19 July, 2005

Jordan's IT Companies, Nothing But ****!

As I've already said before in 1 of the posts, i'll be discussing in this post the suffer I had along with some of my colleagues trying to get training during this summer in IT companies in Jordan.

1st of all, just to tell U, Training for IT students in our college is optional , therefore, from our 2002 class only 4 students dare to try looking for training for this summer, including yours truly.

being optional, training hunt for us is more like looking for a Job, which's good to be honest with u, it makes u more familiar with the suffer u'll have 1 year or less later! we got our CVs ready, a big list of companies with their contact Nrs & emails, Recommendations from the lecturers, Mobile Phones Ready & heavily charged, Amman's urban transport routes' map Ready, our feet ready for long walks ... & HERE WE COME!

yeah, we were all very excited about the whole thing, we all were aiming high in the sky... but ...
BANG!
what a slam in the face, here we are now after 2.5 months of continuous search (having started with the whole issue since the beginning of May) :

FAIEZ: Looked even for companies non member in INTAJ & still nothing.

AMR: no summer courses,no training,,, just waking daily after mid day still hoping for 1 of his WASTA's to call, despite they all ZA7LAGOOLO along with his WASTAs.

EHAB: haven't I told u!? he gave up wayyyy ago, since June!

ME: .......... no comment!

allow me here to tell u some stories that happened between each & every 1 of us, since we were looking each separately of course, between us & some Jordanian “Te5nology” companies members in INTAJ, those are not all the companies of course, those are just (THE FUNNY) list! other companies mainly apologized thru the phone when calling them, or at least their secretaries did!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
This is Jordan, a country ruled by Secretaries rather than Professionals who are to busy in launch meetings in which they “mainly” decide when the next meeting should be!

Javna: for those who don't know, this company is situated in the industrial City / Al Baiader! I don't know if they have AMD tyres coz my machine is Intel :P they unfortunately said, I read : “sorry, we have already ONE trainee, we can't have more!”.

Aregon: Those are a very serious IT / Business group consisting of 4 companies, we had to take a date to visit the company & bring personal photos along with the CV, being there we had a 9 pages exam & form that we had to fill, the exam was more about self-esteem & personality tests, IQ, & english exams.
Both Me & Faiez had the chance to apply for this company. They never called us even. grrrr, I want my photos back !

NCR: those guys transferred our phone call to sth called (The Maintenance Department) to discuss this issue with them !!!!! WE ARENT BROKEN GUYS!

National Technology Corp: those too have a Maintenance department in charge of hiring & training, after they switched the phone call between offices for about 3 minutes, an automated Central Voice said: “Ur phone call must end now!” & shut the line!

Integrant: which is a US based company! who ever (TEEEET) lady who answered my call simply replied: “La2 7abibi, ma fee 3enna tadrib” & Shut the phone on my face!
I felt I'm an 8th grade school boy or sth!
upon that, having the managers email from the Intaj website, I dropped him a line, saying in it that I'm sending the CV thru email coz of the incident that happened with me.... no reply till now!

Fastlink: Respect to the company the trains the biggest Nr of Students in Jordan, despite our believe that we have approximately nothing to do in telecom companies but we said to give it a shot, we have been accepted to come & apply in OCTOBER, so that we MIGHT get training NEXT SUMMER!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Mobilecom: only Amr tried this 1, convincing us not even to dare to try,,, the 1st say : Yeah, no problem, consider ur self in, so bring us the official paper “KETAB” from ur dean, Amr brought it, then they said, no way, u must have at least 3-4 certifications (or as they told him: “6ash7a” )to train here... so Amr of course used the final method: WASTA , a WASTA that he can depend on as he said... ZA7LAGOOLO!

Umniah: yup, I dared for it too, I went to Mr Michale Dagher's office before the company had placed it's logo on the Building all of u know to be Umniah's Headquarter. the guys at Michale's office (which is located in the culture street by the way) welcomed me & gave me the Direct Nr of the HR department, & told me about the Headquarter building. So, I called the HR, the lady answered with 1 word: “It's Full”, I've explained to her that I don't wanna work not even in the Customer Care, it's just that I'm a trainee ,,, she kept silent for about 30 secs & said again : “Aham, It's Full!” & shut the phone!
after this phone call with about 3 hours I was at Umniah's Headquarters, guess what, they have put a paper at the door that this guy (Me) is not allowed for Training Apply inside nor any trainee at all! I've written a letter at that moment explaining why I've chosen this company & the capabilities 3G tech offers & my visions about it .... yada yada ... & appended it to My CV & left it at the door ..... I guess it made it to the closest bin after i left from there!

ABUL HAJ Center Companies: in Abul Haj Center there are 12 companies, Faiez got them all in 1 shot! none of them even accepted to take the CV from him! Gosh, they dont have Trash Bins even!

Menhaj: Financial problems, they only fire , don't hire!

Maktoob.com: Faiez Tried those out last September, despite the fact he was still just getting into the 3rd year, the guy had fair enough knowledge & skills in Web prog, & powerful in OOP & methodologies. They accepted him, but guess for what task?! can I get any Ideas dear readers ,,,, U wont get it , I guarantee! He assigned him to check the discussion forums every day & erase the posts with in proper language & Bad words !!!!! ah, and delete the emails coming to the suggestions area!!
I Mean,,, what the Hell! He quitted after 4 or 5 days..!

