WHO'S WHO IN SKILL-LINK
A sneak preview of the Skill-link team

skill-link.com has been live online for exactly two years. Yours is one of the 1.3 million visits our site received during that period. You have probably by now registered your CV, read the Interest Zone articles and searched the vacancies advertised on the Job Corner. But have you ever wondered who's working backstage to provide you with what you see? Today is your chance to know who's doing what in skill-link.com.

This article is dedicated to those who really do the work at the company, therefore it was unanimously decided that the Chairman & CEO - Sherif Samy - will not be included J However, just to ensure our pay checks keep coming, we assigned him to be interviewed in the Secret of Success section of the Interest Zone.

Since we are not a democracy, and despite that our registered candidates (job seekers) outnumber our clients 100 : 1; we will start with clients, they pay us money !

The Money Makers
The first point of contact for companies to subscribe to skill-link.com recruitment services or advertise on the site is Marwa Mustafa Kamel, Corporate Relations Manager. According to Marwa her responsibilities are: "managing the sales function of skill-link.com and persuading potential clients that the Internet is the best tool for both advertising and for human resources services. Our country is still in stage of limbo between the tried and tested and the innovations of our fast paced modern life. We at skill-link.com are trying to hammer in the power of the Internet as a useful tool and I believe we are being successful in doing so. As you can see our site is the most advertised on site in Egypt with companies such as Americana, Xerox; Mibank , Fiat, CIB ,EAB, NSGB etc… promoting their goods and services. In terms of HR Services we have an enviable list of subscribers that renew their interest in us and relay this message to others: this is the future."

Marwa continues with her conversation about the challenges she faces in her work. She says: " well, being in sales is a challenge in itself and in sales for an online service is not an easy nut to crack as I mentioned before .The regular problems we face are getting client's convinced with the idea and then following up to have the deals materialize. The final rush is when we get a signed contract. This nullifies all the throes of pain that one goes through at the initial stage of selling the service and makes us feel we are winnersJ"


In the United Arab Emirates, Mayssa El Taha is the skill-link.com Country Manager. While her main responsibility is to solicit corporate subscribers to skill-link.com from companies in Dubai, Abu Dhabi and other locations, she spends time ensuring they fully utilize our services. She also follows up with candidates residing in the UAE, these are from a variety of nationlities. She is often contacted by Gulf media representatives seeking information on skill-link.com. In a way, Mayssa sees herself as the company ambassador in the UAE.

A mother to 42,000!
The Operations Department, headed by Lisa Anyon, is concerned with candidates from the moment they first register on our database and post their CV, till they join a new employer, and live happily ever afterJ

Lisa, who is a UK national married to an Egyptian businessman, joined skill-link.com in January 2001. She describes her role as follows: "my main task is to oversee the quality and efficiency of Career Analysts reviewing each and every CV submitted to skill-link.com - of which 42,000 were posted to date - and Recruitment Officers that serve subscribers and interview selected job seekers. ".

"It is my job to make sure that Skill-Link's corporate clients are served in an affective and timely manner. To ensure that the resumes on our database are up to date and in good order and that the candidates have a thorough verification (interview) before being presented to any interested employer."

"Another part of the job is keeping track of our placements, the number of interviewees sent for each vacant position, and the acceptance rate of CVs on our database. This information is very important for us to monitor our operating standards and the quality of our service."

Lisa moved on to talk about the challenges she faces in her work, saying: "I think the major challenge that we face from our candidates is not showing up for interviews either here at skill-link.com and sometimes with the potential employers. The most despairing part of this is that many people take this lightly and do not even bother to apologize. It reflects that they are not professional and as such we would not want to arrange further Interviews for them. A significant number of candidates also neglect to update their CVs with additional work experience or new contact numbers. We sometimes have to send telegrams in order to contact a candidate that an employer has shown an interest in!"

