A Day In The Life Of...
AmJad Bin SHAROOJ
Tell Us More About Your Background?
In high school my focus was on technology and in 1997, the emerging trend was information technology. Alongside technology, I also enjoyed training.
After high school, I started working in a technical support role but found it was not the right career for me. So, I returned to studying to develop my skills for a career in training and thank God I didn't spend too long in techincal support! I studied International certifications and I am now the Head of Training at Dubai Smart Gov.
What Made You Get Into Training?
Training is an amazing career because I get to meet new people and on every training course I teach I get to share my knowledge and skills with everyone.
I especially emjoy training people from different backgrounds, cultures, religions and nationalities which in turn gives me more experience as a trainer.
Also, as a trainer I'm always updating my skills and If I was working in a normal job maybe the job would be stable, but there would be no development of skills.
What Current Training Trends Do You See?
Currently, I find that the majority of trends are all online in smart services and social media. A lot of the Universities have started offering social media diplomas and are focusing on social media which is becoming very strong in the region.
In addition, Dubai wants to be the No.1 Smart City within 3 years.
Dubai Smart Gov is focusing on excellence right now and wants to be compared to the 5 star services offered in the hospitality industry, like having services available 24 hours a day and making people's lives easier through technology.
What Interesting Training Projects Have You Implemented at Dubai Smart Gov?
I joined Dubai Smart Gov 6 years ago when the training department was very small. Now I have successfully, with the help of my team established a training centre that serves a majority of the 40 government entities training more than 6,000 employees through our centre.
Take Us Through A Typical Day?
I arrive at the office around 6.45am, at least fifteen minutes before I start my working day. Usually, I try and finish the pending tasks from the day before
and once I finish that I start on the day's tasks, including things that I want to share with my colleagues.
I also do tasks unrelated to training that include marketing and social media. I have always taught my students when I was a lecturer at Abu Dhabi University to never say no to any job as you will always learn something new and gain experience for the real world.
My management team are happy with me doing this and a lot of people don't like to do extra tasks and just be limited to their job description but I disagree with this because I now have more new skills which will enhance my future.
How Can Our Readers Find Out More About You And Dubai Smart Gov?
I would like to invire everybody to visit our stand during GITEX 2014 from the 12th October to the 16th October in Dubai and see our amazing stand in the World Trade Centre. You will find hundreds of services with different government entities sharing the Smart Gov services.
Tell Us More About Your Background?
Beofre moving to Dubai, I worked in sales for an advertising agency in London. My background is predominantly in Telesales.
Tell Us More About Biz-Group
Biz Group started two decades ago when I first came to Dubai. We are a training and development company, predominantly like your magazine. We also have a team building division and a strategy division that helps small businesses.
Everything we do is about improving performance. For example, how do we improve the performance of teams, the performance of people and the performance of businesses?
What Made You Originally Set Up A Training Business In Dubai?
I originally came here two decades ago to launch a product for a client from the training industry and just fell in love with Dubai in early 1992. Dubai was entrepreneurial, optimistic and sunny. Every time I landed back in the UK it wasn't sunny and the 90's was quite a depressing time for UK business.
So, I looked at an opportunity to start a new business. I didn’t have enough funds to start an advertising agency, so I started a training company which grew from an initial idea and a passion, to what you see today, with 46 people in the company and a very passionate team helping companies improve performance.
How Do You Help Companies?
From a training and development perspective, traditionally we work with an organizationt o find out what their business objectives are, what strategic issues they want to improve and how we can provide training and development solutions tailor made for them, or alternatively implement some of the international programs we have that help get companies from A to B. We also help individuals, whether it’s leaders, front line customer service employees or the general population through professional development. We help companies improve their business results.
Take Us Through A Typical Day As CEO?
Having just read Arianna Huffington’s new book 'Thrive', what I shouldn’t be doing first thing in the morning is checking my iphone to find out what emails have come in overnight from our overseas partners, but I’m still doing that.
Then my day is pretty much mapped out intensively, sometimes I think I’m like a doctor, my PA manages to fill in appointments back to back. If im not in the office, I am in a training room first thing in the morning .
So, a typical day of mine may start with introducing a new concept, like multipliers for senior leaders, followed by running an 8 hour workshop.
But. I don’t think there really is a typical day in my diary, I could either be in the office supporting the team, I could be delivering business keynotes internationally or even delivering a training
32 | TRAINING MAGAZINE MIDDLE EAST OCT 2014
DUBAI SMART GOV