Akhtaboot - The Unemployment Eater

Akhtaboot today launched the first video version of its popular radio advertisement. This marks the first of many video appearances of Mr. Akhtaboot. I think that the video says it all… Enjoy!

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Your First Day at Work

Have you uploaded your CV on Akhtaboot yet? If you did, then chances are that you have already landed your dream job. Congratulations. Let the first day begin. Whether you are still a fresh graduate or you simply want to switch jobs, your first day can seem overwhelming when you don’t know what to expect.

If you want to have a successful first day you need to be prepared, and knowing some basic workplace rules will help you survive.

So what can you do to make sure that you make a lasting good impression on your first day at work?

Do Your Homework

Before you even start your new job you should research the company and their competitors to get a clear idea about the industry as a whole. Most of the information you need is readily available on the company’s website as well as other places on the Internet. Check out the company’s profile on Akhtaboot.com for instance, it has great information about the company including the company profile, the working hours, insight about their environment and corporate culture and even their location on a map. You should also study the company brochures and read their press releases and annual reports to get a solid background and understanding of the company. This will show your employer that you care enough to learn about your new organization.

Dress Appropriately

First impressions are really hard to change, especially in the work place. Play it safe when it comes to your outfit, or at least until you get a clearer idea of what is acceptable and what is not. Try to keep your attire as simple and professional as possible. Keep in mind that each company and specific position within that company has a different requirement when it comes to dress code, some companies don’t require a formal outfit, and other companies do. Sometimes the same company may have a different dress code depending on whether your position is client facing or not. When in doubt, basic black will solve the issue in most cases.

Don’t Be Late

Now that you are preparing to join the workforce, get used to hearing the words: “Don’t be late to work”. Being on time is essential if you want to hold on to your job and make sure that you gain the approval of your supervisors. In order to make sure you arrive to work on time, leave your house much earlier than you usually would in order to account for unforeseen circumstances such as traffic and accidents on the way to work. Arriving late will not only create a bad impression, but you will have a bad start to your day.

Ask Questions

Ask questions, even if they seem a bit silly to you. Remember that there are no stupid questions, only stupid answers. It is always better to ask a question rather than assume something and do something wrong. Show that you are interested. Listen more than you talk. If you listen carefully you will be in a much better position to add value to the organization, and your opinions and suggestions will be that much more constructive. We cannot stress enough the importance of listening; it is a key component for career development and promotion within any company.

Meeting Colleagues

Expect to meet lots of people with different backgrounds and from diverse cultures on your first day. Introduce yourself to those you meet and make an effort to remember their names. You probably won’t be able to remember everyone’s name or what they do during the first week. Don’t worry, if possible, try to remember the names of those who sit directly around you. It makes it a lot easier when you need to ask for things. Writing down the names of your colleagues might sound a bit boring, but it definitely works if you are bad with names. One very important thing to remember is not to participate in “gossip” sessions, even if the person you are talking to seems trustworthy, it might come back to haunt you one day.

Let The Real Work Begin!

Asking if there is anything you can do is very important because members of staff will be busy for sure. You can’t just sit around looking bored, you will be forgotten and you will have nothing to do all day. Try to come up with some things that you can actually do without being told to; the staff will be grateful and perceive you as mature, proactive and ambitious person.

It’s OK to make use of some things that you learned at your previous job or at university, but you must never forget that each company has its own way of doing things and that you’ll eventually need to adjust your working habits according to the way things are done at your current company.

Being the newest member in the company can be both stressful AND exciting. You’ll be faced with many difficulties at first, but things will get better over time.

Just look around you, each one of your colleagues had to go through the same process at some point; they all sat there confused, anxious and even a bit unconfident. But they all survived, and so will you.

Keep in mind that you made it through the application and interview process; which means that the company must have hired you for a reason. You have earned this opportunity. So relax, try to enjoy your first day, make the most of every opportunity that comes your way, and bear in mind that there is always a first time for everything.

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Interview Advice from Akhtaboot

Thanks to Akhtaboot, finding a perfect career opportunity has never been easier. Just go to www.akhtaboot.com, sign up, fill in some basic information and upload your CV. Within minutes you are on your way to finding the right job. You can start applying to any one of the great opportunities by the leading companies of the region with a click of a button. Seems too good to be true, doesn’t it? It’s true that Akhtaboot has made finding and applying to jobs as easy as sending an email, however, Akhtaboot can only get you to the interview. But have no fear, the leading online recruitment website is not going to leave you confused and worried, Akhtaboot is determined to find the right career for you. So sit back, relax and take note of some of the best interview advice you have ever read!

