our society labor market???...10%,15%,20% in most cases??? (despite I may consider for sure from that little %)

6.My company used to pay our salaries in us dollars and starting from Sept.2003, our salaries have been transferred to Egyptian Pounds with the current rate of Dollars in the notional bank ,would that be considered legal??...considering that all our contracts are in US dollars??

Finally... I hope I was able to communicate my concerns through my humble words which I believe I'm not that good presenting them :)

Y. S. (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Mr. S.

Thank you for your words of appreciation for skill-link.com. Your message is interesting, it touches on many issues, that could fill a whole website of our weekly online magazine "Interest Zone". By the way we visited your personal page on the net, your sample work looks very interesting.

We will attempt to address below each of your questions, and so as not to get lost, we will display first a summary of the question. Let us start:

1. I've registered with your site for about a month now and till this moment I have neither been contacted with a skill link officer nor had the ability to search your jobs database, do I have to wait more? is that normal?

By now your CV on skill-link.com has been reviewed and accepted. Let us tell you what we do, and hence why in some instances it takes time.

We invest time and resources in the "review" and "acceptance" of CVs posted online. skill-link.com has a team of Career Analysts that review an average of 1,000 new CVs per month for completion prior to releasing them to our large database accessed by subscribing employers. We also take this a step further by blinding our candidates employment history to protect their confidentiality until they decide to reveal it to an employer that expressed interest in them (ie. by blinding we mean the Career Analyst would enter a generic yet descriptive statement to be displayed in the "employed with" field, so for example Masrawy.com would be "an Egyptian internet portal and online content provider" , and Raya would become a large Egyptian IT group etc... ). Unfortunately 70% of the CVs that get posted online on skill-link.com have something wrong whereby we cannot accept them until they are fixed/corrected (eg. missing data, omitting one or more jobs, wrong classification etc...). It does take time. But this process adds value and attracts a better corporate audience for using our services.

Did we mention that the same process applies to modifications / user amendments to already posted and "reviewed" CVs !

You may therefore appreciate that this process takes some time, the time varies from one month to the other, depending on a number of factors. These include amount of CVs received, our staff vacations (remember some people are still taking there late summer vacations) etc... Please accept our apologies if this has inconvenienced you in any way.

Please also note that for every 1 job vacancy advertised on skill-link.com's Job Corner, there are 7 to 8 that are not advertised, but the companies or our staff would be searching directly on the skill-link.com database for suitable candidates. Companies recruiting prefer the confidentiality or would rather avoid the hassle of many job seekers with irrelevant qualifications just applying. Our staff have access to your CV from the moment you post it.

2. When you check my CV in your database you will notice that I'm mostly involved with 3D computer graphics, so we are talking about digital art, and when talking about ART, so it's about image not about words. So I believe that such job seekers must have the chance to express there work samples. I can see you lack this (like showing samples of our work) in our online CV.

Well, let us start by the fact that we are not perfect J, we cannot please all the people all the time. However, you may be interested to know that because we interview candidates before arranging for them to meet potential clients (if we see them initially suitable), so in the cases of those working in arts (eg. graphic designers) we ask them to bring sample of their works. If they have sample displayed on a web page, we show it to the potential employer. The same is applied to those who work in the field of writing, we ask them to bring samples. So, while not build into our CV system, we are in many ways complying with what you are saying.

3. Why all of a sudden for the past 10 years all of job posts that I can see around and specially in your web site and the likes are all about the kind of jobs: Managing Director, Corporate Manager, IT Consultant, Auditor Manager, Marketing Manger, HR Officer, PR Specialist and the list of that very shiny bright words can go for ever....as if there is not place any more for us poor Engineers, Designers, Technical specialists, Doctors.. as if Egypt has all of a sudden had turned to a very dynamic businesses developing country...does the Egyptian market really needs all those professionals in the fields I mentioned ????.....

Now, here we disagree with you. With regards to skill-link.com, it has only been around for a little over three years, not 10. The same applies to other online recruitment portals (of various levels of quality and professionalism). So what else is you source of information ? newspaper ads ? These are only a fraction of the job market. We definitely have a better view of the job market, handling hundreds of vacancy requests every year and advising a number of companies directly (or via our parent firms SKILLRATE Advisors and FINRATE CONSULTING). We can tell you for a fact, that the job market is in need of all sort of skills, a the junior, middle management and senior executive level. HR Officer and PR specialist are not really shiny titles, they are in many cases relatively junior. At skill-link.com we receive numerous requests for engineers, sales staff, technical support specialists in IT, procurement officers etc… So we do not really know where you got your ideas from. Remember that Egypt 10 years ago, was dominated by a large inefficient public sector, were staff were handled by the Admin Department as opposed to Human Resources, and where there was almost no real marketing. Today, the business environment in Egypt is much more sophisticated, we see demand for PR, Quality, Environmental Specialists, Compensation Specialists, etc… that did not almost exist a decade ago.

We must also state that all jobs are important and needed, and by the nature of them, some have greatest demand.. for instance accountants, sales staff, secretaries are a must in each and every company, on the other only a fraction would need a graphics designer or an architect, a lawyer or a Doctor… it makes sense.

4. Industrial Designer, Architectural Illustrator, Interior Designer, Special Effects Designer, Fashion Designer, Web site Designer, …..would those people by any chance be alive in our market the coming 10 years...or they better start change there careers from now?????

