HR Management Training in Egypt

Last week I started delivering an intensive HR Management training course to FGF trainees through Talal Abu Ghazaleh Professional Training Group. It is an intensive 13-day training course held at the FGF facilities inside Cairo University.

The aim of the course is to introduce new comers to HR to the field of Human Resources Management. Through six modules, the intensive HRM training course introduces trainees to some of the fundamental concepts of HR management including recruitment, job analysis, training and development, performance management and compensation and benefits. Other topics covered during the training are designing orientation programs, writing job descriptions, c0nducting interviews among other things.

I have attempted to use an interactive workshop approach to the training emphasizing teamwork, critical thinking and problem solving skills. The aim was to equip trainees not only with basic HR awareness but also with the confidence to tackle new situations they would probably be facing at an HR department.

Trainees seamed to enjoy group activities most. Trainees were divided into groups, provided with directions and given time to work together. They produced some creative presentations which got better and more creative with each further training session. Their presentations explained recruitment processes, commented on case studies, explained methods of job analysis and designed orientation programs for actual organizations. Role play was another activity that helped trainees experience performing some basic HR roles such as interviewing candidates.

I am planning to add some tips for HR trainers later on my Born Trainer website.

Resala Nasr City - Now Open!

I am excited to announce that at long last, Resala has opened its Nasr City branch.

Resala is an unconventional youth-fueled charity organization that is expanding at a staggering speed while maintaining its stability at the same time. The Nasr City branch marks the seventh Resala branch in Cairo and the thirty second Resala branch in Egypt. Each Resala branch is a whole building with several services present in each floor. Services offered include:

• Free computer courses.
• Illiteracy courses.
• Free private lessons for school students.
• Services for the blind, the deaf and children of special needs.
• Hosting and bringing up of orphaned children.
• Collecting and distributing used clothes to the poor.
• Distributing food for the poor.
• A regular monthly blood donation campaign.
• Direct assistance to poor families.
• Free medical checkups.
• ... and much much more

The above are just a few of the many activities that Resala offers in each of its rapidly expanding number of branches across Egypt.

Even the traditional service of taking care of orphaned children, Resala implements it in a nontraditional way. Each orphaned child in every Resala branch has a number of big brothers and big sisters whom take full responsibility of visiting him/her, applying for his/her school, taking him/her to the doctor ... etc and visiting him/her on a regular basis.

Another successful Resala initiative was the 10 LE initiative. Each volunteers participating in this initiative agree to donate 10 LE to Resala each month. Although the amount of money is small from each volunteer, yet the stability of the income to Resala helps it to survive and be able to offer its many services to community in a stable way. Of course those who want their monthly payment to be more (or less) than 10 LE per month may do so. The idea is to have a constant income to enable better planning instead of getting random burst of donations. A collector can be sent to your house to collect the donation.

The used clothes project is also one of the most successful activities at Resala. If you want to donate your used clothes, you do not have to bring them yourself to a Resala branch, all you have to do is just call Resala and tell them you have some used clothes you would like to donate and they will send someone to you to collect your used clothes.

The idea behind Resala started several years ago by Dr Sherif Abdel Azim (PhD) who lectured at the Faculty of Engineering at Cairo University where Resala was born. He now lectures at the AUC. Resala was and is still fueled mainly by university students and fresh graduates yet younger and older volunteers also participate. Resala relies heavily on it's large and growing volunteer base to achieve its goals and offer its wide range of services to the community.

My first involvement with Resala was several years back at their Mohandiseen branch. I was involved in the training service they were launching there. A few years later, I was so glad that the Masr El Gedida (Heliopolis) branch of Resala was launched. It was much closer to my home than the Mohandiseen branch. I started volunteering there and delivered a number of computer courses. I also attended sign language training there in order to be able to communicate with the deaf.

My dream finally came true when the Nasr City branch of Resala opened last week. It is 15 minutes walking distance from my home. The Nasr City branch of Resala is located in 2 Zaki Rostom street from Hasanain Haikal street which is near the intersection of Abbas El Akkad and El Batrawy streets. Here is a map of its location:

View Larger Map

The vertical blue line is Abbas El Akkad street. The fork and knife sign is Genena Mall. The accessibility (wheel chair) sign is Resala Nasr City.

The Resala dream is to have a Resala branch in every corner of Egypt just as McDonald's.

If you would like to donate your used clothes or need to ask about anything related to Resala just call 19450 and the Resala branch nearest to you will answer.

Selling my IT Recruitment Agency

Due to some health issues, I've decided to go on a farming project away for computers, mobiles and the Cairo pollution. I have thus decided to sell my IT recruitment agency www.genie-jobs.com within the next two months.

