Interviewer: Nourhanne Ibrahim
“When gaining a new experience we know more about ourselves, our points of strengths and weaknesses, so we start to work on them…”
Dina Hesham
About the Interviewee
Dina Hesham Muhammed – a 17 years old senior student at El Manar Language School and she is currently volunteering as the Vice Head of Talent Management in (BTG) Bridging the Gap in Alexandria, Egypt.
Dina has quite an experience in civil work and volunteering, she was a:
-Participant at be creative at 2016.
-Delegate at Alexandria Model of NATO at 2017.
-Talent Management staff member at DLEEL central unit at 2018.
-Vice head of talent management committee at Project X at 2018.
The Interview
1-HR Revolution Middle East: Dina, would you please tell us more about Bridging the Gap?
Dina Hesham: Bridging the Gap is a summer project, which helps youth (from 12 to 16 years old) to bridge the gaps between the educational life and the labor market.
2-HR Revolution Middle East: What’s the difference of being a talent management and being a HR in the volunteering sector?
Dina Hesham: In the civil society we are all volunteering, so nobody gets paid. Here’s the difference that the HR member is more focused on implementing a monetary ‘compensation and benefits’ system, but as a talent management member we focus more on having a non-monetary ‘rewarding’ system like announcing a member as the best for the month or for the project, and a penalty system as giving warnings.
3-HR Revolution Middle East: Tell me about the best volunteering project you’ve worked in so far?
Dina Hesham: I was a talent management member at DLEEL Alexandria at the Central Unit| 2018. This was the best experience I have ever gained. DLEEL is an initiative which its aim to make a change in the individual in order to develop it’s community and so develop his country, DLEELians really care about these values. And that’s why I’m grateful for being a part of this initiative, because of these values. I developed my skills and knowledge.
4-HR Revolution Middle East: When working with students and non-profit, should the head of any committee be a leader or a boss for better results?
Dina Hesham: A leader, for sure. A boss just gives orders and waits for people to do them but a leader supports and encourages a group of individuals and works continuously on the achievement of goals. A leader also needs to be diplomatic and discuss the solutions or ideas with the members to come up with the best decisions. Leaders don’t give orders as much as they care and help people to do their task with the best performance. Leaders should also establish a friendship with the members to get know them.
5-HR Revolution Middle East: In the volunteering field, we hear some complaints about some heads and vice heads of committees who have a work-culture of being arrogant with staff members. What is your opinion about that?
Dina Hesham: It’s not normal that heads of committees do so. We as heads are the same as the staff members. We are all here to achieve our project’s goal. As heads of the project our role is to direct and motivate our staff members but we can reach our goal through a certain way and we must discuss this with our staff. However, every committee differs from one another and every team has its own goal so if another committee interrupted our work with any action or sort of aggression, we should never care about it and focus on our goal because this action might have been happened as a result of stress.
6-HR Revolution Middle East: What was the hardest decision you made as the vice head of talent management?
Dina Hesham: Selecting the talent management staff members, as I was afraid to be oppressive for not giving someone the chance to gain the experience.
7-HR Revolution Middle East: Since that BTG is mainly dealing with children, how do you describe your relationship with the parents?
Dina Hesham: No, I didn’t. As I actually respect the parents because they’re helping their children to gain more knowledge and to improve their way of thinking not only improving their skills.
8-HR Revolution Middle East: In your opinion, what would be the thing a person can gain from joining BTG as a staff member and as a participant?
Dina Hesham: Firstly, let me talk about the staff members, we as board members are trying our best to give the staff an effective training to help them in the work environment, also the staff members gain experience from the situations they face during the project. And we don’t learn without doing mistakes and facing situations. Secondly, the participants. The training committee is giving such a great training program for the participants to develop their skills and knowledge. We help the participants to be more sociable and not to be afraid of giving a presentation or to communicate with others.
9-HR Revolution Middle East: How could someone’s experience in BTG affect his/her career or current job?
Dina Hesham: As the main vision of DLEEL or BTG, is bridging the gaps between the educational life and the labor market, so we work on giving the members the needed skills to bridge this gap. For example, someone was a talent management member and he learnt some of the technicalities of the human recourses, then he felt that he wants to shift his career, so he started developing his knowledge and started working as a HR in a real company based on the skills he gained from the training sessions we’ve made. These training sessions include conducting interviews, giving presentations, writing formal reports, job analysis and performance management.
10-HR Revolution Middle East: In general, how do you think civil work projects support the Egyptian society?
Dina Hesham: When gaining a new experience we know more about ourselves, our points of strengths and weaknesses, so we start to work on them. So in my own point of view, the more we get developed the more we help our country to be progressed.