Again our answer to the previous question (#3) would be relevant here. And yes, these jobs will still be in demand, may be more even in the coming years, as more content and business is going online, as our advertising industry is developing, as more multimedia interactive education/learning tools are relied upon (eLearning etc..), and media is becoming more sophisticated etc…

5. why do I get the feeling that your portal targets special classes in our society??? and that salaries averages???...really strange?? ...I wonder how much these salaries represent our society labor market???...10%, 15%,20% in most cases??? (despite I may consider for sure from that little %)

Yes we do not target the whole Egyptian society, we are mainly addressing university graduates who are just starting their careers (or at the final years of university) up till middle managers. Those we target can use a computer, can browse the internet and have at least below average English. Those we also address are individuals not desperate to work for the government or the public sector. These criteria exclude millions of blue collar workers, those with school only education and millions eager to work in the government (el miri). So if this is what you meant, then it is true… if you had something else in mind, like all the professionals we interview and place live in Zamalek, Garden City or Rouchdy (in Alex) then your are 100% wrong. We have those living in Shubra, Imbaba, Zagazig, Tanta and Assyut as well.

If you want to talk numbers, then we probably address a fraction (English speaking, not interested in government jobs etc..) of those university graduates with zero to 15 years of work experience who total about 3 million (out of a work force of 20 million in Egypt).

We did not understand your comment with regards to salaries…. Do you see them too high or too low ? The fact remains that these are actual salaries…. We fill positions for as low as LE 600 a month and as high as LE 10,000 a month (for middle managers).

6. The company I work for used to pay our salaries in US dollars and starting from Sept.2003, our salaries have been transferred to Egyptian Pounds with the current rate of Dollars in the National Bank, would that be considered legal??...regarding that all our contracts are in US dollars??

Did you mean "all your contracts in US dollar" to refer to your contracts with clients ? or your employment contracts ? If you employment contract clearly states a salary in USD without mentioning "or its equivalent in Egyptian Pounds" then you have the right to be paid in dollars… otherwise it is not a must for them to pay you in dollars. You know of course, that what drove your employer to do what you described is the severed shortage of foreign currencies in Egypt and the price fluctuations we have been witnessing.

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Q2: Should I accept this offer in the Gulf?

I am an Egyptian accountant having 3 years of work experience, currently employed by a multinational financial services company in Egypt. My gross monthly salary is around LE 1,500.

I recently received a job offer to work in an Arab Gulf country, to work in a training company. I was interviewed by telephone first and then a company representative visited Egypt to conduct a face to face interview. The offer consists of a monthly salary equivalent to LE 7,200 (when converted). This salary is all inclusive, therefore it includes accommodation and everything. The job is supposed to focus on preparing financial statements and handling receivables.

I am a bit confused about this offer, because of the salary and the experience I will gain, so could you please advise me.

Initials withheld by special request (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Mr. X.

We do not know much about the company you are considering to join, however we assume you have done your homework by asking all the right questions about the work environment, what is expected from you and who you will be reporting to. It is important for you to be comfortable about what you are getting into.

The country you got the offer from has a nice living environment, by Gulf standards and as you know is tax free. Obviously you will have to dedicate part of your income to housing, how much that is not an easy question to answer, it depends on the standard of living you are used to and you want to maintain; also whether you will share a flat with another colleague or you will live alone. We are assuming you are single. You should in all cases budget around 25% of your income for housing and utilities.

You did not mention anything about travel tickets… would the company pay you an annual round trip ticket ? or would you have to pay it yourself ?

Obviously, you will be making some savings, by Gulf standards for someone with your experience and background and for the job offered, the proposed salary is "reasonable". Not the best, but in line with similar ones we see. Also, while there if you prove yourself and work hard, you should expect to be promoted and advance in both position and salary, or on the other hand find a better opportunity a few years down the road.

From another angle, you did not really elaborate on your current job, do you like the employer, are you acquiring new skills and feel motivated or not ? This should be considered. All other things being equal, the sector/industry experience you are getting now, is more valuable than the one you are considering joining. Furthermore, you are working in a financially stable company in a growing sector (not a small entity with financial difficulties). So there are many factors you should consider.

The good thing, you are young, and most likely single… so a new experience now should be feasible, even if it does not meet your expectations, it is not the end of the world. It may also prove useful for you to experience first hand how it is to work in another country with people from different nationalities. Not everyone adapts to such an environment.

We tried to present to you the various angles you should take into consideration when formulating a decision, which in the end is YOURS.

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Q3: What sort of salary range I should expect?

I am a graduate of Mansoura Univesity's Faculty of Commerce in the early 1990s, I started my career in the audit field. I worked with two of the world's largest audit firms among the Big 4 (PriceWaterhouseCoopers, Ernest & Young, KPMG and Deloitte), where I reached the level of Acting Manager. During this time I studied and passed the exams of Certified Public Accountant (CPA) from the USA. Through my work I was exposed to various industries, (travel, pharmaceutical, manufacturing, government agencies) therefore, exposed to various accounting and financial practices.

After several years of working in the audit field, I joined a multinational firm in Egypt, working in the Food and Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCG) sector as Financial Manager, reporting to the Finance Director.

Now three years after my latest move I have an offer to become the Head of Finance, overseeing the whole function in one of Egypt's leading companies in the field of technology (internet, communication, web development etc…). What should be the salary range I should expect in light of my experience, qualifications, the role and the company I am considering joining ?

A. S. (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Mr. S.

You have a good professional background and you have progressed well at a relatively early age. If you are like you described yourself, and qualified to assume the new role proposed to you then the gross annual salary should be in the range of LE 120,000 to LE 150,000. There are numerous other considerations of course, such as benefits, transportation, mobile allowances, the incentive scheme in place, the future growth plans of the company. However, the bracket we mentioned reflects current trends and practices in Egypt.

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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