Dubai: Emirati students get a chance to shadow private international and local companies for a day to get a taste of job opportunities available in the private sector.
The aim of the campaign ‘CEO for a day’ is to broaden the horizon of the UAE youth to include jobs that are outside the traditional public sector that UAE national youth tend to pursue.
Essa Al Mulla, Executive Director of Emirates National Development Programme (ENDP) spoke about the importance of raising awareness regarding this issue as an increasing number of UAE nationals are going to enter the job market in the coming years and the public sector will not be able to accommodate them all.
“According to the Dubai Statistics Centre 18,000 to 20,000 UAE nationals are going to enter the job market in the next eight to ten years. We can’t put them all in the public sector so it is vital that they learn about the other job opportunities that are available in the private sector.” Said Mulla
Another reason to why it is important to raise awareness among the UAE youth is that most UAE nationals are unaware of the valuable experience that they can gain from working from the private sectors which is why ENDP and Horizon group have launched the campaign. “We hope that once the Emirati undergraduate shadows the private company’s CEO during meetings and general day to day work they will gain interest in the private sector and so consider to pursue a career in it.”
Third and fourth year undergraduates of Zayed University will be invited to participate in the campaign through email were they will be asked to submit there applications to a dedicated Facebook page. A team of experienced ENDP human resource specialists will then shortlist the candidates based on a set of qualities that are associated with corporate leaders worldwide.
The chosen candidates will be placed with the appropriate private companies between the 4th and 6th of December where they will shadow the company’s CEO for a whole day in hope that they would be influenced and drawn to the private sector.
Some 80 local and international private companies participating in the campaign vary from banking and finance, retail, hospitality, logistics, technology, aviation, telecommunications and other sectors that contribute of the country’s economy.
The CEO for a day” programme is not the first programme that the ENDP has launched to call on the Emiratisation of private sector as the ENDP has successfully recruited 10,000 UAE national in the private sector since 2006. However what is different in this year’s programme is that the students are being targeted from there.
Al Mulla also spoke about other solutions to solve the unemployment of the UAE national’s problem by introducing subsidies. However, he believes that it is not the best solution. “The UAE can easily pay subsidies for Emirati national who find trouble in obtaining jobs. It will cost 6.5 billion Dirham and the problem would be solved however I do not believe that it would be the best solution as we want the Emirati youth to be a productive one.”
