Huawei Training Center in Riyadh provides advanced technical training for employees of its customers (operators) and subcontractors, and also partners with regional universities to provide learning programs for students. JEDDAH – With spending on IT infrastructure in the Middle East predicted to jump to over $192 billion in 2013, and Saudi Arabia seen as one of the dominant players, encouraging the next generation of talent has become a top priority for not only the government but also private multinationals operating in the Kingdom today. In an interview, James Wu, CEO of Huawei KSA, shared his thoughts with the Saudi Gazette about the top IT skills in demand today and what multinationals like Huawei are doing to bridge world-class training programs with real-world job opportunities. He highlighted Huawei's ongoing commitment to support and hone the IT skills in the Kingdom. He noted that Huawei has invested around $6 million in training initiatives in the Kingdom since the establishment of its Riyadh Training Center in 2006. “Since its establishment in 2006, the Huawei Training Center in Riyadh has grown steadily to meet an expanding list of educational and training objectives, and is recognized today as a major center of excellence for telecom industry training in the region. Our Training Center provides a broad portfolio of high-quality training programs, covering the needs of field operations, software commissioning, equipment operation/maintenance, network management and more. The facility is capable of accommodating 40 trainees at a time, and more than 2,600 individuals are put through their paces at our center every year,” Wu explained. He further said the technical courses are developed entirely by Huawei. Customer requirements are passed on to the Huawei Learning Service development team in Shenzhen who analyze training needs and market trends and collect relevant supporting materials from Huawei R&D, then use the insights and resources gathered to develop the course material. Moreover, he emphasized that Huawei also has in place a comprehensive quality assurance system to ensure that quality controls are implemented in all training procedures, including training needs analysis, courseware quality assurance, training development and delivery processes, instructor quali?cation, and training effectiveness surveys. As a global telecommunications leader, what are the top technical skills organizations like Huawei are looking for in 2013 when hiring both on a global level and within KSA? Telecommunications technology is evolving at a breakneck speed, and it's difficult to identify a set of sustainable skills or predict the multitude of ways technology will change our lives. For telecom professionals, however, these rapid technological changes only serve to reinforce what we have known for some time now – that up-to-date technical skills and continuous life-long learning is absolutely essential to thriving in the telecom field, or even to staying professionally relevant. Huawei understands this and our training solutions are designed and constantly updated to reflect market trends and changing realities. Our solutions include Competence Consulting, which identifies employees' competence gap and then customizes their competence improvement plans, and Knowledge Transfer, where we provide Huawei product training and end-to-end technology convergence training. In Bayt.com's most recent “Top Industries in MENA” report, telecommunications was ranked by respondents in Saudi Arabia as one of the top three industries offering the best career growth opportunities. Do you see a heightened focus today on bringing young people into the industry or supporting mid-level professionals advance in the sector? The Middle East telecom services market accounts for 77 percent of total IT spending in the region—according to Gartner—and much of this spending comes from Saudi Arabia. Given the extent of investment being witnessed in the telecommunications sector in KSA and the massive requirement of skilled manpower it would engender, it is imperative that we focus on bringing highly skilled young people into the industry and at the same time provide opportunities for the continuing education and training of existing telecom professionals. Huawei is committed to building the telecom talent pool to drive sustainable economic growth in KSA and the region. The Huawei Training Center in Riyadh provides advanced technical training for employees of our customers (operators) and subcontractors, and we also partner with regional universities to provide learning programs for university students. We now have around 500 trainers who are Huawei employees, in addition to our pool of outsourced trainers. Our training centers uniquely benefit from round-the-year support from the Huawei University in Shenzhen, allowing us to source trainers, remote labs, course materials, and training solutions as per requirement. Huawei talks a lot about business ‘glocalization' when making HR investments in emerging markets. What does this strategy entail and do you have specific targets for hiring local staff in the long term? By “glocalization”, we essentially mean blending “global” best practices with keen “local” insights about a country's social and economic environment; at the most basic level this requires skills and technology transfer to local staff in a manner which is culturally relevant and builds on their existing skill sets. Glocalization involves customer-centric innovation, commitment to establishing and maintaining long-term local partnerships, as well as providing opportunities to develop local talent that will form the next generation of business and industry leaders. For a global company like Huawei, where does Saudi Arabia come into play as being an innovation hub for the region? The government of Saudi Arabia is committed to creating a more technology-focused economy as part of its Vision 2020, and has unveiled ambitious investment plans across key sectors. In its June 2013 report, Gartner estimates that Saudi Arabia will spend $3.5 billion in education, $4.9 billion in health, and $25 billion in transportation equipment plus services. As a technology innovator and a global leader in ICT, Huawei is focusing in a major way on KSA and is committed to delivering customer-centric innovation to the Saudi market to help the Kingdom achieve its economic needs and goals of Vision 2020. Huawei has a long history of innovation and a wealth of R&D expertise. We invested more than $4.8 billion in R&D and applied for over 56,000 patents in 2012, and around 45 percent of our global workforce is devoted to research and innovation. — SG
