Skill Link TALKS TO THE PRESS

On November 14^th Skill-Link held its press conference at Ramsis Hilton. The members of the board of directors of Skill-Link presented the company’s activities and the reason behind launching such a recruitment site in Egypt.

Mr. Sherif Samy- Chairman of Skill Link started with a brief introduction about the effects of the Internet in our daily dealings and on businesses. Samy highlighted the importance of having an online recruitment site to put together both the employers and the job seekers.

With the traditional forms of recruitment, CVs are most of the time filed and archived, which consequently makes the information not updated. Rarely an HR would look up in the pile of CVs to find the suitable person to fill a certain position. skill-link.com helps avoid all this paper hassle and allows job seekers to get access to their CV at any time to update it.
Moving to technicality, Mr. Khaled Bichara- member of the board of directors of Skill- Link and Chairman of LINKdotNET- started out by defining the need of the Egyptian market for the services provided by such a site as the number of Internet users is ever increasing.
skill-link.com is an employer search driven site, whereby corporate subscribers would search listed resumes using a set of advanced search tools and communicate their interest electronically to short listed candidates. Corporate subscribers have up to 18 different search criteria that enable them to find the right calibers they are willing to attract for their company.
According to Bishara, this high and sophisticated technology used in skill-link.com makes it a unique site and is not considered just a “one more .com” on the web. “skill-link.com is considered one of the steps for Egypt to more forward in the IT world,” said Bichara.

Mr. Alaa El Ghadban, Managing Director of Skill-Link then gave attendees a detailed presentation regarding the company’s life cycle since inception to date. As shown in the graph below, the company was established in April 2000 and was legally present in the Egyptian market. As from July, and with the start of its marketing campaign, skill-link.com was launched, whereby candidates access to the site to post their resumes. And with parallel to the sites launch, skill-link published the first edition of its weekly English magazine- the Interest Zone. Having reached quiet a high number of posted CV’s throughout July, August and September, Skill-Link approached corporate subscribers at the beginning of October. As for its future plans for expansion in the Middle East and the region, Skill-Link will soon start its offices in Alexandria, which its market is in need of such recruitment services. Additionally, Skill-Link will expand its activities in the Gulf area. SkillRate has recently started functioning in Dubai. Skill-Link will start its Gulf operations through coexisting with one of its founders. Skill-Link is currently negotiating with companies in Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and Abu Dabi, which have shown interest to become its representatives in those countries.

El Ghadban then answered journalists’ and guests’ questions concerning the confidentiality of the site and the verification process. Indeed, a dedicated operations team takes the effort of verifying candidates’ data making sure that the information posted on the site is a true reflection of their capabilities and skills.
The verification is done through e-mails, telephone calls or one on one interviews. Corporate recruiters highly appreciate this service as it saves them the time and effort required during the recruitment process.

As for confidentiality it is highly observed in skill-link.com; corporate recruiters will have access to blind resumes (ie. without seeing the names of job seekers or their employers’ identity). Only the job seeker can electronically allow an interested recruiter to view his personal information- in response to a recruiter request received in his/her Messages Box.

After almost 45 minutes of a questions & answers session, coffee & cake were served. The break allowed all guests to have a one on one discussion and gave the chance to journalists to introduce themselves to the different members of Skill-Link.

Skill-Link highly appreciates the presence of all the journalists and guests and thanks them all for taking part of this conference looking forward to other events.