"With regards to our subscribers (recruiters), some of them are sometimes slow in providing their feedback about the candidates that they have interviewed and this information is imperative for us to be able to match the right person to the job. Transparency is also another issue. The more specific details we have about the job including details about the package the more effective we will be in presenting candidates."

The concept of online (search driven) recruitment is still a little new for many corporates in Egypt so we have to adjust our service to go with this - we often send hard copy CVs to them!."

The Gate Keepers
Within the Operations Department, Carole Fattal is the Career Analysts Supervisor. Carole joined skill-link in August 2000. She divides her role into the following: " What I mainly do is supervise a team of Career Analysts to ensure that skill-link.com's live database of resumes has no duplicate CVs or missing information. We are also entrusted with the task of ensuring the CVs database is updated in a timely manner and that the candidates' information is reviewed as practically as possible to enhance objectivity and accuracy. Under that broad responsibility there are a number of functions like organizing distribution of work for each Career Analyst and overseeing that they all reach their targets and identifying areas of improvement. In addition to that, I respond to candidates inquiries and complaints and communicate them to the relevant person within skill-link.com."

"The challenges faced by the department are never ending. Some candidates don't update their resumes on a regular basis. Thus hinders the search process and at the same time their chances to find the suitable job decreases."

"Even when they want to update their resumes, candidates sometimes forget their usernames and passwords. What they do is post a new CV. This leads to having a duplicate!

Two Career Analysts: Lamiaa Adel and May Ezz El Din work with Carol. Their job is to review submitted CVs to eliminate duplicates and ensure reasonability and comprehensiveness. A more critical role is blinding each candidate's employers' names, to maintain their confidentiality. Therefore, Lamia and May have to be familiar with (or research) what each company/ bank/ organization does and what sector / industry it belongs to. In the beginning it was a difficult and slow process, now they are more familiar with most corporate names. The other challenges they face are more or less the same as Carole's challenges but on a narrower scope. They find it difficult sometimes to contact candidates to get them to update their CVs.

The Match Makers
We continue our journey and step into the Recruitment Department. Four veteran Recruitment Specialists assist companies in their search for candidates. They are:
· Dina Farid (who is currently on a maternity leave), she was the first person to join skill-link since day one
· Ghada Abdel Bar (who is on a short vacation in the Far East!) she joined in July 2000
· Sandra Ebeid and Noha Khalifa who both joined skill-link.com in October 2000.

Ghada Abdel Barr

Sandra Ebeid

Noha Khalifa

Sandra speaks on behalf of her colleagues about the responsibilities and challenges they face. " Well, as a Recruitment Specialist, you're not just conducting interviews with candidates/job seekers and scheduling appointments for them to meet potential employers. The process is more complicated. First, you visit your clients to define their recruitment/hiring needs and of course to see their working environment to get a feel for whom of your candidates would fit there. After this needs analysis step, you go ahead and search for the required criteria and qualifications on the skill-link 42,000+ database, the outcome of which you screen to have a potential sample/pool for the skill-link.com corporate subscriber to review. After you get the approval of the client to meet with the candidates, the second phase comes in. A Recruitment Specialist schedules 2 interviews (which can become very messy at times when you're working with several active clients with more than one job and all want to interview at the same day!! And this is usually the case :). Anyway, the first interview is called a verification interview conducted at skill-link premises to verify information on the resume and to evaluate whether the candidate will fit the position and blend in the environment of the client or not. The second interview is scheduled at the employer's premises."

"Now, supposedly a client has seen an average of 10 candidates for one position (sometimes it reaches 20 or more and other times it goes down to 5 only according to the position). The client might make a decision after the first interview (we wish !) however; most of them make a short list with which you have to reschedule second interviews with the client. Although you don't get involved in the salary negotiations, yet you sometimes act as a moderator trying to convince the candidate to accept a lower salary for the better company name, experience and job itself and at others you try to persuade the clients to raise their salaries because the candidates have what they need to accomplish the job."