ITG: Now I don't know what's the real story behind us not getting training in there!? we applied (Both Me & Faiez), they called, asked what we like, called again cooperating with us about the times we can be available. & even called that they'll be soon calling us to confirm when to start! Then, simply abandoned us! by coincidence both me & Faiez happened to had gone bored & decided (without cooperating) to check what's the deal since they didnt call back for over 10 days after when they were supposed to, Faiez went in Person, I called ....WE WERE BOTH TOLD THAT: They took trainees already long time ago, at a moment they said (Are You Sure U have applied to THIS Company!) ,,, & finally declaring with proud that they took already TOW trainees & we're not Them apparently !!!! DUH! They took a graphics student & one that “knows” ASP.NET as they told Faiez ... WHAT!?!!!!! Graphics!!!!! What about 3D Canvas Programming, AI, Sun Certified Programmers, PHP, Oracle, Linux & Unix Platform experience (since they deliver products on those platforms) , Software Engineering tools use, Software Design Patterns Experience, HCI & experience in Customer Social & Psychological interaction with SW & GUI !!! what about .. .. .. .. .. WHERE THE HELL IS MY CV COZ I WANNA BURN IT ... I got out of minds writing this post & I Dont wanna continue .... HELL YA I NEED TRAINNING !

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

hey nasim

i work at one of the IT companies u applied to and well let me just tell u that ur lucky they didnt call u back !

emmm .. ur absolutely right IT companies in Jordan are SHIT ! they dont know a good candidate when they see one.. they do depend on WASTA when hiring and its absolutely frustrating getting the job ... and if u do eventually get the job.... u dont get enough money and u realise that 90% of the ppl who do get better money are waaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaay less qualified than you are!!

good luck :)

Anonymous said...

lol

That is a funny story, and the sad thing is it is not the first time i hear it, everybody I know went thorough this!

Anyway man, take it easy, cuz the problem is most of the companies in Jordan have tried to take trainees before, but those students did nothing but harming the company more than being useful, trust me, thats why they stopped accepting trainees.

Now, who to blame?! why engineers, doctor, pharamcist and lawyers gets better training chances?! I guess it has to do with having "Niqabat"...
So there is no rule that forces the IT companies to take the risk of accepting trainees!

wilbagi 3indak

Anonymous said...

Aregon is the worste company I've ever dealt with in my entire life :)

Anyway, send me your CV, I think we've got vacancy for a trainee. email: ammar[at]gnuix{[dot]}com

Anonymous said...

Hi

I am a general manager for one of Abu-Elhajj companies.. There are many reasons why training is difficult in the IT industry.
First, it is the Unviersities job to find you training, but the university does not bother at all (once they received the tuition fees). I tried myself with Jordan University to create an industry link, we embrassed and sponsored 5 gruops of IT student for their graduation project (we paid money to get them H/W and S/w like smart card kits, RFID etc ) We even participated in certain classes by giving some classes in security , GIS and database, but all of that went done the drains, nobody is interseted for such a link. For it to work, there should be win-win situation for both the University (students) .and the IT indestry (companies). another reason is that most students are not qualified for the IT sector, with many even the basics are missing, i ask simple question like why are todays databases called "Relational Databases" 3-5% give the right answers, the others say that it is because you can reference tables via foreign and Primary key. I ask, explain to me the three normalization rules and why they are important , again they would say, yes i remeber studying this but i forgot exactly and start throwing some words like redundancy etc... Then i stop asking my other question like what do you know about Servlets, JSP, JSF, JAAS, EJB, TopLink, BC4J, Struts, Web Services, UIX, BI beans and the rest of J2EE suite that can be implemented by Oracle Jdeveloper (which BTW became a free product now)

However, if you or anybody you know have PASSION, again i repeat PASSION for investigating, researching and developing Software technologies, please send me your CV, i am sick and tired watching some of the employees recklessly practicing IT with an absolute lack of passion. Passionless IT professional does not worth more than 200 JD for me evey after many years of exprience for Software cannot be dealt with as a JOB but rather as ART

Ammar

oraclejo@yahoo.com (i do not check this email frequently, but i will for the coming 2 days)

nasimjo said...

anonymous & hani: Alla be3een!

Ammar Ibrahim: thanx alot man ,, GNU ppl rock ;)
Ammar & ammar: thank u both, me personally got my self an internship with the "yakee" microsoft during august, but ill be applying to you both with pleasue along with Faiez & Amr(who is a linux box that u'll adore mr Ammar Ibrahim).

By the way, mr ibrahim, we'll be having a GNU Linux event soon in our uni, ill be contacting u & sending u an official invitation. thanx alot

Anonymous said...

asim ullah

Anonymous said...

asalam o alikom
i am asim ullah from pakistan . i have done mba-it and i am looking for a job. if u have any information which u think can b usefull for me for finding a job then please do inform me. my email add is m_asim_ullah@yahoo.com
ALLAH HAFIZ