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INSIDE AMCHAM
Fresh Graduates Program
Three years ago, AmCham Egypt’s Career Development Center (CDC) launched a special program to provide fresh university graduates with the skills they need to excel in a professional environment. The Fresh Graduates Program was initiated to help bridge the gap between the skills that university students possess upon graduation and those in demand by private sector companies. It also provides career guidance and mentoring to help fresh graduates land, and hold on to, their first jobs.
The Fresh Graduates Program encompasses two separate but similar programs. The first, a corporate program, targets those who have already succeeded at landing their first job with a firm and are now looking to climb up the corporate ladder; while the second, geared for university students, targets graduates who are still applying for jobs in the market. The courses, offered to Egyptian university graduates, are taught in English with some Arabic content.
The corporate program has three main tracks, each of which adopts a hands-on approach. The first track, lasting five days, addresses communications skills, both verbal and written. It also gives enrollees a strong understanding of business writing and negotiation techniques, as well as guidelines on teamwork. Each of these topics is discussed at length during a one-day workshop.
The second track, also five days, teaches young professionals the essentials of creating a good first impression – an important tool to excel in any business environment. It builds on the lessons of the first track, providing more advanced instruction on business writing, presentation skills, customer service and time management.
The program’s third track offers a primer on information technology skills, covering software that every business professional needs to do his or her job in today’s business environment. Students are introduced to business software such as MS Word, MS Excel and MS PowerPoint.
The university students program shares much of the same content as the corporate program, but is specifically geared towards helping participants secure their first job. In the first track, in place of students receiving instruction on business negotiations, the enrollees receive guidelines on the how to write a CV and fill out job applications. In the second track, they receive an extra day of instruction, which focuses entirely on how to ace a job interview. The third track is identical to that of the corporate program.
AmCham Egypt is continually developing the Fresh Graduate Program to make it more accessible to Egyptian fresh graduates. Cooperation agreements between AmCham Egypt and Cairo and Ain Shams universities facilitate the delivery of these courses to their students on campus. The CDC also intends to provide courses tailored to specific sectors, such as the pharmaceutical and banking sectors.
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