CV Guidelines from Google

It's an amazing exercise for both HR professionals and software engineers to read and think about the CV writing guidelines provided by Google.

Massage Interviews

Now that's really interesting. The interviewing process can vary from a strictly formal procedure to a casual informal meeting with a number of candidates one after the other. Yet Google has broken the normal once again by having this interesting interview: a massage interview!

Wishcraft

Wishcraft is one of those many books about how to achieve your goals. Like all such books, it goes on trying to motivate you all the way along telling you that anybody can achieve his or her goals in life. Yet unlike most of these books, Wishcraft does not put the load on your "will power." Instead, it says that will power is not necessary and that can go along achieving your dreams without having any so called "will power."

Another interesting aspect of the book is that it does not say you can achieve just about any dream you may think of, but instead, it says that every one of us has a special dream, finding such a dream is the first step, then one can go along attempting to realize it. Trying to just randomly pick any goal will simply not work.

Instead of will power, Wishcraft shows you a practical method that can work for people, even those who do not have any sort of will power. Instead of relying on will power, one would use the support of other people and help him or her in achieving their dreams.

You may also read Wishcraft online.

Promoting the Company Culture

Google has a unique company culture that is well suited for young creative minds who are engineering great software. Google constantly promotes its internal culture giving the world a peek into it in the hope of attracting yet more bright and creative minds to join it.

One of the unique cool things at the Google work environment is free food. Google repeatedly stresses on this unique point and entices young minds by showing the diverse appetizing free food it offers its employees. Another point Google kept stressing in the last period was it's welcoming of pets, specially dogs, at its premises.

As if that was not enough, Google's stress on its free informal work environment did not stop there. Recently, Google has showed the world how caring a work environment it possesses by relating this story of a pet snake owned by a Google employee and how a thriving team spirit from colleagues at Google resulted in the pet snake being found at the end and returned to its owner.

Recruiting Heats Up in Cairo

In their March article titled The War for Talent, Egypt's Business Today magazine sheds light on how multinational as well as local companies in Egypt are fighting hard to recruit and keep high caliber employees at their companies.

Starting My IT Recruitment Agency: Genie

Since 2001 I have been managing Egypt IT Jobs. Fast forward five and a half years later, I am just about to reach 9000 members subscribing to receive my IT job ads. Over 300 additional new members are subscribing each month. I am now starting my own IT recruitment agency specialized in providing recruitment services for the IT sector in Egypt. I selected Genie to be the name of my IT recruitment agency.

Having worked as HR Manager at the Cairo branch of a Seattle based US software development company has given me a feel of the difficulties software companies are facing in finding and retaining competent software developers and other IT professionals. Now I am happy and excited about launching Genie because it will give me a wide opportunity to assist in pushing the IT industry in Egypt forward by facilitating the search and selection process of software developers in Egypt.

Visit www.genie-jobs.com for more information.

Jobs at Google Egypt

Here is a list of jobs at Google Egypt.

1300 CVs Every Day!

According to CNN Money, Google gets 1300 CVs a day! Google has been selected as the #1 company in the list of 100 Best Companies to Work for 2007 in the US.

Writing IT Job Ads

Now that's what I call a well written IT job ad. This job ad presents a vacancy for a Web Developer at Google's Seattle office.

Well-Informed Employees

One of the big mistakes of management is not to make your employee aware of exactly how he/she will be evaluated, what is expected from him/her, what is his/her duties and responsibilities, and how he/she might get rewarded or punished. Despite the fact that this might sound natural and logical, yet unfortunately many managers and companies fall into this very trap.

Managing the expectations of an employee would make him/her less resentful when he/she is evaluated and rewarded or punished. A workpace where an employee does not know exactly what his responsibilities are might foster friction between employees due to taking decisions instead of others and some not doing their duties and blaming this on others.

The best thing to do is to take each new candidate through a brief orientation in which he/she gets to know the policies and procedures of the company, a clear written statement of his/her job description including clearly stated duties and responsibilities and finally the method by which the employee will be evaluated. Investing in such an orientation would save companies a lot of headaches caused by employee friction, a lot of frustration on the sides of employees due to unmet expectations and a lot of waisted energy on the side of employees who might be waisting a lot of their energy on low priority activities that do not really add to the bottom line of the company.

Branding Workshop at Zedny

I just came back from a session about branding as part of the Zedny marketing workshop. The session was really great, mainly due to the presentation skills a hand-on real-life experience of the presenter. The session was delivered by Basem Abdel Ghani, currently Category Marketing Manager - Dairy at Juhayna Food Industries.

Secretaries No More?

The role of a secretary is changing with time. The more technology evolves and spreads at our workplace, the more our work style changes and the role of the secretary in particular changes.

