INTERVIEWER: MAHMOUD MANSI
EDITOR: NOHA ALY SLEME
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: How did you start Jobzella as a project?
Nader El-Batrawi: I started Jobzella on my own, and since I had not enough cash in hand, I had to sell my house and all the staff I had to start. I knew from the beginning that the capital I started with was not enough, but I believed that if we built a great project, we will be able to find investors to fund us. First I got my first partner, Jamal Suboh, who was my manager, to help me build my business, as a co-founder. Then in one year, we were able to get two rounds of investments and the majority of our shares have been acquired by the Saudi group of companies “Al Khaleej Training and Education” the largest training and education network in the Middle East. It is considered one of the top 100 companies in Saudi Arabia, and one of the top 500 companies in the Arab world according to Forbes Middle East.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: In the beginning how did you convince other companies to trust your service?
Nader El-Batrawi: I cannot say that I convinced any company to trust our services, but I was able to convince them to try our services. However, we sincerely cared that our early adopters meet their expectations to receive a positive feedback from their side.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: As the founder, are you finding a difficulty to delegate? Sometimes the owner of any project is the most enthusiastic, how can one pass this enthusiasm to the ones working with him/her?
Nader El-Batrawi: In the beginning of any startup, it is really difficult to delegate critical tasks and responsibilities, but once the teams are settled down and everything gets stable, then delegation will be no issue at all. Once you share with your team your vision and progress and make them feel they are part of a great dream and that their input really makes a difference, then they might get even more enthusiastic, and they can come with better ideas.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Why do many companies prefer to rely on recruitment companies instead of their own?
Nader El-Batrawi: If you are talking about headhunting and traditional recruitment services, then this is not true in all cases, as the majority of companies, especially SMEs, are not using recruitment companies. But companies with high turnover of employees, for example: call centers, might not have enough capacity to satisfy all their recruitment needs. Also some companies are looking for some top qualified and rare calibers, so they prefer to rely on a recruitment expert to save time and money…etc.
If you are talking about online recruitment in general or using professional networks like Jobzella to satisfy the companies’ recruitment needs, then the answer is so obvious. Recruitment websites and professional networks provide companies with great tools to promote their job vacancies, and also offer huge databases to allow recruiters find the talents they are looking for. Also the return on investment with professionals’ networks like Jobzella is much higher. In addition of being able to hire needed talents Jobzella offers great branding for its clients and help them to build their community of followers. No need to say that newspapers are not used widely nowadays.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: From your professional opinion, should all companies rely on outsourcing recruitment, or only specific kind of organisations? What does it depend on?
Nader El-Batrawi: As I replied on the previous question, this depends mainly on the size and nature of the business, but definitely, relying on experts in any field saves a lot of time and money and increases the quality of the outcome.
I believe unless you have a full fledge HR team in your organisation then using external help would be beneficial to save you time and provide you with the required resources on timely fashion. Some companies with hiring needs tend to try and do it in house using cheap ways or do it self recruitment and they lose lots of time to find the right person. We all know time worth money and you are better off to spend little money with a professional network such Jobzella and get the help needed
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What are the common mistakes you find in CVs?
Nader El-Batrawi: Actually, I am not dealing with traditional CVs, but mainly Jobzella public profiles, and we encounter many issues, for that reason we created this blog article to discuss such issues https://www.jobzella.com/blog/here-is-why-you-are-not-getting-hired/
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is the job title of the person responsible to select the CVs? What are the qualifications of this job title?
Nader El-Batrawi: I think you mean here recruiters or recruitment specialist. Recruitment is not an easy job, and to be really a good recruiter you need to practice a lot. You can never be a great recruiter, unless you did too many interviews and worked on different positions with different career levels and industries. You also need to understand your clients’ culture and the working environment so you chose the right fit.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: One of the services you offer is Career Consultation. Tell us more about this service please.
Nader El-Batrawi: Career consultation has many aspects, and such services are designed to help professionals and job seekers build their careers and aspire to a better life. Career consultation include writing a CV, cover letter, or public profile, or giving consultation regarding career shift or even moving to another country, preparation for interviews, or professional personal branding…etc.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: As a recruitment company what are the employment problems you find in Egypt? There is always a huge demand in organisations and among the unemployed. Why is that and what are your suggested solutions?
Nader El-Batrawi: We do not consider Jobzella as a recruitment company, and this is a very narrow scope and a small part of what we really do. So to put it in the right place we can say that Jobzella is the first professional network in the Middle East, which is offering millions of great career opportunities, which includes jobs, courses, career services, events, professionals and companies…etc.
Returning back to your question, the main problem in Egypt is the education level, dedication to work, and focus. Yes there is a huge demand, but not enough qualified and serious talents. We and other organisations are doing a lot of effort to promote learning and promote professionalism, work ethics and career building. For example, our search engine for courses includes 6,000+ free online courses from top universities worldwide; also we have our Jobzella Blog which is dedicated mainly to help professionals and jobseekers in building their careers and aspiring to a better life.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is your criticism regarding HR in Egypt?
Nader El-Batrawi: Actually, I don’t want to criticise anybody, what I would do is to advice the top management to empower more their HR staff. The most important asset to any company is its people, and the major capital is its mental capital, which is mainly the role of HR. I think management needs to give more space and powers to their HR teams. One thing I would mention is to increase the quality and focus of the learning materials of the different colleges regarding HR topics, and one important thing is to have a really big organisation to support HR in Egypt.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Jobzella has its own blog that contains very rich articles regarding HR and Job Seeking issues. Who writes these articles? What are the challenges you face in managing the blog and writers?
Nader El-Batrawi: We have a team of copywriters who are dedicated to our blog. We produce three bilingual articles a week, and we are offering different kinds of articles to meet both the professionals and/or businesses’ needs. Of course the main challenge is to provide quality and relevant article to our users, and this is not easy, but we are trying our best.
HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Thank you so much Mr. Nader for your efforts towards the HR market in Egypt and for this interview.
Facebook Page: https://www.facebook.com/jobzella.egypt/?fref=ts