Fatima Sidiya Saudi Gazette The gap between graduates and job opportunities in the Saudi market remains a major challenge. Despite many graduates being churned out for the job market, most of them are unable to find jobs because what they have studied is not suitable for jobs on offer. Talat Hafiz, a Saudi writer and the secretary-general of the Media and Banking awareness group, said that there is a gap between graduates' aspiration and the job market. “We lack candidates willing to work in small to medium jobs and handicrafts. In addition, what is also in demand is for young Saudis to abide by work ethics and that includes being punctual, committed and gaining some work skills.” The problem, said Hafiz, is that the education focuses on theory, but “we call on establishing a more practical side of education,” adding, “there is a need to put more focus on research.” King Abdullah Scholarship Program said Hafiz will provide new qualified candidates and will create an evolution both in education and in the job market. He, however, said that what is expected more from this program is to provide graduates with different education backgrounds such that they are able to meet the needs of the job market, including different handmade crafts and vocational skills. According to him there is still a great demand for low and medium level employees in the job market, but because of cultural stigmas not many apply for those jobs. “Both young Saudi men and women do not agree to work in such jobs and prefer to work in businesses and administrative jobs,” explained Hafiz. The Ministry of Labor and the Ministry of Higher Education have set up a joint committee that will work on reducing the gap between higher education professions and job market demands, the spokesman of the Ministry of Labor Hattab Al-Enezi told Saudi Gazette recently. A study by Moneer Al-Otaibi, an associate professor at the college of education at King Saud University, titled “On the compatibility of Higher Education Output with the Labor,” stated that 75 percent of graduates in Saudi Arabia have obtained their degrees in humanities and social sciences. The scholarship program, stated the study, is to work on reducing this gap and about 47 percent of students have been sent to study professional courses, including medicine, engineering and agriculture. The study also stated that private sector still hesitates to employ nationals and still demands language and computer skills before employing them. The main specializations that the Saudi market still needs, based on this study, are medicine, engineering, technology, industry, finance, commerce, hotel, travel and computer and information systems. The vocational jobs and those based on handicrafts are still being dominated by expatriates, revealed the study, stating that 73 percent of all vocational jobs are still in the hands of expatriates. Saudis do not go to such jobs because of low wages, lack of skills and their reluctance to work long hours. The main sectors that Saudis are still offered opportunities are agriculture and animal husbandry with expatriates constituting 96.5 percent of the work force in these sectors. Another sector, close on their heels, is engineering and all services related to it with expatriates controlling 94.5 percent of the jobs, followed by the industry and food sectors where expatriates have a 92.6 percent share. Among the main recommendations that the study puts after contacting managers of recruitment at different establishments are: Knowing the job market demands by setting a system that gets updated regularly, mastering English language, more focus on developing personal skills, and setting dialogues between colleges and the job market to exchange views to meet the demand.