Confidence

Take it from the experts, if you don’t believe in yourself, then no one will. You MUST be confident, and the only way to be confident is to know your stuff and come to the interview prepared. We live in the information age, and it is easier than ever to research what the company you are interviewing with does. Go to their company profile on Akhtaboot, watch any of their uploaded videos, read about their vision and mission. Then go and read the job that they posted on www.akhtaboot.com and get familiar with their requirements. Make sure you are comfortable with any possible questions that they might ask, and be prepared for anything. You can also go to their website and get a solid understanding of the business.

Another important thing is that you need to know your CV by heart. This means that you should memorize it and be prepared to answer any question about your skills and past experiences faster than the interviewer can complete their question.

Organization

You want to get things right for the interview, so make sure to be well organized. This means that you need to confirm the interview time, date and location as well as get the name of the interviewer if possible. You should also plan to get there at least 15 minutes before the interview time, and don’t forget to bring at least 3 copies of your CV in hard copy format to hand over to the interviewers.

You can also do a quick search on the Internet about sample interview questions and practice how to answer them. Looking at your CV and the job description and writing down possible questions and learning how to answer them is also a good exercise. As you do more and more interviews, stay organized and note down all the questions you are being asked and you will soon notice that many of them are repeated. Being organized this way will save you a lot of preparation time.

Make a Good First Impression

Remember that this is the first time anyone in the company sees you in person, so make sure that you look professional, that you are well groomed and that you dress appropriately. Greet your interviewers with a friendly smile and a confident handshake. Keep eye contact at all times and do not sit back in a relaxed casual position, lean forward with your hands on the table or on your lap. This gives the interviewer the impression that you are prepared for anything.

There are also other ways to make a good first impression. You should always ask intelligent questions. Asking intelligent questions shows your interest and also conveys how knowledgeable you are about the company. Questions about corporate culture, about the job itself and anything that you are curious about are fair game. But stay away from questions about salary during the first interview unless the interviewer brings it up. You should show excitement about the company and don’t be too presumptuous and ask about financial compensation early on, because that rubs some interviewers the wrong way. Also, when asked questions that require some thinking or solving, it is always a good idea to ask for a pen and paper and walk the interviewer through your thought process.

Avoid Common Mistakes

In addition to what you should do, there are things that you should not do during an interview. Do not talk too much. When asked a question, answer it clearly and concisely. If you talk too much then you give the impression that you are either uncertain or exaggerating.

You should also keep in mind not to talk negatively about past employers. If you don’t have anything good to say about past jobs, then attribute your departure to a difference of opinion. Talking badly about previous employers sends out the wrong message to potential employers: it says this person is not loyal and may one day talk about your company in this negative way.

If you follow this advice, you should be more prepared than most when sitting for an interview. When the interview is over, it is always a good idea to follow up with a phone call or an email that is polite and straight to the point. Make sure that you get closure and clearly understand what the next steps are or when you can expect to hear back from the company.

Akhtaboot is with you every step of the way, so go to www.akhtaboot.com and sign up now and start applying to your next dream job.

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Looking for a Job is a Job in Itself

We have all been active job seekers at one point in our lives. Whether it was the search for our first job right out of college or during one of those transitional periods between jobs, the conclusion was the same: looking for and finding a job is not an easy task!

In fact, the irony of it is that looking for a job is actually a full-time job in itself. Don’t kid yourself, if you are in the job market and actively seeking a job then you should take it very seriously. This article highlights the most important points that you need to keep in mind and diligently follow in order to land that dream job.

The Art of the Search

Searching for information is a skill, and searching for information about potential vacancies is a downright art. The biggest mistake you can make is to think that the right job will come to you. It won’t. You have to be proactive and actively search for opportunities. This means that you need to ask around, work your networking skills, read up and get informed. The world is a different place these days, and the explosion of information on the Internet means that your next job is literally at your fingertips. Almost all companies have an online presence these days, and many of those companies are advertising their vacancies on online recruitment sites such as Akhtaboot (www.akhtaboot.com).

Akhtaboot offers you a one-stop-shop where you can find vacancies from and information about many companies in one place, in addition to video interviews with company officials and an insight into their corporate culture. You can even build a professional network, which helps you spread your tentacles to hear about jobs from your connections and take advantage of digital word-of-mouth. It’s a different world now, long gone are the days of finding about jobs through newspaper ads, the digital age has transformed the “Art of the Search” by streamlining information into catch-all websites such as Akhtaboot.com.

