Meet Mr. Hassan Choughari, an industry expert with over thirteen years of experience in full-cycle recruitment and business development. Choughari’s extensive experience came from being an HR leader and a regional influencer working in various industries.
From Fast Moving Consumer Goods (FMCGs), to Retail, Construction, Catering, and Recruitment, Mr. Hassan worked between the GCC and Lebanon with local, multi-national, and global organizations such as M.H. Alshaya, Saudi Icon, Henry Schein, Pain d’Or, and NRC.
Currently, Mr. Hassan is the Group HR Manager for Jaroudi Group, a conglomerate of companies that branched into construction and electronics.
With such extensive and diverse experience, Mr. Hassan can provide job seekers and employers with insights that will help them both excel in their respective industries.
You have a long and extensive experience. You’ve worked in retail, FMCG, and construction to name a few. From your point of view, what skillset are young, job seeking, talent lacking?
Most job seekers lack interpersonal skills. Excellent communication skills are vital if the job seeker wants to succeed in the place of work. Having these skills will enable them to accomplish their business goals and get ahead of the crowd.
With different generations currently occupying the professional world, their needs are also different. What steps do you think Saudi Arabian employers should take to make sure these very different needs are met, while simultaneously working on a comprehensive career development strategy to retain existing talent as well as attract new and young top talent?
Today, it requires more than a simple job description with an attractive job title and an appealing salary to “sell” a company to hot new talent or retain existing talented employees. Let’s face it, the probability of other organizations, just like ours, searching for top employees is very high and they’re probably offering top talent what we are.
To stand out, we’re focusing on aspects like work environment, diversity, career path, and professional development, in addition to work-life balance, as the secret weapons that can help us achieve our mission of hiring and retaining top talent.
Today, the MENA region is not the same as it used to be ten years ago - the faces of businesses, recruitment, and legislation are constantly changing. What major changes do job seekers and employers need to know about when seeking a job or recruiting talent in 2017?
Employers are now focusing on passive candidates, meaning that organizations want to sustain long-term relationships with their employees and have employees work their way up the corporate ladder.
On the other hand, companies want enthusiastic candidates with positive attitudes. They want people who can quickly contribute their abilities and skills, ones that might be able to use their competencies to solve a company’s problem.
How do you approach young talent currently employed at your workplace? What do you believe are the best strategies for retention?
In addition to focusing on other aspects of employment, work-life balance, growth, and personal development among others, we are now implementing a new recruitment strategy, which focuses on hiring new fresh graduates and giving them a clear training and career growth plan. We’re hiring positive attitude and pleasant behavior. When hired, we work on developing their skills, which is the best way to retain top talent.
What do you think is the best way to marry career development and succession planning?
The best way for organizations to effectively integrate career development and succession planning is by utilizing managerial personnel in developing an organizational mentorship network to help mold high-potential talent.
Moreover, succession planning should begin by identifying and codifying high potential employees, developing high potentials via project‐based learning experiences and manager‐facilitated workshops, creating a flexible and fluid succession planning process, and building a supportive organizational culture.
Recruiting an amazing candidate for the perfect role is not an easy task. Having worked in several industries, how does sourcing top talent differ from one industry to another?
In some respects, it is a tailor-made approach differing from one industry to another. However, each industry has its own identifying key traits and competencies, which help configure the selection tools that will predict the strong and highest-potential candidates.
Certainly, the recruitment industry is fragmented and faces different demands in each sector.
For example, financial markets force companies to hire employees with a clearly-defined set of skills and by stringent regulations. On the other hand, hospitals and the healthcare industry organizations require highly-trained candidates who have a high level of autonomy.
Many managers unconsciously concentrate on problem solving and end up rewarding mediocrity. Indeed, they empower their low performers by focusing their time and energy on trying to solve their problems—while ignoring their high performers who end up leaving for lack of recognition. How do you build a company with a culture of excellence and set an organization-wide expectation of high performance?
As a manager, and I’m sure many other managers would agree, I do not head to work every day intending to achieve mediocre results. Nonetheless, managers might be inadvertently setting average expectations through their actions or focus. Unfortunately, this is a trap that snags many organizational and business leaders.
When we build a corporate culture of excellence, we create organizational capacity and a structure that empowers employees to focus and engage. We stop wasting a tremendous amount of time and money nurturing an old culture focused on problem-solving. Instead, we equip our teams with the right mindset and skills necessary to focus on creating the desired results.
We build a company with a culture of excellence by making every employee understand not only the company’s vision but also their own roles, responsibilities, and the specific actions they need to take to help achieve this vision. This, in return, will make employees feel that what they’re working on is meaningful, significant, and purpose-based. Every employee must know that they are supported and encouraged to become a master in their role and area of expertise.
Finally, as an HR Influencer in the region:
What is the #1 piece of advice you would give to HR professionals working in Saudi Arabia and the Middle East?
The new generation of HR professionals has to evaluate their peers and colleagues to identify the most efficient way to deploy their knowledge and abilities in service of their organization’s goals.
They will need to understand their competencies and gain new skills; I advise them to gain professional certifications and to read about the agility of the HR sector to know how they can develop their knowledge and apply these theories to their current jobs.
Moreover, they must have a clear vision of what they want to do in the future; they have to try to be strategic thinkers, flexible, and work on improving their communication/inter-personal skills.
What is the #1 piece of advice you would give to job seekers who want to find a job in Saudi Arabia?
I tell them to remember why they’re looking for a job and what is this job going to do for them. Write a professional CV, do not just download a template and fill in the blanks. In addition, I advise them to write a proper note (cover letter) when applying and never just send a CV in a blank email.
Should the application process reach the interview stage, job seekers should practice well before an interview and demonstrate how they add value to the organization while expressing what it is that makes them passionate.
If and when they get a regret letter, they should not let the bad news get them down. They should stay positive and remember that it doesn’t necessarily mean that they’re not qualified. It simply means that someone else might be a better fit for that position than they are.
