Akhtaboot Announces Website Enhancements and Additional Service Offerings

Akhtaboot (http://www.akhtaboot.com), the Middle East’s top career network, has undergone a major user-focused upgrade. Akhtaboot will roll out the updated, bilingual version of Akhtaboot.com to all its users worldwide with a dynamic new look and an enhanced feature set. The bilingual website was designed in direct response to a comprehensive survey targeted to disclose the underlying recruitment needs of both companies and job seekers. The newly enhanced website provides online visitors with dramatic improvements in navigation, speed, clarity and appearance in addition to a fully bilingual Arabic/English interface, allowing users to shift smoothly between the site’s English and Arabic views.

Improvements to the site include:

• Improved look and feel - Enhanced graphics and page layouts providing visitors with a consistent look and improved user experience solidifying Akhtaboot’s presence as the leading doorway to jobs in the Middle East.

• Simplified navigation and sign up - The simplified and consistent navigation allows users to find information faster and easier. Akhtaboot has also revamped and improved the critical job seeker sign up process in order to ensure a larger and more qualified database. In addition, the Employers tab will be placed in a more prominent spot to make it clearer for companies wishing to use Akhtaboot’s recruitment services.

• New features for job seekers - Job seekers now have the ability to include a cover letter with their job application, notify a friend about a certain job posting and to mark a certain job posting as spam, emphasizing job seeker protection a top priority for Akhtaboot.

• New features for companies - In an effort to give employers more control over their Akhtaboot account, companies can now create multiple user accounts with specific user rights and passwords assigned to each sub account. Multiple users can now use the same Akhtaboot account to post jobs and search CVs. Moreover, the credit list has vastly increased to include radio job postings as well as job postings targeting candidates locally or globally. Employers also have the option to feature a certain job posting or their company globally or locally on all pages of the Akhtaboot website in addition to being able to post different jobs under the profile of different companies within the same account.

• Jobs page improvements - Searching for jobs has become quick and easy with Akhtaboot’s simplified filtration process. All job postings will feature corporate logos for enhanced visibility.

• Expansion of CV search facilities - Akhtaboot has expanded CV search facilities to include the ability to send a certain CV to multiple email addresses as well as displaying CV notes in a thread that highlights the date, the time and the name of the person.

• Enhanced crediting and online purchasing system - The power of activation is now in the hands of the recruiter. The improved website has features geared specifically to benefit employers through displaying client purchase and credit history. The online shopping experience has also been enhanced to include a shopping cart that allows employers to purchase multiple recruitment services and charge them all at once.

• Revamped CV writing section – The registration process in the CV writing section of Akhtaboot has been modified by allowing job seekers interested in revamping their CVs to upload their old CVs upon submission of contact information.
  

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The Boss from Hell: Akhtaboot presents 5 types of difficult bosses and the way to deal with each one of them!

Conflict between a boss and an employee can be both exhausting and intimidating, yet it is bound to happen in any workplace. Difficult bosses vary in personality from being somewhat controlling and aggressive to being straight up abusive. The way employees handle their difficult bosses may determine their position in the company as well as their long term career success. Akhtaboot presents to you 5 types of difficult bosses and the way to deal with each one of them.

The Control Freak

Control Freak bosses always consider themselves to be overwhelmed and burdened with the task of protecting the ungrateful world from their own mistakes. They are convinced that no one can do things the right way unless they dictate the exact steps of doing it. Their behavior is definitely annoying, yet confronting them would only make the situation even worse. They will only see your behavior as evidence that you’re not interested in doing things right. A good way to deal with a Control Freak boss would be to reassure him that you are taking your tasks seriously, and that he can count on you in handling your own responsibilities effectively and efficiently. Hand over all your deliverable on time and make sure not to miss out on every single detail.

The Absent Boss

If you rarely see your boss and most of your conversations with him are a quick chat in the hallway, then most probably you are dealing with an Absent Boss. The worst part about working with an Absent Boss is that he is rarely aware of the problems caused by his absence. Absent Bosses are rarely present when their approval is required or when a procedure is unclear and their guidance is needed. The secret to getting your boss’s attention is stressing the importance of your work and how your boss’s input is crucial to the project at hand. Once you get his attention, talk in headlines by summing up what decisions he needs to make or directions he needs to give. It might take more effort from your side to get things done, but your manager will respect you for being assertive.

The Whip-Cracker

Most Whip-Crackers are workaholics who don’t have a life and they assume that their employees don’t have a life either. They push their employees to the extreme and are never satisfied with their output. They think that employees are irresponsible slaves who wouldn’t want to work unless they are forced to do so. In order to get you’re the Whip-Cracker off your back, work hard and do not let your work go unnoticed. Demand acknowledgment by showing initiative and introducing new ideas that would benefit the firm. Show your boss that you consider yourself a partner of the firm rather than an employee who only works for a living.

