“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• "How long should I stay in this position ? and what is the compensation range ?

• Are my skills in demand ? and in what direction ?

• Is there a salary index in Egypt ? and how does inflation affect it ?

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 long should I stay in this position ? and what is the compensation range ?

I'm currently holding a project management manager position at one of the major telecommunications providers in Egypt, I have bee in that role for the last 3 years.

My department is responsible for the pre-sales, customer projects implementation and internal network projects with a total of 9 engineers. I have a total experience of 10 years divided as follows:

• 2 yrs of network operations and help desk with a major multi-national communications service provider
• 3 yrs as a regional instructor in the same company
• 1.5 years as a Project manager in a large system integration company
• 1 year as pre sales with a multinational telecom equipment and services provider; and
• the last 3 years in my current position

I have several questions:

1. is that position considered as middle management or first line management, taking into consideration that we have some how a very flat organization structure.
2. what is the average and maximum duration for me to keep this position
3. what is the income bracket for such a position

T. E. (Cairo)

Replying:

Dear Mr. E.

Thank you for you message, which to us reflects both a steady career progress and legitimate concerns about future advancement.

As you mentioned, you work in a company with a flat organization. Hence the concerns for advancement from one organizational box to the other are not serious. Additionally, you should consider that your role (that of project management, pre sales and implementation) is in a way diversified and elastic. By that we mean you get to deal with a variety of environments and clients, and similarly the project sizes, complexity and value may increase without the need to promote you to a different position, since your role grows with the business flow. For the sake of comparison, your position could be similar to that of a consulting manager in the Telecom & Networking team of a large consulting firm (eg. Accenture). These firms have typically flat organizations and in many instances an experienced professional could remain as a project manager, let alone the unit manager for 5 to 7 years. So, in other words there is no reason to be alarmed, assuming you are gaining new experience and the business is health (growing not shrinking). Your company (which we guessed from your email address) also has a good name recognition in the market.

Obviously on the longer term, you should always consider what is next ? We are not very familiar with your current employer’s organization chart, and therefore cannot tell where your advancement could be. There is always the chance to move to other organizations with a bigger role and responsibility. We tend to believe, that for your next step up, it will not be just your technical and project management skills that will count, but rather a better grasp of the industry, the business and client relationships.

Back to your question about being first line management or middle management, it does not really matter. You may actually be both. In other words, if you directly supervise 9 staff, without an intermediary supervisory layer, then you are first line management. You could also be considered middle management depending on how many management layers separate you from the Managing Director / CEO. If it is only one in between (bearing in mind it is a flat organization), then you could also be middle management.

Compensation reflect any factors and elements as we always state. For instance, we do not know the value of the projects you are responsible for (LE 5 million a year or LE 20 million a year), that would make a difference in your compensation. Similarly, do you complete them in a timely and quality manner, with minimal supervision ? or do you constantly have schedule and cost over runs ? and so on… However, the average gross salary for the position you described (without variable bonus incentive), should be in the range of LE 144,000 to LE 180,000 per annum.

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Q2:Are my skills in demand ? and in what direction ?

I work in the IT industry as a Localization QA Engineer, with 3 years of work experience. I have the following educational qualifications:

Master's degree in Management and Innovation

Grad.Dipl. in Software Localization

Bachelor's degree in Humanities

Bachelor's degree in Modern Languages Education

I have experience with the following languages, technologies and environments: Visual Basic, Visual Basic for Applications, VBScript, Java, Microsoft Access, Visual SourceSafe, UML, Select Enterprise Modeller, HTML, and Microsoft FrontPage.

Due to restructuring in the company I am now in the redeployment list. The company gave me two months to find alternative employment here. The jobs I have applied for in the company so far they all required more experience in particular areas (like sales). I told the HR personnel that I would like to be considered and fill that lack of experience with overtime, that I learn quickly.