"So basically to wrap it all up and put it in a nutshell, you are a sales and marketing person both ways (for clients & candidates), you're a recruitment specialist (searching for, interviewing and screening candidates) and you're also performing this extra duty of customer satisfaction - both ways as well. And you thought it was all about meeting people!!"

"One of the inevitable challenges is trying to schedule interviews with candidates during the normal 9-5 day (in case of the working population of course). Otherwise, it's easy. Handling that issue requires the duplicate effort of numerous phone calls to and back clients and candidates. Another is "NO SHOWS" and this is really out of your control when a candidate is scheduled for an interview with the client and he/she doesn't show and neither call to postpone and/or apologize, which is extremely unprofessional (if I might add). This you could only handle by calling the candidate and check if it was really something worth it and the reason for not calling was valid (provided the employer is willing to give them another chance) then you can give them the benefit of the doubt before placing them on your Black List.

The highlights of the job, on the other hand, are meeting very interesting people everyday and establishing great contacts and business friends with reputable companies. And nothing can come close to be compared with the joy you feel when you make that perfect match and place an eager job seeker and you accomplish that difficult equation of a win/win result. It's priceless :)"

The Fire Fighter
From Recruitment we go to Online Support. Ahmed Magdy - Online Support Officer - is in charge of maintaining the IT infrastructure that enables all other staff of skill-link.com to operate. He is also responsible for the web site availability and functionality with regards to outsiders: registered job seekers, corporate subscribers, advertisers and Interest Zone visitors.

Ahmed joined skill-link.com in February 2001. When I asked him to describe his responsibilities and functions he was brief and concise like all IT people (am I guilty of stereotyping hereJ?). He said, " What I mainly do is the following: " I support online recruitment system users regarding problems facing them using the system. This includes, subscribing companies, users and back office users. Task number two is administering the network and continuously improving and testing system functionality. I also publish and edit the weekly online magazine (Interest Zone). And last but definitely not least is handling the Hardware/Software support/help desk."

Ahmed's challenges are endless and it would take forever to talk about in detail. But as he was clear and concise in describing his responsibilities he did the same with the challenges: "user competence…. supporting a user who is technology oriented yields much higher effectiveness/efficiency than users who are still taking their first step. It becomes much easier when the user is sincerely willing to learn from first/second time, even if lacking all the tech backgrounds. Keeping up with the pace of technology evolution is an inevitable challenge and role simultaneously. And, having the patience to deal with the system developers."

The Editor
Samar Shams-El-Din (that's me) is the Interest Zone Editor. I joined skill-link.com in January 2001. My job is to constantly research sources of information to supply interesting content to the web site; this will be through the local and international media and any other information sources. I also write regular sections for the Interest Zone like "Close Up on Professions" and "Secret of Success" which are the articles I enjoy doing most. What is really interesting about them is that you actually meet the people and interview them. You learn a lot that way. The more unusual people you meet the more interesting it becomes. You get exposed to fields of work you never would have heard of before.

Researching content for the site and writing about it is part of the job. Since the Interest Zone is the first online magazine that targets professionals with career related information and tips, being up to the minute and following on all career related issues helps you in knowing what is going around you in the market. You get to know what is in demand in the job market and what is the latest in career and skill development. It is a very interesting yet hectic job. Everyday there is something new to learn of.

The major challenge that I constantly face is of course the deadline. The Interest Zone is updated weekly. Arranging meetings to interview candidates or searching is no easy job. Here I would like to thank all those who help me (or should I say save meJ) with their contributions and those who agree to be interviewed. We force Sherif Samy to be a regular contributor, especially to the "Your Career Advisor" section, since he has more gray hair than any of us. Sandra Ebeid helps quite a lot with interviews and articles too, even if it's something like referring a topic or a potential candidate for interviewing. It may seem like nothing to the person who refers it to me. However, I consider it a great contribution because it can save face sometimes.

This was a quick journey through Skill-link office and a sneak preview of what each one does. Just remember that all what we do is for the satisfaction of our clients (both candidates, companies and site visitors). Thank you again because without you we would not have been here today.