INTERVIEWED BY: MAHMOUD MANSI
EDITED BY: NADA KHAFAGA
- 1-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: You studied Engineering in The Arab Academy for Science, Technology and Maritime Transport. How did you immediately start your own private business right after graduation?
Ahmed Mansour: After graduation, I studied project management professional (PMP) for 6 months. Afterwards, I joined the army for one year and I was so eager to work. I learnt my lesson from the army and in this year, I invested my time in studying my general management diploma.
As a freelancer, I started working on my friend’s apartment as a favor. I made some profit, but it was not enough to start a business and making it my career would have been very risky. A business needs salaries and other fixed expenses.
I took the risk; I rented a place and I built my own office from scratch just to do more work because I didn’t have much at that time. I used to observe how each labor worker did his task, what kind of tools he used and how he used them. When I was alone, I practiced each of these tools until I was successfully able to wield all the tools and perform the duties of each laborer, although not as professional as they would. This helped me understand their needs, their routines, enabling me to manage them in a smarter and better way.
- 2-HR Revolution Middle East Magazine: What are the steps needed to create one’s own business in Egypt?
Ahmed Mansour: Surely you need to have connections as most people know, but believe me, that this only helps you get the chance to enter the market but not to grow in it. The way you manage, how good you are at managing, your ability to run the business and how you remain with the same excellent performance require that you have a vision and tactics.
The vision must not change. However, by time and experience, I think you might change your tactics and as long as you have a good long-term vision, you will be able to compete in the market.
Study your business well, and don’t start a business if you didn’t study your market well. Focus on your business and trust your idea because a lot of people are going to try to bring you down just because they think that no one can be better than them.
When you succeed, to not invest all of your money in work, such as employees or workers, you need to always put a fixed percentage, depending on your situation, and a long-term plan just to continue the business. Do not, all of a sudden, begin to downsize.It’s not about how many employees or workers you have,it’s about what they do and how they work.
- 3-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What are the common challenges that face Contracting businesses?
Ahmed Mansour: The challenges in contracting businesses include how you react when facing a drop or when work is a little bit slow. The trick is to stay in the market and keep the same good workers and employees. This is what will make your company stable and that won’t happen if you just keep on hiring more people, because you have work now at the time being. It is when you hire a great team that can give you the work of 2 people at a time. This is why I said it needs to be calculated. You cannot simply hire people because you feel that you are able to pay them. This strategy will prevent the drops when work is a little bit slow.
Another huge challenge is when you get your money from the client that you did the contract with, whether it is an individual person or a corporate. You need to meticulously calculate what you make compared to what you take, because you can just keep on paying the workers and do a lot of work and then you don’t get the check on time, when your contract ends.
- 4-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is your criticism regarding the contracting business in Egypt?
Ahmed Mansour: I don’t like that there is a lot of monopoly.
- 5-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: When it comes to recruiting your employees, how do you guarantee that this candidate is the suitable one?
Ahmed Mansour: It depends on the employee’s passion and how he wants the company to get bigger and gain more of the market share so as to put him in a better position, as compared to someone who comes to work to get things done and leave. Also,employees who are interested in the ‘know how’ of what needs to be done stand a better chance of recruitment.
- 6-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What does your job mean to you?
Ahmed Mansour: It means the world to me. It is my passion and my happiness. I just find myself in what I do because I really love my work.
- 7-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: As an engineer, what do you think are the problems engineers from different fields face in Alexandria?
Ahmed Mansour: The problem engineers from different fields face in Alexandria is that no one wants to know the ‘know how’, they just want to work like a donkey and not be bothered with the practical field. Honestly, some of the fields don’t give you the chance to know the practical way. We simply don’t produce, we just do the work after the production, like the sales and marketing of the product, and putting the components of certain products together.
- 8-HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: What is the most valuable lesson you learn from your work?
Ahmed Mansour: That nothing is impossible. If you have a target and you want to reach it, you will definitely reach it. You need to be strong and nothing can break you. You need to run after your dreams no matter what happens. You need to have faith in God that he will repay you because as hard as you have waited and worked hard, God will grant you just as much and will never let you down. You will also be successful if you learn from each and every bad situation that happened in your career life.
It is not only about how hard you work, but also about how hard you can have breakdowns and still surpass them.
- HR Revolution Middle-East Magazine: Thank you so much Eng. Ahmed for the great interview.
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