The Stellar CV

A lot has changed in the job market with the digital revolution, but one thing hasn’t: an impressive CV is a foot in the door. A good CV should be well written and straight to the point, it should be informative (after all, it’s a snapshot of who you are) and above all it should look good. You should work on formatting your CV and take the extra effort to save it as a PDF. Make sure there are no spelling or grammar mistakes and as a rule of thumb if you are under 30 years old your CV should not be more than one-page!

The mind of a recruiter is one of skimming and first impressions. The person looking at your CV is also looking at hundreds of other CVs, so put yourself in their shoes and make sure your CV grabs their attention as a professional qualified applicant and they will take the extra few minutes to read your CV and call you in for an interview. You might want to check out the Career Center videos on Akhtaboot, they have a lot of excellent tips on how you can build a stellar CV that will truly impress.

Although Akhtaboot allows users to upload their existing CV, they also have a great CV builder that allows users to build their CV and generate a beautifully formatted PDF version for their use. You should definitely check it out!

The Interview

OK, you found a great opportunity, you created a stellar CV and it worked… you landed the interview. Well, the easy part is over, all that work was to get your foot in the door, now comes the hard part. The interview is everything and these are just a few things that you must remember:

Dress to Impress
Remember that this is the first time anyone in the company sees you in person, so make sure that you look professional, that you are well groomed and that dress appropriately.

Be Prepared
Expect to be drilled about your CV. You should know it by heart and be prepared for specific questions about your experiences and educations. You should also be informed about the company and the job that you are applying to. There is nothing worse that being ignorant about the job description, and there is nothing more impressive than a candidate that knows the company and the job description very well.

Ask the Right Questions
Asking intelligent questions shows your interest and also conveys how knowledgeable you are about the company. Questions about corporate culture, about the job itself and anything that you are curious about are fair game. But stay away from questions about salary during the first interview unless the interviewer brings it up. You should show excitement about the company and don’t be too presumptuous and ask about financial compensation early on, because that rubs some interviewers the wrong way.

Follow up
It is always good to follow up with a phone call or an email that is polite and straight to the point. Make sure that you get closure and clearly understand what the next steps are or when you can expect to hear back from the company.

The Extra Mile

The above advice represents the backbone of your job search. However, you should always remember that it’s a competitive world out there, and in order to get the best job you must really stand out. You must go above and beyond the ordinary, take that extra mile and show prospective employers what you are made of. For example, Akhtaboot allows users to upload video cover letters of themselves. Not only will this impress potential employers with your technical skills and Internet savvy-ness, you can also convey so much more about your personality via video. The MBTI test on Akhtaboot is also an invaluable tool, and you can also choose to show it to employers so they know your personality type.

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A Career is More Than a Job

Many people have used the two terms “career” and “job” so interchangeably in their daily lives that the two concepts have blended into one absolute notion that only means “work”. In fact, a career is so much more than a job. A job is a means to achieve the end of a satisfying and intellectually stimulating career. In light of this, we should even change our understanding of what a job seeker is and what a career seeker should be. A job seeker looks for the temporary, the next stepping-stone, whereas a career seeker is a true seeker of future prospects, growth and professional recognition.

All that being said, it is of course much harder to find the right career, and some people take years looking for one, changing from one to another before they are finally set in their path, if ever. The first and most important factor in finding a career is to find something that truly makes you happy. The best way to do that is to find a job that you would wake up every morning to do even if you weren’t being paid. Not that money isn’t an important issue of course; it’s an essential factor to consider because it rules our practical lives. However, a true career is one that runs in parallel to financial compensation and is not determined by it. Salary is a critical component of any job, because it is the only way to monetize people’s appreciation of our work and it is the means to build a better life. Therefore it may be one of the most important factors to consider, but it is by no means the only factor to consider. Don’t make the mistake of allocating greater weight than necessary to short-term financial gain, because you may be missing out on long-term professional and financial success.

This means that you would need to look at other issues in addition to salary when looking for a career. One of the most important things to realize is that on your first job interview with a specific company, it is not only you who is being interviewed; the company is as well. Let the interviewer ask you all the questions they want, but if you initially like the company and want to work there, don’t forget to ask the interviewer lots of questions too. Questions about the company culture, promotion and career prospects, atmosphere and even seeing the desk you would work at are all good examples. Remember that the company may be interviewing you for a job, but you are interviewing them for a career. And when interviewing a company for a career, you need to know where that company is going and where it will take you. You need to know things like your boss’ management style and how that fits in with how you like to be managed. And after all that, it is also helpful to talk to and ask your future co-workers about the company.

