Climbing The Corporate Ladder

By Alaa el Nawawy

The book is an attempt to put the careers of individuals that are currently working in corporates or looking to join one into context. Nothing is done by chance or luck, but you everything needs a strategy and a plan. Throughout this book, the aim is to aid people on how to make decisions about their career in corporates and explaining why they should make them, and also understand the influence of those decisions on both their short and long term career.

I do not claim that this is the single source of truth , I just say that I have tried it myself , seen it realize into results and seen it as well happen to other people. Grasping what is in the book is one thing, but your honest application of the concepts on your actual life is something you are totally on your own in doing . Read with an open mind and heart , nothing is impossible if you put enough effort behind it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: BookBaby
• Release date: Feb 21, 2016
• ISBN: 9781483562810

Book preview

Chapter

CHAPTER 1: THE BEGINNING

Hello, can I speak to Alaa? Yes, speaking.

I am Sara from the human resources of Xyz, one of the largest oil companies in the world. I would like to ask you to come for an interview next week.

I paused for a second and then abruptly interrupted her. Thanks, but I have just started a new job and not planning to move at the moment.

She seemed a little surprised and said, Thanks. Good luck. And the two-minute phone call that shaped my career for years to come has ended.

I constantly recall this phone call, which happened more than 10 years ago now, and realize how swiftly I decided to decline the interview with one of the leading oil companies in the world, which has completely changed my career for good. I had just graduated from university with a bachelor’s degree in engineering, specialized in electrical power generation. My job hunt for my first job did not take long. I have to admit I was lucky.

A couple of months before that phone call, I had just gotten my degree. I passed my CV to one of my father’s old friends, who got me an interview at an oil drilling company, which seemed a logical choice considering my education. After spending a few hours going through a series of IQ tests, interviews, etc., I was offered a job as a junior electrical maintenance engineer on their drilling rigs, where I would work 15 days on-site and take 15 days of rest for 1,200 Egyptian pounds a month, which I think was equal to $200 a month back then. And yes, I did accept the job. After all, I was unemployed and desperately needed to record some experience on my CV.

In the next few days, I was undergoing medical tests in preparation for my job. My phone rang, and it was for another interview at a telecom company. I had come to know about them from a huge number of friends who had recently joined that company. It was massively recruiting for its new offshore service center in Cairo. Back in 2005, Cairo was starting to boom as a preferred destination globally for IT and call center companies to take their operations offshore too.

In a few days, I was there again, sitting in a meeting room and undergoing some IQ, English proficiency, and obviously IT knowledge tests. I did not perform that well in the latter, but I would say not bad. A couple of days later, I got a call informing me that I passed those tests and should come over for a final interview with the hiring manager. I popped in. After about a 30-minute interview, I was given the job as customer technical support agent. An offer letter with a salary of 3,500 EGP a month was handed over to me for signature. It was a no-brainer really. I was still very naive when it comes to my career. My focus at that point was getting a job in a decent place and earning money to kick-start my life. Immediately, I signed the offer, and there I was one week later, starting my first job ever on the 20th of March 2005 and declining the job to join the oil drilling company.

Looking back now at the decisions I made and how I came out of university with a certain mind-set and a very narrow focus on finding jobs related to my education, it clearly highlights to me the flaws we have in our education system back in my home country and how it does nothing to prepare us in making those decisions. To be honest, I did not understand the decision I made and its magnitude until several years later, when I realized that I have become something in and now familiar with the IT/telecom industry and that this is where my experience stands out. No longer do I have anything to do with electrical power engineering, which I spent five years studying at university.

Throughout my career of 11 years,