Haykal: the number of newly-emerging companies participating in the fair has exceeded previous years

On Saturday evening at the new Exhibition City in Damascus, the Minister of Social Affairs and Labour opened the “2009 Job Fair”, organised by the Syrian Young Entrepreneurs Association (“SYEA”) with participation from more than sixty different companies.

The exhibition, which the Association organised for the sixth successive year, forms an opportunity for young Syrian graduates, qualified technicians and scientific experts to meet directly with leading Syrian companies that seek young, domestic talent.

SYEA’s President Abdulsalam Haykal said that the “participation of a large number of newly-emerging companies in this round of the exhibition clearly reflects Syria’s economic growth”, expecting to see the current exhibition “increasingly receive Syrian expatriates, especially those from the Arab Gulf states who have been forced by the international economic crisis to return home and look for work.”

“Despite the Association’s fears that it would not be possible to run the exhibition this year because of the international economic crisis, more companies took part than in past years,” explained Haykal. “The thing which invites optimism is that, although a number of the biggest companies in Syria have stopped hiring because they stopped growing or perhaps shrunk, we find that there are a large number of emerging companies participating in the exhibition. A larger proportion of companies participating in the exhibition need a much greater number of employees than the companies existing previously in the market.”

Co-President of SYEA’s Board Karim Tabah said that participation in the exhibition “allows companies to access young capabilities, and contribute effectively in alleviating the overcrowding of the unemployed market in Syria. The exhibition provides a suitable opportunity for university students and graduates, who constitute the majority of the fair’s attendees, to meet those economic actors willing to employ.”

In addition to allowing for directly meeting between job seekers and exhibiting companies, Tabah said that the exhibition “allows everyone to fill out their curriculum vitae directly at the exhibition or via its electronic website (syeajobfair.com), where applications for all of the companies at the exhibition are arranged for selection according to the nature of each company’s work.”

In his statements to reporters at the exhibition, Minister of Social Affairs and Labour Dr. Al-Hajj ‘Arif stated that the exhibition “is an opportunity to organise the labour market and address unemployment by bringing together job seekers with the job advertisers” and gives “decision-makers a genuine idea of the needs of the job market and the qualifications required in filling vacant positions in companies seeking labour.” She added that the exhibition helps “create quick remedies on the tactical level in the area of training and qualifying which is carried out by different institutions.”

“The exhibition is important in exposing unemployment in the technical trades and the necessity of addressing this through training and qualifying courses for the job seeker, seeking to harmonise their skills and abilities with the job opportunities being exhibited.”

“The private sector contributes within acceptable limits in guaranteeing job opportunities and limiting unemployment,” added the Minister, expressing her hope of “further deepening the private sector’s idea of social responsibility in the future.”

SYEA’s statistics indicate that the exhibition, which has been run six times in Damascus and three times in Aleppo, enjoys the participation of scores of companies and job seekers, and ten thousand young men and women, each year.

It is worth noting that SYEA will organise towards the end of the exhibition, which continues until the coming Monday, a series of meetings with training and employment experts that aim to introduce young people to the principles of CV writing, doing an interview, communication skills and entering the job market. The job fair that SYEA ran on the grounds of Aleppo’s Production Market at the end of the previous May attracted some 4352 visitors and 1400 applications on the official website. On the third day of the exhibition, it was announced that 396 jobs had been secured, in addition to the 4000 jobs secured during the previous sessions of the exhibition in Aleppo.