The role of a secretary was traditionally to do typing of correspondence or typing of reports for the manager on a manual typewriter, to sort out mail coming to the office, to answer and make phone calls and arrange appointments for the manager. Things are changing now, specially at companies that use technology more. At a software company now for instance, a manger has a computer and probably can type by himself. Most communication and correspondence takes place via email, so snail mail is limited. Appointments can also easily be scheduled via software. The only secretarial task remaining might probably be answering and making phone calls. Even this one might have been reduced due to the increased reliance on email which is by definition fast.

When I worked at Sakhr 8 years ago, they did not have any secretaries (although they had hundreds of employees). Well, actually they had a position for secretaries, but they did not call them secretaries, they called them Assistants instead. Perhaps naming is not a big deal, yet I believe that software companies, which are big consumers of technology and are staffed by highly computer literate people, are usually less reliant on secretaries.

Sure we are a long way from not needing secretaries any more. After all, there are so many companies that are run by managers who are not technically savvy. They still need someone to type their messages and will rarely use email, or even my ask their secretaries to type it for them!

Google for Education in Egypt

I am excessively excited about Google's deal with the Egyptian Ministry of Education to provide Egyptian students with Google applications as part of Google's Google Apps for Education program.

Microsoft has long known the treasure hidden in the large population of Egypt and the will of the Egyptian government since 2000 to transform Egypt into the digital economy stage. Now Google is doing the right move. Google will spread into the Arab world through Egypt. After all, Egypt is a big exporter of ideas and has tremendous cultural influence in the region.

Google Selects Egypt!

I have previously mentioned that Google has selected Egypt as the Arab country of choice in the region to open up its presence in thus creating Google Egypt. Some have questioned the validity of this information claiming that it was nothing but a hoax. To those I only point to this job ad at Bayt asking for an Administrative Assistant for the Managing Director of Google Egypt.

Resala and Dr Sherif

I remember Dr Abdel Aziz Hamuda once told us in a lecture at Cairo University that one way to know a good work of art from a bad one is that with a good work of art you can read it over and over again, each time discovering new things and experiencing the emotions once again as if you were reading it for the first time, while in the case of a substandard work you read it only once then it's 'burnt' and will never want to read it again. I remembered this yesterday when I was at Resala, Masr El Gedida branch, listening to Dr Sherif's same introductory session for the third time! Resala is an NGO and Dr Sherif is its CEO.

I told a friend of mine about Resala the day before and he expressed interest in visiting. I told him I was going to Resala the following day, so he wanted to come and see. The following day, which was yesterday, we went together to the Masr El Gedida branch of Resala and by coincidence it was the day, and time, when Dr Sherif was giving his biweekly introductory session about Resala for new volunteers wishing to get introduced to the activities of Resala. The interesting thing is that such a session provided by Dr Sherif is always more or less the same, he mentions the same stories in almost the same sequence and says basically the same things in every session, of course those attending the session are different people every time. But sometimes a person attends this same session more than once, and that was my case yesterday. It was actually my third time to attend this session by Dr Sherif, and the amazing thing was that I felt his words deeply and I was listening with great interest despite that fact that I've heard what he was saying twice before! That is what brought to my mind Dr Hamuda's words about works of art and the simple rule one may use to differentiate between a good and a bad one. Even though this sesson of Dr Sherif cannot be defined as a work of art, yet indeed this literary rule of quality applies to it.

Web Standards Seminar at OpenCraft

Yesterday I attended a seminar at OpenCraft about Web Standards. It was interesting. The point I liked most in the seminar was what Omar, the presenter and an OpenCraft team member, termed as "the zero principle" or the zero rule. He coined this term to indicate the first rule web developers (and designers) should keep in mind when making web applications or web sites. The princi0ple is: when (and where) to use what. I find it a pity that there are still many making with sites with a dreaded "Flash intro". Yes the customer sometimes insists, but in my opinion it is the duty of the developer/designer to educate him on what professional websites of good companies look like.I really loved Omar's approach of showing us a succession of web sites pointing out to us the good, the bad and the ugly. I'll learn from this approach and perhaps try to use it in one of my next training sessions or seminars. 

Google Egypt

Although I do not know him personally, yet, I was excited to know that Sherif Iskander is working as a Business Manager for Google, handling their interests in Egypt. I do hope the day nears when Google opens up a development center in Egypt similar to the one it has in India. That would result in technology transfer, more jobs in the high tech industry for Egyptians inside Egypt and better Google services for the Arabic language and Arab countries. For Google it will mean tapping into a growing pool of creative talent eager to participate in creating all sorts of new and interesting stuff.