Companies in the Middle East should hire more employees from the region as opposed to recruiting from global markets, according to Hisham Elaraby, the regional director for MENA at online education platform Udacity.
Speaking to Arabian Business, Elaraby called on companies to look to the region when hiring, particularly when it comes to tech.
“There’s been a trend by regional industry players, big and small, to hire tech talent from outside this region. Typically, when you’re a company and want to hire a web developer or data analyst, the mind-set is still to recruit from other markets,” he said.
“I really hope that going forward, a lot of our regional players, big and small are going to look in market to hire their tech talent,” he added.
Udacity, the Silicon Valley-based education technology company, offers nanodegrees that cover an array of subjects ranging from self-driving cars and AI to data science and digital marketing. Content for their programs, which is created in partnership with leading organisations including Google, Facebook, Amazon and IBM, aim is to upskill students for jobs of the future, but also update current skills of older workforce.
The platform connects its graduates with global and regional companies. Some of its Middle Eastern graduates work in firms including Careem, IBM and Aramco.
Elaraby urged companies to contact Udacity when in need of tech talent.
“If they’re looking for tech talent, they are more than welcome to reach out to us. As part of our alumni service, and in order to help the ecosystem, we connect our graduates with employers. Certainly, we’d be more than open to talk to any company looking for tech talent,” he said.
Udacity so far has had over 3,400 nanodegree graduates from MENA in the past year and a half since it launched, with the number expected to increase to 5,000 by the end of 2018.
It has several partnerships in the region, including with the Ministry of Communication and Information Technology in Egypt, the non-profit MiSK Foundation in Saudi Arabia and the Dubai Future Foundation in the UAE, among others.
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