Ah ! He is Lucky to have made millions….

Oh !  Every thing he touches turns into gold

Hah!  Can you imagine, He became the CEO of the firm, what luck!!!

   NONSENSE !

What people call luck is nothing but probability outcome! It is a phenomenon that beholds us from the moment we are conceived till the day we depart to NOWHERE ! The fact that we were the “lucky” sperm that beat all the other millions that were striving to get to the goal “ the Egg” is a result of millions and one factor which one usually summarizes by one ambiguous and unintelligent term … “luck”.

How about winning at a lottery! Is that Luck??

Hundreds of factors determine which number will be the winning number including the decision of buying the ticket, where the ticket was purchased, when it was purchased, and the electronic system used in spinning the wheels. all play a role in determining which number will be the “lucky” one.

Oriental societies, tend to consider luck as a major player in their lives, so are rural and agrarian societies. The explanation for that I think is because older societies and economies relied for their livelihood on agriculture where natural uncontrollable factors play a serious role. While developed societies and economies rely on man made equipment, machinery, and services where he has control over the decision making process.

Here below are four cases of ex-classmates of the writer who have amassed large fortunes during the past 30 years and who are referred to by many laymen as “lucky”!!

Have you considered hard serious 18- hours- a- day work as a factor in jamil’s promotion at his firm and later being selected to the position of the CEO of the company??!!

Sami decided to join the family stationary business, and worked hard and long, to prove his leadership skills and sound decision making to his father and his business associates. XYZ the leading computer firm in the world offered Sami’s company the sole distribution rights for their line for the whole MENA area, based on Sami’s track record. I cannot detect the element of luck in Sami’s success story!!

Let us take Amin’s case. No one can deny that Amin’s enduring, patient, and compromising nature that brought him close to the Prince of the Northern Provence who later became the Minister of Defense. Amin has chosen to limit his is vocabulary to four words…Consider It Done done! Thus he became the trusted and loyal confident to the Prince. He consequently was entrusted with the arms deals that were transacted between the United Regions of Evil and the Prince’s country. His shares of the commissions over the past twenty years are over 200 million dollars. Amin has been married for 15 years and was not endowed with any children. Would you consider luck has been behind Amin’s financial wealth or life???

Hamid we all know left Lebanon, instead of accepting the position of Head of Department at the Ministry of Finance which his sectarian leader has arranged for him. He went to Nigeria during the Biafra war. He traded with both warring parties, living in the war zone for seven years at the risk of being captured and killed at any moment. His wealth is strictly a product of the risks that Hamid was willing and ready to assume.

Finally, let us take the case of our class mate Nabil. We all watched Nabil investing in real estate in Lebanon at a time when we all were selling, during the ugly years of the Lebanese. At that time we all referred to Nabil as the “naïve one” to say it politely. Now that Nabil is worth more than 150 million dollars is the result of seeing an opportunity and grabbing it on the spot without hesitation, if or but.

In conclusion success has nothing to do with luck unless your definition of luck is “opening the door when an opportunity knocks…no buts or ifs or or procrastination.”

Success is a result of HARD WORK, RISK TAKING, QUICK DECISION MAKING, PERSEVERENCE, PATIENCE, and ATTENTION to DETAILS.  

“LUCK” does not have any role in the process…..

“Luck” is a term used by losers to fend their failures, and discredited the successful.

Sabbah Al Haj, PhD

A few years ago in the early seventies it was futile for an HR specialist or executive to search for a job or seek employment. His knowledge or specialty was a commodity that was not in demand. It was looked upon as “Western ideas that would ultimately spoil the staff and render them expensive”.  The whole field of HR was not understood and hence was not appreciated. HR management was looked upon as a glorified personnel function; this was the case with the very few medium size businesses. Family businesses on the other hand, which constituted the overwhelming majority of firms, historically were small. Their few staff members who manned the mini posts at those firms were hand picked by the senior family member “Le Patron” and served the family, not the business, for the rest of their working days.

The latter part of the twentieth century has brought with it a marked change in the legal structure of Business Arabia, with the emergence of corporate structures and shareholding companies. This change was introduced by the continuous increase in the price of oil, the building of excessive infrastructures, the oncoming of globalization, and the advent of the internet that brought ideas, information and knowledge to managers and staff alike in the region.

The looming questions are how many of those new corporations are aware of the need for, and the value of HR management; are the contributions of sound human resources management to the well being of the firm been appreciated and given its real value vis-à-vis physical capital; Has the HR Manager in the new environment been given his full value, and has his status been recognized as that of the financial, and marketing managers?

The creation of a well staffed HR Department is only the first step in the right direction, however to be productive and rewarding this Department must have the support and commitment of top management.

 Firms should realize that the fruits of investment in their staff and the efforts to improve their productivity and lot are a long term processes. The rewards are slow to come, but when they begin to flow they are there for good and grow at an increasing rate.

It is definitely different from physical capital where the investment is visually noted. If you purchase a production line or buy new desktops to your staff the following day you will have the satisfaction of seeing your invested capital in operation. The very marked difference, however, is that investment in human capital appreciates with time, while that in physical capital depreciates, and ultimately becomes obsolete.

Sabbah Al Haj, PhD.

Management Plus, GM and Chairman  

1- Slow and Stringent Feedbacks:

Upon receiving a request from one of our valued client, the assignment is passed on to one or more of our consultants, depending on the number of positions to be filled. The consultants normally take the assignment very seriously, do their search and select three or four CVs whose profiles closely match the job description specified by the client. The CVs are emailed with dispatch to the HR Manager of the client firm or whoever is designated by the request…, a week passes with no reply…two weeks pass   and no reply…in the meantime our diligent consultants follow up the client with a barrage of emails, to no avail. Then we decide to further invest in our valued client, over and above the time our consultants had spent searching and contacting the candidates, our consultants call long distance to talk to the concerned party at the other end. Getting through to party concerned is usually a chore by itself and a call that might take two minutes, ends up taking 10 minutes to finally be informed that the executive concerned is out of the office…period. A message is usually left, but to no avail…..and what should have been a simple one week’s assignment, ends up being a three months job.

