“Your Career Advisor” is responding this week to:

• How to write perfect business correspondence? (d)
• Should 45 year old males stop looking for jobs? (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 write perfect business correspondence?

I need to know how to write a perfect business correspondence in English without any grammar mistakes and in good style.

And also I need to know if there are any free on line dictionaries to use it in my work in Arabic and English language.

S. L. R. (Egypt)

Replying:

Dear Ms. R.

Perfect is a very strong word, writing is an art … thus even most native English speakers cannot claim to have perfect writing. Therefore, let your objective be "To have outstanding business writing skills".

Now, to start with it requires practice, practice and practice. You must read a lot in English, the web provides a large number of business publications that you can read (eg. www.economist.com and www.businessweek.com ; this is of course in addition to the printed publications you should constantly read (eg. BusinessToday magazine and the Ahram Weekly newspaper).

You may wish to supplement this with courses, for instance the British Council in Cairo offers useful course in that aspect. There are also others that are offered online, from the comfort of your home of office, the most convenient could be the "Effective Business Writing" offered by the Amideast, click here to check the details. They also have "Grammar for professionals" and "Strategies for effective writing".

Now, with regards to the online dictionaries, you might find the translation sites more useful. While they are not as reliable as human beings, they get it 60% to 70% right. The problem is that words could have different meanings depending on the overall meaning of the sentence. One of the most popular sites, Ajeeb could be found if you click here.

It also has a dictionary is you want to look up a certain word.

We hope the above was of some use to you.
Good Luck

Q2: Should 45 year old males stop looking for jobs?

I have been a registered member of skill-link.com since mid 2000 and I have the following observation:

Is it possible to filter the job vacancies by Age & Gender because according to employers conditions now a days, people like me ( 45 year old males ) should not be looking for any chance of employment!

If you have any other opinion please reply.

For the record, I graduated from the Military Academy and worked for many years as an officer, then in the early 1990s I moved to civilian life and worked in Saudi Arabia and Egypt in a number of jobs related to administration, translation, training and IT technical support. Over the years I attended a number of courses in Egypt and the US.

S. K. E. (Egypt)

Replying:

Dear Mr. E.

We are not sure what you question is... probably voicing your frustration with regards to the job market in general.........

Anyway; you may or may not know that for every vacancy advertised on skill-link.com's Job Corner.... 7 or 8 are not, where employers would search directly or through our Recruitment Specialists (to avoid the hassles of irrelevant feedback to their vacancies or to narrow the search or to maintain confidentiality etc....).... Hence the filtering by age/gender is of no significance...

Most likely what you are really saying is.... are there jobs for those in their mid forties ? Yes of course... we do not feel there is a special advantage for being a female in that age group (in the job market)... the issue has several aspects:

* the ratio is 5 : 1 or even higher when comparing those below thirty to those in their mid forties in the private sector. For obvious reasons. Mainly the organizational pyramid (ie. for every 1 senior executive there are 3 or 4 middle managers, and for every 1 middle manager there are 3 or 4 senior professionals and supervisors, and then there are the new graduates and the more junior professionals etc… The population pyramid also affects the situation:

Egyptians between 40 and 49; represent 10.1% of the population
Egyptians between 30 and 39; represent 13.5% of the population
Egyptians between 20 and 29; represent 17.9% of the population
Egyptians aged less than 20; represent 45.4 % of the population … this is where our BIG problem lies !

Usually, seniority goes with years of experience, hence there are by default more vacancies for entry level and junior positions.

* Egypt is going through very difficult economic times.... which you are well aware of.... hence a very tight job market...

* Your CV in particular is not a very straight forward case... ie not a clear cut sales or finance or IT or HR career... it is more of a "character" or "personality" type of CV where it is really the diversity of your experience, your personal character and multicultural / multifunctional exposure ... that could inspire a potential employer as to where you could fit... it is a relatively more difficult one....

We probably did not tell you anything new... however we hope the above was of some "consolation" to you.
Good Luck

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

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