Akhtaboot is trying to bring all this information to you before the interview. Video interviews with companies, open and free communities with relevant and user-generated content, the opportunity to network and connect with other career seekers are all tools that are literally at your fingertips when you become a member of Akhtaboot.

Now all this is great, but there is one big problem in all this, what if you don’t know what you want? It’s not such a simple problem to solve, because most people end up working in a lot of jobs that they end up hating, and all that they get out of the experience is the knowledge of what they don’t want rather than what they do want. That knowledge is invaluable, however, career seekers need more than that. They need to be able to recognize the right career and jump right into it, in addition to identifying the wrong job. Luckily, the Myers-Briggs® Type Indicator (or MBTI for short) is the global standard test for personality analysis in a career context. The MBTI has been around for more than sixty years. It is a tried and true indicator of your personality type. That is not to say that the MBTI will explain every single aspect of your personality, but it will certainly explain a lot about who you are.

One of the main principles behind the MBTI is that you are born a certain type. Therefore, the more you are put in situations that allow you to be who you are, the better you will feel and the more productive you will be. MBTI is about how you feel most energized, how you perceive information, how you make decisions, and how you deal with the outside world. It is about preferences, preferences you are born with.

You can take the MBTI for free on Akhtaboot (www.akhtaboot.com) when you upload your CV. After taking the test, your MBTI results will be a personality type composed of four letters. The combination of these letters will tell you quite a bit about your personality and your preferences. This can be an important weapon in your quest to finding the right career and the best company and environment to work in.

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What can Akhtaboot do for you as An Employer?

In 2020, the MENA region will be faced with the challenge of creating 100 million jobs . This is indeed a daunting challenge for the MENA region, more so with the absence of an effective platform that links job seekers with employers and vice versa. Recognizing this missing link between employers and job seekers, Akhtaboot stepped up to fill this gap. Their approach was to first identify employer’s most common recruitment aches and pains, whether through online or traditional recruitment. After approximately a month and a half of research and interviews, Akhtaboot was able to narrow down those recruitment problems into 4 distinct areas:

1. Filtering and sorting CVs takes a lot of time and effort.
2. Irrelevant candidates always end up applying to advertised job openings.
3. Candidates end up not fitting in with the company culture.
4. Receiving applicants is easy; receiving qualified applicants is always a challenge.

After recognizing these most common recruitment problems, Akhtaboot went to work. Ten months later, Akhtaboot can provide employers with the following value added proposition:

Easy Filters Save Time

We all know that time is money. Finding the right candidate is more than just having access to a database, it’s about being able to filter through that database to find the perfect match. Akhtaboot allows employers to narrow down their search in a matter of seconds. Now, that sounds like a great feature! But how was Akhtaboot able to accomplish that better than any other recruitment website? The answer is simple: by adopting the web 2.0 mentality and introducing cutting edge technologies such as AJAX. AJAX allows employers to filter candidates without experiencing those annoying page refreshes, making the website appear like a desktop application. In addition to those filters, Akhtaboot adopted Google-like free text search that actually searches within uploaded CVs. So all you have to do is type the qualifications you are looking for in one simple text box, and Akhtaboot does the rest.

Receive Relevant Applicants

Akhtaboot is built upon a community-based model. Communities are sections within Akhtaboot grouped according to job function that attract people with similar career interests. Job seekers must join at least one community and at most three, which forces them to make choices and express their preferences. When companies post jobs, they post them onto specific communities, which means that they are able the target an interested, attentive and relevant audience. This community-based model also allows companies to filter out irrelevant applicants and serial appliers with the click of a button.

Increase Your Exposure

Almost every company has a corporate website these days. Their corporate website targets potential clients, with nothing more than a “careers” button for potential employees, if anything at all. Akhtaboot allows companies to build a comprehensive corporate profile that goes way beyond any other recruitment website. In addition to the standard company profile and company logo, Akhtaboot allows companies to put in other information such as hours of work, weekends, lunch breaks, their location on a map and even a video of an office tour or an interview with a key person at the company. By allowing this information to be out there, companies can start attracting the right talent to their corporation, and can even cater interview questions for potential candidates to make sure that they have taken their time to explore the company culture and that they actually subscribe to it.

