As Jordanian universities turn out a fresh batch of graduates every year, many have found themselves without the necessary skills that local companies demand of them.

Naseem Tarawnah looks at Maharat, a program that is at the center of arming new graduates with the tools to get by.

For the average university student in Jordan, unemployment is the number one fear when it comes to post-graduation life. There are several reasons for this. First, is the labor pool, which seems saturated, with lots of new graduates searching for similar positions in similar companies. Add to that the large number of new graduates every month, and the picture darkens further.

The second is that employers daily fill local newspapers with job vacancies in search of the perfect candidate who, in between the fine print and the black and white fray, ideally comes with several years of work experience. Thus in the form of a question emerges the second greatest fear for the average university student: how does one get work experience if every job requires such experience to start with?

These fears reach new heights when we factor in an educational system that does not teach students essential life skills; a system that leaves companies in the region preferring to hire holders of international degrees instead. As if students did not have enough to worry about already, there is still the economic arithmetic that is enough to send a shiver down any recent graduate’s spine. Horrid numbers such as unemployment figures that are as high as 25% (unofficially) and even higher for those aged between 20 and 29, to say nothing of the JD150 national average income.

A local degree from an ailing system, massive competition, impeding numbers, closed doors; no job, no experience and no skills: simply a bundle of fears.  Though forget for a moment all the elements that have come together to create this disheartening environment for a recent graduate. Forget about who or what is to blame, and forget about the empty promises of long term solutions that seem to only promise that thousands of students will fall through the cracks in the meantime.

Think about the now. Not a band-aid solution, but an actual way to move students from a seat in a lecture hall to a seat in an office. The Maharat (Arabic for “skills”) program has recently emerged as a new way to facilitate that very transition; setting a new standard in training for Jordan and helping hundreds of students.

Maharat
At the Business Development Center (BDC) in Amman’s Swefieh district, President and CEO Nayef Stetieh is a busy man. The BDC is one Jordanian NGO that has grown so rapidly in the past two years that it is now home to a variety of projects and initiatives that all have the common goals of maximizing potential for Jordanian SMEs, creating more jobs and higher incomes, and making local businesses more competitive in international markets. The $27 million USAID-funded BDC does just about everything; from an initiative promoting environmental friendly standards to helping Jordanian companies access European markets, and an initiative to help increase the competitiveness of women-owned and managed businesses.

Certainly, attempting to describing each and every project would require more than a single article, and deservingly so. However, for the sake of brevity imagine BDC as a giant machine where there are cogs of different shapes and sizes, turning at varying speeds and in different directions but all with the same purpose of enhancing economic development in Jordan with a hands on approach.

Maharat is an internship program that is part of the $8.5 million BDC-managed Tatweer project. Established nearly 18 months ago with an allocated budget of $4.2 million, Maharat recruits a variety of recent graduates from all across the Kingdom’s universities and prepares them for the job market. “They don’t have to have a specific degree,” said Mr. Statieh. “We have a lot of people that are graduates from social sciences, English literature and translation. We have degree holders in fields like engineering, computer science and business. In fact, 60% of our graduates have degrees that are very hard to find work with these days.”

The Maharat internship program comes in two different formats: On-the-job and Pioneers. The former takes students on a rigorous six month journey where, based on their application, they are matched with one of BDC’s SME clients, while receiving eight hours of training every Saturday at the center. The training is conducted by professional practitioners who are all private sector volunteers and covers a wide spectrum of subjects to create well rounded individuals; a task that regional educational institutions have failed to do so far. “Every Saturday, Maharat students get trained on different topics regardless of what they specialized in or their position at the recruited job,” said Mr. Stetieh. “So if someone is working as a graphic designer he will still be taught subjects such as accounting, values, work ethics and corporate social responsibility.”

