
ERBIL, Kurdistan Region—Last month, 25 local and foreign companies participated in the first Kurdistan Careers Conference in Erbil. A similar conference will be held this week in Sulaimani.
Amanj Muhammad, the main organizer of the conference, said, “The aim is to establish job recruitment centers and decrease the unemployment rate in Kurdistan.”
Muhammad, who formerly represented the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) in Spain, said that the idea first came to him when he returned to the region two years ago. “I had a hard time finding a job when I came back to Kurdistan in 2009 as there were no recruitment agencies for job seekers like they have in other countries,” he said.
He said that, in the West, career conferences are held annually, adding, “We want to do the same thing here.”
However, Muhammad noted that representatives from foreign companies told him that when they invest in Kurdish employees and train them for careers, they quit their jobs to become government employees for a smaller salary.
“This is a big problem and we need to change this mindset,” Muhammad said. “In general, oil-rich countries produce lazy people.”
Muhammad Khalis, a computer science graduate, came to the conference with the hope of finding a job. “I came to find a job with an oil company, because they pay well.”
“So far, 450 people have applied for jobs with oil companies,” the conference organizer said. “We want to become a bridge between job seekers and companies in the future.”
Media Qadir, a representative of Chevrolet in Erbil, said that her company wouldn’t hire a Kurdish person as they demand high payment with little experience. “The problem is that we don’t have many experienced Kurds in this field. Most of our current employees are from Baghdad. We have other job applications pending from the south and Syria.”
Qadir admitted, “We would prefer to hire Kurdish people as we don’t know the future plans of people from the south and Syria in Kurdistan.”
Gasha Hassan, an oil service representative, said that he prefers to hire Kurdish people as well. “We want to find local professionals through this conference.”
A representative from UB Company said that they were able to find and hire professional people through the event. “We still need to hire more people, especially in IT and those who know English. We have received many resumes,” he said.
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