The Scheming Boss

The Scheming Boss is the most dangerous type of bosses who is always planning to fire one person or another. He is highly manipulative, keeping an innocent face while setting up a trap for his prey. He tries to protect himself and his position by firing brilliant and qualified workers who might get in the way of his career success. Always be honest and act with extreme care when dealing with this type of bosses. Don’t hesitate to state your opinion about a specific situation even if it is different from your boss’s opinion, but be careful not to point out his shortcomings as it will never go unpunished!

The Busy Boss

This type of bosses is always impatient with lots of things on his mind, yet he respects all of his employees. He expects everything to be done the instant he asks for it. He may not be fully focused when talking to him and may even surprise you with a “you didn’t tell me that” the next day. When talking to this type of bosses, try to repeat important issues more than once and make sure that he has grasped it and agreed to it by asking: “so this is what we have agreed upon, right?”. Moreover, keep evidence of your communications by sending official emails about each decision taken by you or your boss.

It’s often said that people do not quit a job, they quit a boss. While it is frustrating to work with one of the above bosses, it’s quite possible to be able to manage your relationship with them so that none of you would kill the other. Always remember that your boss is someone who is highly experienced with a lot of wisdom to share on how to reach the position he is in now. Keep in mind that bosses aren’t from another planet, although sometimes they seem to be!

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Mohamad Haj Hasan and Yousef Shamoun of Akhtaboot Selected as Endeavor Entrepreneurs

Endeavor invited ten High-Impact Entrepreneurs from Egypt, Jordan, Mexico and Turkey to join its network at an International Selection Panel held in Cairo, Egypt last month.

“In Cairo, Endeavor selected an impressive array of entrepreneurs that are running companies that will not only change industries but also create value-added jobs that are necessary for any growing economy. We are delighted that our Jordanian entrepreneurs, Mohamad Haj Hasan and Yousef Shamoun from Akhtaboot (www.akhtaboot.com), were among those selected.” said Endeavor Jordan’s Managing Director, Carmen Saad.

Akhtaboot - Arabic for “octopus” - is an online recruitment company serving the broader Middle East and the GCC markets. Founded in 2007 and headquartered in Amman, Jordan, Akhtaboot offers an interactive and dynamic interface that provides job seekers and employers with high value products that maximize their goals. These products include online Job Postings, CV Searches, recruitment assistance services in addition to other specialized offerings.

“We are truly honored and humbled to have been chosen among some of the best companies in Jordan and the Middle East, and the acknowledgment is a true testament to the great creative work of the Akhtaboot Team. This is a time when both jobseekers and companies can and should demand excellence from their recruiting partners. It is great to get this confirmation from Endeavor that validates our efforts as well, and we are honored to be recognized in this way”. Said Yousef Shamoun and Mohamad Haj Hasan, Co-founders of Akhtaboot.

The International Selection Panel is the culmination of a rigorous multi-step Search & Selection Process where top business leaders interview and then offer guidance to entrepreneur candidates. Once selected, Endeavor Entrepreneurs are given strategic advice, access to key networks and other tools that will enable them to grow their businesses. Often overlooked, these local entrepreneurs are initiating private sector development in their respective countries.

Mohamad and Yousef join 9 other Endeavor Entrepreneurs in Jordan representing varying industries, who have been selected since Endeavor Jordan began operations in 2008.

About Endeavor

Endeavor breaks down barriers that prevent emerging-market entrepreneurs from reaching their high-impact potential. Endeavor identifies entrepreneurs leading high-growth innovative companies in emerging markets. These entrepreneurs are given world-class strategic advice, access to key networks and other tools that will catapult them to success. With Endeavor’s guidance they become “high-impact” - expanding employment, generating wealth and inspiring others to innovate. Often overlooked, these local entrepreneurs are now jumpstarting private sector development in their countries.

As of 2009,Endeavor Entrepreneurs throughout Latin America, Egypt, India, Jordan, South Africa and Turkey have created more than 98,000 new jobs and generated over $3.15 billion in revenues. For more information, visit www.endeavorjordan.org

About Akhtaboot

Akhtaboot (www.akhtaboot.com) is an online career network that is committed to providing a user-friendly, effective, and efficient way of linking the right person to the right career opportunity. Akhtaboot is a leading career network in the Levant and GCC region utilizing internet, radio, newspaper, and magazine advertising for employer’s job vacancies.

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Get a Life! Akhtaboot presents 5 helpful tips for achieving work-life balance!

Achieving the right balance between your work life and your personal life in today’s hectic business world is no simple task. Between work, kids, social and family commitments there is no time left for personal leisure. Nevertheless, you should remember one important thing “life is what you make it”. You have a choice to either surrender to whatever comes your way and live in chaos or you can be proactive by identifying your priorities and scheduling your activities leaving sufficient time for your personal obligations.