While students of the On-the-job stream are trained both in a classroom and in the workplace, they receive a monthly salary throughout the internship just like any employee. BDC subsidizes 50% of the salaries for students employed in Amman, where there are more job opportunities, and 80% for the various other less developed governorates such as Irbid, Aqaba and Karak.  

Essentially, On-the-job meets the needs of both the student and local SMEs, allowing the latter to select the perfect candidate and help shape them in a short period of time, while also lifting the burden of paying full  time salaries. Meanwhile, students are given quick access to employment post graduation, all the while receiving comprehensive hands-on training and a decent salary to go with it. This helps overcome the third greatest fear of the average university student: earning a sustainable living.

Pioneering The Way
SMEs are not the only organizations in search of skilled employees. Jordan has a growing market of multinationals, whose demands tend to be more specific when it comes to certain jobs. “New telecommunication companies and development companies are looking towards the fields of public relations or human resources or customer service”, said Mr. Statieh. “These are topics that are not taught at Jordanian universities. So we design courses to meet such needs.”

Using a team of local professionals in such relatively new fields as ublic relations and human resources, Maharat creates a completely locally tailored continuous course described as the Pioneers program. Students are trained on a single subject for eight hours a day, five days a week for a total duration of 45 days. At the end of the course, students must undergo two weeks of practical training where they are taken out into the field and given a single task to complete: a graduation project. Working in teams, they produce high quality studies that are so professionally done they can put similar projects from more experienced hands to shame.

“We don’t subsidize the salary,” said Mr. Statieh, “but the Pioneers program offers very high skilled training that has even encouraged some organizations to give our students a one-year advanced credit; allowing them to essentially be promoted upon employment.”

At the end of the Pioneers program, 20 local companies are selected to attend a job-matching day, where they are able to sit with each of the program’s students in a one-to-one meeting and get a chance to recruit them. Suffice it to say, the word “Maharat” is beginning to carry some weight within the confines of a CV. Producing a pool of skilled and educated labor in a short period of time, Maharat has set a new standard in the market and has even caused some companies to change their employment policies to make room for the program’s graduates. Various BDC clients, such as the Arab Bank, automatically advance Maharat graduates past their standard employee two-year initialization phase.

Value Added Skills
“Maharat is adding a tremendous value for both the Jordanian graduate and Jordanian companies; both of whom pay nothing for the process,” said Mr. Statieh, “We are not only trying to find jobs for graduates, but also find the right person for the right position, regardless of their degree. We are trying to shape new personalities; build self-confidence and enhance their skills. Most of the students who enter the program have never had the experience of standing in front of an audience and simply talking. After they finish their training they tell me that they feel like different people.”

Dana Al-Qdah, Rula Ayyash and Nasser Matahen are all recent graduates of the Maharat program. These 23 year-olds describe their Maharat experience with such passion and energy that they quickly abolish the first impression one might get from them as being shy or reserved. Their body language has a way of making that suggestion, and perhaps the rest of their body is only now beginning to catch up with their hearts and minds, both of which have been dramatically changed. “I only realized this recently”, said Dana, “a few days ago I went to a job interview and afterwards I compared myself to the first interview I went on a week before I joined Maharat and it was a completely different experience. I feel an overwhelming feeling of confidence when engaging with other people in these situations.”
Confidence is just one of many skills picked up through Maharat; working in teams is another. While training takes place at the BDC, the environment is more different than that of a typical classroom. For instance, all the tables are round. On the first day, students automatically group themselves into males and females, sitting around the unfamiliar shape. By day’s end, Maharat puts the students to work in teams of five while, at the same time, constantly rotating throughout the duration of the course, allowing them to learn from each other. Rather than simply being dictated to, students learn from working together.

“In the beginning, many of the students were suspicious of the program, thinking it was based on the empty promise of finding students jobs,” said Mr. Statieh, “Instead, they were exposed to a methodology. We only use practical training and team building so the students don’t just sit and listen, they sit and work. I would say that 95% of what they do is based on the concept of learning by doing.”