A Feedback Loop and a True Career Network

Since Akhtaboot allows users to connect to each other and to connect to companies, they are building a professional network and actually taking “Word of Mouth” into the 21st Century. Companies can have a network of their employees and people that they trust, and those people can have their own network. Building upon the premise that good people know other good people, Akhtaboot uses the power of networking when companies post their jobs by spreading the “word” about their vacancy through the company’s network. Not only that, Akhtaboot’s technology actually tells you how you know that person, just in case you wanted to get a referral before interviewing or hiring them.

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What can Akhtaboot do for You as a Job Seeker?

There are many job recruiting websites out there; some big, some small, but for the most part all the same. Akhtaboot is different because of the fact that the company’s founders actually saw and researched what was out there and said to themselves, “let’s build something different.”

Akhtaboot went beyond the basic functionality of allowing users to search for and apply to relevant jobs; they grasped the concepts of Web 2.0 (the next generation of the web) early on in the development of the website. They understood that an easy and user-friendly experience was key to the success of any website. They also wanted to build a website that was catering to the market that they were serving, and what better way to serve a recruitment market that is heavily reliant on word-of-mouth than by building “the career network”?

A True Career Network

Put in its simplest form, Akhtaboot allows regular users (or job seekers) to connect to one another. Much like other popular networks like Facebook, Akhtaboot remembers these personal links and helps users build their professional network of contacts. Other networks are used for social and entertainment purposes; however, Akhtaboot’s network is purely professional. This means that your network on Akhtaboot is used for spreading and receiving job announcements through viral word-of-mouth. The larger your network of contacts is, the more likely you are to hear about job opportunities that are posted by companies on Akhtaboot, and when you apply to these “word-of-mouth” jobs, you are applying through what can only be described as a digital “recommendation”!

The best thing about the networking feature for job seekers is that you don’t have to be looking for a job to use the networking functionality. All you would need to do is sign up (which literally takes less than a minute). Akhtaboot also allows you to set your status, and Akhtaboot has one status called “here to network” that makes sure that no company can see your CV and you are left to network without being contacted by potential employers.

Akhtaboot is Built Upon 20 Communities

Communities are sections within Akhtaboot grouped according to job function, and registered users have the option to join up to 3 communities. Joining communities that reflect your fields of interest allows you to receive relevant job recommendations from Akhtaboot, read relevant articles, watch locally-relevant videos, grow your knowledge, and network with fellow users that share similar career aspirations. So even if you are not currently looking for a job, you can benefit from Akhtaboot’s community model!

User Friendly Interface

Let’s say you are looking for a senior, full time job in Jordan in the Marketing and Communications community. Selecting the before mentioned filters on Akhtaboot literally takes less time than it took writing the actual sentence!

Incorporating only the cutting-edge of technology, Akhtaboot is bringing a true web application to the Middle East. When you use Akhtaboot’s filters, your results update on the spot without you having to wait for the page to refresh. This technology, called AJAX, is also used in other places on the website and it makes the user’s experience truly friendly.

Akhtaboot has also spent a lot of time and effort into placing just the right amount of tabs and links so that the website is simple to understand right from the start. No piece of information is more than a couple of clicks away, and users are able to find what they want faster and more efficiently.

Uploading your CV

Unlike other job recruitment websites, Akhtaboot allows job seekers to actually upload their CV. If you have spent a lot of time and effort on your CV, just upload it on your profile and you are ready to apply to any job on the website. Has your CV been updated recently? No problem. Just upload the new one to replace the older one that you already have on Akhtaboot.

Akhtaboot also allows users that don’t have a CV to build one on the website. In a soon to be released feature, Akhtaboot will also allow users that built their CV on the website to export it as a beautifully formatted PDF document for their own use.

The Myers-Briggs© Type Indicator (MBTI)

Recognizing the importance of placing the right person in the right job, Akhtaboot is the only career site in the Middle East that is qualified as a Myers-Briggs© (MBTI) provider. The MBTI is recognized as a global leader in personality tests with over 70 years of extensive research. It is used by Fortune 500 companies worldwide both for hiring and human resource development purposes.

Akhtaboot plans to make this test available online to its users within the next few months. Job seekers will have the opportunity to take this test and receive their results online. The MBTI provides a reliable and valid analysis of a job seeker’s strengths and areas for development in a career context. It also includes suggestions on how the job seeker can capitalize on his/her strengths and compensate for his/her blind spots.

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