Fortunately, a good part of our clients are efficient with a well trained HR staff that makes up for the trying few

2- Blurred Job Descriptions

Since most of the firms in the Middle East are basically family owned, with different legal structures, their organization structures invariably take a Trinity form, namely the Father, the Son, and the old accountant who was inherited with the old safe from the grandfather’s days. In the absence of a clear organization structure, it is not possible to have clear descriptions, and this is what our blessed consultants have to deal with in some cases. As you can imagine in such a case the job description changes with every email that we receive from the client, and what starts being a request for a senior accountant position in the first request ends up being a senior Financial Manager ten emails later

3- The Decision Making Dilemma

The lack of feedback from some of the clients regarding a selected candidate of our side, is caused by the ambiguous decision making process in that firm. This is mainly due to the very vague and “baggy” job descriptions at those firms.

4- The Absence of a Defined Evaluation Criteria

The lack of definite criteria by which to assess a candidate is a serious problem that some of our clients face and consequently reflects on our efficiency of placing a candidate. While one executive from the HR department reports that a candidate is suitable for a certain position, the other interviewer who heads the department concerned reports that the candidate is lacking professionally, while the CEO finds the candidate pleasant, but unable to side with either parties. A “Hung Jury” is the result, and the client in this case asks to see more candidates.

5- The Lack of an Hr Department

Some of our valued clients have grown over time in business volume and in head count, and even in the number of staff at the Personnel Department, but had not realized the need for an HR Department. They may have changed the label of their glorified Personnel Department but definitely not the content.

The above are samples of the problems that we face with some of our clients, and invariably, we do volunteer some suggestions and consultations on how to remedy them. However, a good part of our clients fall under “pleasure to serve “category.

Sabbah Al Hajj, PhD. GM and Chairman of MPlus Recruiters

 The problem that firms in general and recruiting companies in particular are facing these days is the wrong attitude that some young men and women are demonstrating at the workplace nowadays. The lack of seriousness and irresponsible attitude are  manifested by the following behavior:

a. Complete disrespect for time, theirs and the employer’s. They rarely show up on time for an interview.

b.      Over evaluation of their capabilities and potential input  by asking for higher salaries than their training and experience count for, and what the market is offering.

c.       Their repelling  questions during an interview such as : “ What are the working hours?” ,“Do you work on Saturdays?”, “Do you have Summer hours?”… All those questions manifest their disinterest in a job and their sole interest in a salary.

d.      Their misrepresentation of their previous experiences and salaries they use to cash.

 The newly comers to the labor  market seem to have no consideration of the firms’ interests, profitability and well being. In other words there does not seem to have any sense of belonging to the employing firm.

 This attitude and behavior discourages a recruiter and/or an interviewer from pursuing the recruiting process with candidates of such attitudes.

Firms seek and value loyal and interested employees and plan long term careers for them with the institution, and depress the advancement of negligent staff members.

Sabbah Al Hajj, PhD. GM and Chairman of MPlus Recruiters

On our local mini scale scene, the Lebanese government, and business leaders are at a loss    to the fact that the repercussion on our economy has been minimal.

The explanation to that is quite simple. Lebanon is not an industry based country that depends on exports to suffering foreign markets, Lebanon is a net importer of goods, and hence is at an advantage of importing cheaper goods . On the other hand, Lebanon is not a global financial center crowded with uncontrolled greedy brokers and fictitious investment opportunities. The monetary authorities in Lebanon had wisely barred the local banks from engaging in the overly attractive commercial papers that originated in the US financial centers.

Lebanon main assets are its educated, young men and women who are entrepreneurial, flexible, dynamic, and trilingual. Those skilled candidates are very much in demand in the Gulf countries by firms in media and promotion, construction, finance, sales and marketing, and general management.

To determine the impact of the financial crises on the Lebanese expatriates in the Gulf,  MPlus, had to start with a figure of the number of Lebanese expatriates working in the Gulf, in the absence of official statistics on this subject.  Based on its16 years experience in recruiting for the region, MPlus estimated the number of Lebanese expatriates working in the Gulf at about 300,000, with a marked majority working in KSA.

The following table reveals the estimated number of Lebanese who were rendered redundant as result of the crisis.

Our forecast of jobs lost by Lebanese working in the Gulf is estimated
according to the following table:

The loss in employment on the Gulf scene is being partially
compensated for by an increase in the demand for Lebanese
professionals by  some of the African countries, Syria, and the local
Lebanese market. The reason that some African countries, Syria and Lebanon were not affected by the crisis, are the following:

A)   All three economies are partially independent of the international economic community.

B)   Syria for one had been, for quite some time, on an economic boycott list by many of the countries that were hit by this crisis, and therefore did not have any dependency on such economics.

C)   Lebanon was fortunate to have had a wise monitory policy, implemented by the Central Bank of Lebanon, a few years ago, which barred Lebanese banks from being infected with the virus that hit monitory, and financial tools.

D)  Some of the African economies are mainly commodity producers, and even though the prices of commodities have dropped, the essential demand persisted because many of those commodities are soft commodities which are the staple food for the people of the whole world.

This is why we feel comfortable and confident, that the overhanging dangers of economic recession, which is engulfing developed and industrial nations will mildly affect the Lebanese economy and hence the leveled employment.

Sabbah Al Hajj, PhD, GM and Chairman MPlus Recruiters