JEDDAH, 2 July 2006 — Most job adverts and offers in newspapers or magazines include statements such as “A minimum two years of experience in the same profession,” “Priority goes to experienced applicants.”
Many college graduates are finding out that a lack of prior experience hinders their ability to break into the workplace.
“I applied for many jobs. However, all of them required at least two years of experience,” said Salwa Abdul Hadi, a 22-year-old computer science graduate. “How would I gain the experience if I’m a new graduate?”
Dana Sulaimani is only in eighth grade, but already she is devoting part of her summer vacation to get on-the-job training for her future professional life. With the help of her father, she is working at a local private hospital.
“For the first four days of the training, I worked in the clinic of one of the women pediatricians at the hospital,” she said. “I help her in holding and relaxing the children while she checks them.”
Dana, who has been devoting part of her summer vacation to unpaid hospital work since sixth grade, takes measurements of the babies in the maternity ward and does paperwork. She says she wants to be a pediatrician when she grows up, and this summer she is starting some basic training in lab work and next year she plans to work in the radiology department.
Like college-educated youth the world over, graduates in Saudi Arabia are realizing that it is essential to find on-the-job training in the fields of their interest, sometimes unpaid.
Maha Ahmad, 20, says she wants to enter the field of banking after she graduates. Until then, she has a customer-service training position at a local bank.
“My work here is to help customers fill in forms and guide them to the kind of service they wish to have,” said Maha.
Lama Ismail, a 23-year-old bank employee in Jeddah, said she was granted priority over other applicants because of her previous summer work.
“I was a marketing student in King Abdul Aziz University (KAAU) and used to train every summer in the bank where I’m currently working,” said Ismail. “The employees there recommended me to their supervisors to work in the customer service department in the same branch.”