If you had to rate your work-life balance on a scale of 1 to 10, what score would you give it? If the chosen score was less than 5 then you have a serious problem that may lead to depression, exhaustion and maybe chronic stress. Akhtaboot presents 5 tips to help you get your work-life in balance.


Organize your Day

Give each activity in your life a fraction of your time. Get a calendar to help you organize your day by setting goals and scheduling appointments such as lunch dates, outings and even sleep hours. Most employees take work home almost every day. Technology has made us more readily accessible to those who needed to reach us urgently, but at what cost? Checking your Blackberry or laptop for work mail every 10 minutes can become one big work blur. Instead of checking your PDA every 2 minutes, stay at work for one extra hour to respond to all of your work emails. The more in control of your projects, tasks and your life as a whole, the less you need these things interrupting you from enjoying the rest of your non-work time. Always remember, work will always be there in the morning!

Learn to Say No

Have you ever felt that you can’t concentrate on the task at hand because every half an hour a coworker interrupts you asking for assistance? One of the most valuable tools for effective time management is recognizing that you don’t have to place other people’s needs before your own. Learning to say No to certain requests when there’s too much on your plate is an effective tool that you should master for better work-life balance. Always identify inquiries that simply aren’t worth your time for effective time management. This advice does not only apply to work but also to personal and social events. Next time you are invited to something, weigh the benefits and costs before saying yes to make sure you don’t compromise your own priorities.

Accept Help

Most professionals do not ask for assistance since they prefer to stay in control and figure things out themselves. Even if you have many years of experience, don’t feel ashamed to ask for help in any area where you lack sufficient knowledge. Moreover, learn to delegate when possible. That doesn’t mean to hand over all of your tasks and sit down doing nothing, but it means passing on some of your responsibilities to your subordinates. Always remember that many of your coworkers may be able to handle some of your work if you give them a chance. When it comes to life outside work, accept help from your partner, family members and friends. For example, ask one of your friends to watch your kids for a night out on the town.

Protect Your Private Time

You may probably think twice before skipping out on a business meeting, doctor’s appointment or a career-related event. Give your private time the same respect you give to your prescheduled appointments. Protect your personal time by turning off your work mobile and laptop whenever you are spending time outside the office. It is not healthy to be one click away of your boss or clients. Make it clear that they should not expect a response from you if they contact you after work hours or on weekends. Moreover, take a ten-minute break every two hours during work day to increase your productivity and efficiency.

Plan Fun & Relaxation

Fun and relaxation are definitely an essential part of leading a well-balanced life. Most of you would think that going on a vacation is not something one should plan beforehand. This is not precisely true. In today’s busy life people can’t afford to let things go unplanned as nothing will be accomplished. Figure out what you want to do while you’re vacationing, and do some research to find out just how you’re going to do that. You do not necessarily need to go abroad in order to relax; you can simply take a novel to the park and enjoy the outdoors, visit the gym or go for a long relaxing walk.

Many employees of today’s world are too busy making a living that they don’t make enough time to create room for their personal life. What you do in your life is in your own hands and finding a balance between your work activities and personal activities should not be left to chance. Work-life balance is all about setting your boundaries and communicating them clearly to everyone. Don’t be one of those who make work life itself and try to get a life of your own!

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Akhtaboot Conducts the First Career Planning Lecture at King Saud University in Al-Riyadh, Saudi Arabia

As a step to fulfill the growing demand for online recruitment solutions in the Middle East, Akhtaboot - the career network - has expanded its operations to reach Jeddah and Al-Riyadh. Akhtaboot’s presence in the Saudi Market aims to provide both companies and job seekers with a higher level of onsite and local customer service. Akhtaboot’s offices in Saudi Arabia are run by Recruitment Consultants, HR and Marketing Specialists who are dedicated to provide an extraordinary variety of employment-related services for both job seekers and businesses of Jeddah and Al-Riyadh.

Akhtaboot has also continued its ongoing commitment to support the young graduates in Jeddah and Al-Riyadh through the Akhtaboot Cares Initiative, which is a comprehensive plan that was developed through partnerships with a number of third parties and educational institutions that aims to educate the young public on issues related to career planning, while creating awareness and readiness on different work-related issues.

As part of the “Akhtaboot Cares initiative”, Akhtaboot’s Area Manager, Dauod Abu Kasheh, along with one of Akhtaboot’s Recruitment Specialists, Atef Hajeer, have conducted their first lecture on career planning at Saudi Arabia’s oldest and most prestigious university, King Saud University, Al-Riyadh. The main focus of the lecture was to educate the attendees on the differences between a job and a career and the steps that they should follow in order to effectively plan their career. The interactive presentation was well received and feedback from the 150 attendees was overwhelmingly positive. One of the students commented: “God bless you, this is one of the most informative and inspiring lectures I have ever attended”.

