Publication Date: July 12, 2007
A new career center has been established at Algeria’s Institute of National Commerce (INC), a result of a Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) in higher education between INC and the University of Michigan’s William Davidson Institute (WDI).
The center is Algeria’s employment service for students and will fulfill the need of Algeria’s growing economy for well-educated managers. Historically, the hiring of recent college graduates had been via informal networking among friends, family and colleagues.
The project is funded by the Higher Education for Development (HED) which is part of USAID’s Bureau of Economic Growth. The partnership, called Educating Managers, Promoting Linkages and Opportunity Integration – or EMPLOI – commenced implementation during January 2007.
Tom Devlin, the WDI consultant, visited INC and assisted in developing a framework for the career center. He worked with Abdenour Slaouti, INC project director and a professor. Slaouti said that “the INC faculty and students are very excited about the new career center, which will serve as a bridge between students and employers.”
Khalid Al-Naif, director of Development Consulting Services at the William Davidson Institute, said that Algeria’s population will continue to increase at the relatively modest rate of 1.5 percent a year, but the working population will grow more quickly because of the country’s young demographic profile.
“As a result, unemployment will continue to be a chronic problem despite indications in official statistics that the jobless rate has fallen sharply over the past two or three years,” he said. “The new career center offers a structured means of linking private sector employers to young entrants into the workforce who are interested in internships and postgraduate employment. This will create more opportunities in the private sector and stop the exodus of Algeria’s most talented professionals to Europe and North America.”
After a comprehensive selection process, Ali Belhkiri was hired as the center’s part-time director and Nassima Arheb was named his assistant. The combination of Belkhiri's extensive business and teaching experience, along with his commitment to students, places him in an excellent position to build the career center at INC into a model for other institutions of higher learning, Al-Naif and Slaouti said.
Objectives for the career center’s first year of operation include: identifying summer employment opportunities; identifying post-graduate employment opportunities; promoting and marketing the career center to students and employers; gathering information about the labor market and learning about the needs of employers; and, establishing a mentoring network for female students with female managers.
In just its first few weeks of operation, the career center in Algeria has already made substantial progress with 60 students submitting their resumes and a growing number of employers posting job announcements. In addition, the center has already made contact with managers to begin establishing the foundation of its female mentoring network.
The center held its first career fair in June, a two-day event designed to give students and employers an opportunity to meet and exchange information.