For Nasser Matahen the methodology made a difference. “I don’t want to put Jordanian universities down, but there are simply many skills that I could never have acquired in the environment currently on offer. Here, I found myself learning to learn.”

Without a doubt, the techniques Maharat employs in its training are what has made it so popular amongst its students, most of whom complain that they wish the course had been longer, some of whom will even cry at their graduation, and all of whom never missed a day of training in a program that boasts 0% of absences.

“We want to encourage them to work with passion,” said Mr. Stetieh “We want them to love what they’re doing; accepting jobs not merely for the money but jobs where they feel they can make a difference.”

Expanding the Program
Plans are underway to expand Maharat in a variety of ways. Currently, both On-the-Job and the Pioneer programs have produced over 300 graduates (95% of whom are employed), while taking in 30 new students each with the beginning of every new round of courses. Maharat presently operates in Amman, Irbid, Karak and Aqaba, though on a recent visit to the BDC, Her Majesty Queen Rania encouraged the organization to expand the program throughout all of the Kingdom’s governates. In Her Majesty’s last visit, she emphasized the importance of focusing Maharat in all the governates and this is what we are doing now. So we are looking to localize our programs to meet the needs of each governate in terms of finding local partners and local trainers,” said Mr. Stetieh.

Based on recommendations from Queen Rania’s visit, Maharat has recently joined forces with the Jordan River Foundation (JRF) to collaborate on a new initiative. The Community Empowerment Program has opened the doors for Maharat graduates to work on marketing plans for several of the Foundation’s projects located in Bani Hameida, Northern Badia, North Ajlun and Jabal Al-Natheef. Sixteen Maharat graduates were selected in May, conducting field visits to the various locations, and formulating a comprehensive marketing plan for the four projects.
Meanwhile the BDC is planning to create a Maharat Alumni, inviting recent graduates of the program, local companies as well as university students in their final year. Held every six months in the form of a working conference, the alumni will seek to  bring together the three groups of people in order to encourage further support and development of the program, from both new students and local companies.

“We want those people, the graduates of Maharat, to tell others how they changed,” said Mr. Statieh, who is currently seeking greater support from the local business community. “When we are talking about His Majesty’s vision of producing and finding jobs for Jordanian students, I believe that Maharat would be the best platform for any organization wanting to do something for their community as part of their social corporate responsibility.”

According to the BDC, the biggest obstacle for Maharat has been changing mentalities. Internships are not historically common or widespread in Jordan. While many companies complain about the lack of professional and skilled staff they require, there is a need for more companies willing to give graduates a chance and open the doors to new skill-building and internship programs such as Maharat. Along with this comes the challenge of encouraging these same firms to employ more Jordanians as opposed to foreigners where the perception is that the latter are more qualified.

“We promise them at Maharat that we can deliver graduates according to the needs of the company, and we are ready to work with these companies to identify their individual needs as ever company differs from the other,” said Mr. Statieh, who sees the perception students have towards training as also a key obstacle to overcome. “The mentality towards training has also been difficult to deal with. Most look at training as a waste of their time and effort rather than as an extensive investment in themselves, and this perception is changing with every success story. They see the results first hand. Pepsi, for example, offers Maharat graduates a starting salary of 570JDs, and we are talking about recent graduates. Compare this to many other people who have been working for a few years without reaching JD500.”

Historically in Jordan, the private and public sectors have constantly been at odds with each other when it comes to things like education and labor demands, and their relative inaction has meant that NGOs such as the BDC must take the initiative and fill the void. It is the same void students all over the Kingdom find themselves constantly shackled to: losing all hope in a system that has failed to teach them the right skills. Where hope breeds confidence, Maharat restores a sense of optimism to a depressed generation that is tired of all the fear; that is tired of desperation. With such a large impact in a short amount of time, the BDC may be destined to become Jordan’s top recruitment center and “Maharat” may become the single most sought after word on a Jordanian student’s CV when applying for a job.