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Akhtaboot at The University of Jordan Job Fair

As part of Akhtaboot’s ongoing commitment to support the young Jordanian graduates-to-be in their quest to find the right job and plan their career path, Akhtaboot - the career network participated in The University of Jordan job fair which was held on Mar 4th in the Deanship of Student Affairs.

The University of Jordan provided Akhtaboot with 2 booths; one of which was dedicated for interviewing University students and graduates who are interested in finding a job at Akhtaboot, where they can gain excellent experience in a dynamic environment that promotes continuous career development and skill improvement. The other booth was devoted for free CV evaluation where two of Akhtaboot’s HR specialists advised students on how to best structure their CVs as well as highlighting common mistakes they should avoid when writing their CVs.

The CV Evaluation Booth was set as part of Akhtaboot’s CSR initiative “Akhtaboot Cares”, which is a comprehensive plan that was developed through partnerships with a number of third parties and educational institutions that aims to educate the young Jordanian public on issues related to career planning, while creating awareness and readiness on different career related issues.

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Bullying is Not Over Yet!

Bullying is something we all hope not to have to deal with much beyond school days. Unfortunately, the bullies you tried to avoid at school will most probably grow up and follow you to the workplace. Adult bullying has become a common trend in both small and large organizations. Employees as well as managers should be able to easily distinguish between the various forms of bullying such as hostile communication, exclusion of certain employees, public humiliation, making some employees the target of particular jokes and using faulty language. In addition, employees who are being bullied should be able to handle the issue immediately; otherwise, it can result in high levels of stress, low self-esteem, lower productivity and possibly depression.

Most bullied employees simply choose to quit in order to escape the trouble and the stress, but why give bullies the victory when you can win the battle as well as preserve your job? While bullying obviously harms those directly targeted, it can also affect onlookers and ultimately lead to an unhealthy organizational culture. Akhtaboot will help you identify the main types of bullying behavior and the way to handle each one of them.

Chronic Bullying

This form of bullying is the meanest and cruelest of all as it is part of the individual’s nature and everyday behaviors. Chronic Bullies behave with an intention to harm and they have pleasure in torturing others. They usually target those who have low self-esteem levels.

How can employees survive a Chronic Bully and stop him from crossing the line? Humor is the ultimate solution. Using humor is the best way to disarm a bully. Telling a joke about yourself, will give the impression that you are not intimidated by the bully’s criticism and will help the bully let down his wall of insecurity. In general, when you make a bully feel that he’s an insider rather than the person who has to fight his way in, he becomes more approachable and easier to deal with.

Situational Bullying

This is the most common type of bullying and usually happens in specific situations such as, high stress levels at work, change, competition and conflict. In such situations, Situational bullies can turn on their colleagues through verbal abuse, intimidation and aggression. However, these acts are only temporary and tend to stop once the situational factors disappear or when they feel it is in their favor to do so. In fact, Situational Bullies can be very friendly when it comes to achieving their personal career goals.

When dealing with a Situational Bully, one of the common mistakes that you should avoid is to become defensive about the situation. Defending your actions through explaining why you did something signals weakness. Don’t argue with the bully as it will make him more hostile and will definitely blow things out of proportion. The Situational Bully tends to meet aggression with aggression. Instead, stay calm and keep the argument at a minimum. Again, the most useful piece of advice that you should follow in this regard, is to use humor to disseminate the situation.

Unaware Bullying

Some bullies might not be aware of their bullying behavior or the effects it might have on their colleagues. The Unaware Bully is someone who just happens to be in the mood for criticizing and commenting and is totally oblivious to what he is doing.

The best way to deal with Unaware Bullies is to ignore them because their bullying behavior is not intentional and most probably will not happen again. However, once the bullying behavior starts to reoccur, you must confront the bully and tackle the situation at once. A typical reaction of an Unaware Bully would be to become defensive as he might not be aware of his bullying behavior but most of them will stop and apologize.

If you have exhausted all your options and non of the above suggested solutions seemed to work, then you might be left with only one alternative and that is to communicate your problem to top management. Top managers have a huge responsibility towards keeping the work environment bully-free. They should be able to solve such situations immediately through creating a zero tolerance anti-bullying policy that details how employees should treat each other and the punishment that any employee will be subject to in case they mistreat one of their colleagues.

If your company is not supportive of making the changes that will help you feel less bullied, then maybe you should move on and find another Job. After all, if the corporate culture is one that won’t support and protect you from anti-productive bullying, do you really want to work there anyway? Well, maybe you do, for other reasons such as your compensation and the other people you work with. But if not, then it’s time you moved on. Just remember, bullies will always be there, in every industry and almost every company, so be prepared!

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