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1.1 million young Arabs complete course to prepare for better careers

Course offers training in English language, interviewing skills, resume writing, and job search tips

Crescent Petroleum, the Middle East’s oldest and largest privately held oil and gas company, in partnership with Edraak, the region’s top nonprofit online education platform, has announced that the Crescent-sponsored Career Compass Pathway work preparedness course has reached 1.1 million registrations since its launch in June 2023.

The rapid uptake of the Career Compass, which teaches important soft skills like interviewing, presentation skills, and communication in the professional setting, underscores the demand from young people to develop skills that will help them find better jobs and thrive in their careers.

The pathway was launched to help young people in the Arab world develop soft skills and succeed out in the modern workplace. The online course offers modules ranging from English-language communication skills, digital literacy, business and workplace communication as well training in how to produce a polished CV and develop interview skills. It builds on a number of other career readiness programmes that Crescent Petroleum and Edraak have collaborated on in the past.

Edraak’s MOOC platform enables the delivery of a rapidly scalable suite of courses than can serve hundreds of thousands of students across the region, with tailored skills training to equip young people with skills they need for future work. The courses are hosted on Edraak’s platform and delivered in Arabic by Arabic-speaking practitioners and subject matter experts, free of charge to registered users. Students who successfully complete the range of classes in the Career Compass also receive a certificate confirming their completion.

Average youth unemployment in the Mena region reached 24% in 2023, according to the International Labour Organization (ILO), and exceeds 40% in some parts of North Africa, presenting major policy challenges for governments across the region. The lack of soft skills has proven to be one of the most critical impediments to improving hiring of young people, the ILO found. In fact, the organisation found that soft skills play as crucial a role as technical skills for success in the workplace.

Majid Jafar, CEO of Crescent Petroleum said: “This milestone of more than a million registered underscores the massive demand of young people in our region to learn soft skills that will help them build their careers and reach their full potential. For more than 50 years Crescent Petroleum has focused on supporting the communities where we work; and our partnership with Edraak has helped advanced this mission to upskill youth which are the future of our economy and prepare them for the modern workforce.”

Bassem Saad, Chairman of Edraak, said: “Initiatives such as these are demonstrative of a continuing demand among youth and employers for these critical competencies and market-responsive skills to continue to set the region apart as an innovative hub for business and growth.”

The course is targeted at students across the region, with the largest proportion (42%) coming from North Africa followed by the Levant (34%) and the GCC (24%). More than 75% of students who completed the course said the skills included in the Career Compass enabled them to secure better jobs, promotions or other opportunities.

While most students said they originally registered to build their competency in English, most found the additional learnings in soft skills and leadership skills as valuable additions to help them stand out in job applications and opportunities. Edraak also found that the course provided considerable value to college graduates as well as youth not registered in university, enabling them to gain critical skills and boost long term career opportunities.

Crescent Petroleum has long invested in capacity building and youth empowerment efforts to enable young people to close the skills gap and reach their full potential. The company has supported a range of Edraak courses in recent years aimed at developing young people’s soft skills. The collaboration Edraak’s reinforces the mission of offering high-quality online education in Arabic to learners across the region and to present solutions to the educational challenges facing the region.