Over 10,000 young Saudi men and women have applied for job training at the Saudi Labor Market Exhibition in Jeddah since its start on Saturday. The exhibition held workshops to educate job seekers on work ethics and available future careers with companies based in the Kingdom, said organizers. “Participating companies are sincere in their efforts to provide job security for young Saudis,” said Nada Al-Olaqi, director of human resourses at a national company. But this depends on the qualifications of job seekers, she said. “Some of them just don't have the necessary qualifications to get our jobs,” she added. However, she encouraged the youth to at least join up for crash-course training sessions so that they can at least have an entry level qualification. At the exhibition, a young woman who was looking for a job suited to her current qualifications, said she had submitted her CV to a few companies and was hoping for a “positive” response. Many young people lamented what they described as “hard to get” jobs requiring extensive experience and higher qualifications that would take ages to obtain. Ali Hazem, a graduate of a technical college, said he has been looking for a job for two years, but was always excluded by demands for “unreasonable” qualifications. Ayman Erqsous, a trainer at the exhibition, held a session on how to prepare a good CV and pass a job interview. Emad Anbar, director of marketing at the Jeddah Council for Human Resources Development, said that the Yuser (Easy) Job Office has provided 3,302 jobs at the exhibition, 67 percent of which are technical. The Yuser Job Office is the brainchild of a strategic partnership between the government and the private sector to guarantee more flexibility in both foreign and national recruitment. “We've changed the old negative perception about manual work among Saudis,” he said. The Saudi job market has taken a different turn over the past few years by creating more jobs for Saudis at factories and hospitals, he added. Employment strategies in the Kingdom will be more organized and systematic, he said, based on need and availability of jobs. At the beginning, many companies could not understand the driving force behind increasing real employment opportunities for Saudis. The Yuser Office has helped to reduce fake Saudization, where employers present a list of Saudi names who are not actually employed. Through the office, the companies' payroll lists and contracts are closely monitored and field inspection trips are conducted to determine the true figures of Saudis employed by companies. The disabled have not been left out of the labor market, said Othman Abdu Hashim, Director of the King Abdullah Rehabilitation Center for Disabled Children. The center has taken part in the exhibition to find jobs for its trained and qualified men and women with disabilities, he said. Hashim hailed the decision of the Ministry of Labor to equate one job opportunity for a person with a disability, with four jobs in its Saudization quota.