I am trying my best to find alternative employment searching into all recruitment agencies as the redeployment deadline is coming soon. Could you please advise me if my skills are in demand in the market and in what direction I could go, as I have a multi disciplinar background and wouldn't like to continue working with computers directly, would like to interact more with costumers, using my computer skills.

My CV is attached for your reference.

T. L. (Ireland)

Replying:

Dear Ms. L.

Well, in our 3.5 years history, this is our first message from Ireland. We are delighted to receive it.

To start with, we will not claim we are experts on the Irish employment market, our reply will be in general terms, applicable to your case and skills in a broad context.

You are definitely well backed by a number of degrees, you have also had a number of years of experience in a specific field, within a sector (technology) and industry (software) that are far from being on the decline. These are all positive assets. Additionally, while we could not immediately tell your age from your CV, it is clear we do not have an age problem of someone in his/her late forties or fifties, since you are probably on or around 30.

With regards to redeployment within the same company, there are advantages, namely: they know you, you know the culture and the products. These things will allow you to bridge part of the time gap associated with getting oriented with a new function within the company. We cannot tell what the various positions and functions in your company are, however we would imagine the most relevant should be product / services related. For example: pre sales, market analysis, the production of communication material (brochures, manuals, web content etc..), training , user support etc…

The above was in relation to your current employer, in the broader employment market, we tend to believe your skills are in demand. Specially that with the ‘digital divide’ around the world, numerous developing countries are trying to catch up on the IT front, and lots of newly acquired application systems from world leaders require localization. Similarly, there is a rapid growth in e Learning, and this is one of the fields that require a grasp of localization, languages and humanities, all – we believe – are within your background.

As we understand you are more inclined towards interacting with people, rather than being restricted to a pure technical job; and this could be satisfied from a broad range of roles such as: user requirements definition, pre sales, sales, customer support, training etc.. Teaching in some relevant fields maybe another option.

We hope the above was of some use to you.

Good Luck

Q3: Is there a salary index in Egypt ? and how does inflation affect it ?

I work with a multinational service firm in Egypt.

Please advise me on the salaries bench mark in Egypt as well as salary performance increasing rate. To be specific my question is:

What is the market inflation rate and its implication on prices and in salaries?

A. M. (Egypt)

Replying:

Dear Ms. M.

That is one of those short questions that require a book to be properly replied to
 

We would like to attempt to address your question with a few facts:

Egypt has serious disparities in salaries depending on the type of organization (eg. Large multinational, joint ventures, large private sector, middle size private sector, SME, NGO, public sector, government etc…). These are very apparent even in the cases of similar jobs, take for instance the job of a secretary with little experience or a junior accountant, these could range from LE 400 a month in some places to LE 1,200 a month in others. Such disparities lead to the fact they you cannot derive country wide benchmarks or any sort of index. The large numbers would way in favor of the largest segment, which fall in the low paying segments.

Having said the above, more limited benchmarks or indexes (focused on certain types of organizations) would be more relevant. Unfortunately we do not have them in Egypt, because most companies are very secretive about their payroll information. Only companies like skill-link.com, with large databases of professionals and the capacity to interview thousands of individuals, could have a sort of objective and comprehensive overview on the market.

Prices and the cost of living went up in Egypt, specially after January 2003 when the pound was ‘floated’. Obviously the $ now reaching LE 7 has impacted pricing of goods and services, compared to its previous LE 3.5 price just a few years ago. So what is the real inflation rate ? there are no reliable figures, but 20% to 25% percent could be a safe bet for 2003.

Employers did not increase their payroll / salaries accordingly, for a variety of reasons. Mostly because the economy is not rosy and they have to face difficult times, the level of difficulty varying from one sector to the other. Some multinational businesses setting their salaries in dollars or dollar equivalent, had their Egyptian payroll automatically adjusted, but these are really just a few. Some others, with significant revenues in foreign currencies, had a positive impact and could be more generous with their staff. But the majority, could not adjust their salary to match the inflation rate.
 

Did we provide you with anything of value ? we tried. The thing is, it is a difficult situation for most employed individuals in Egypt.

Good Luck

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

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