125 Israeli Arabs have been hired by high-tech companies through President Shimon Peres's MaanTech Program. The program was launched a year ago by Peres and Cisco Systems president and CEO John Chambers.
Executives from Amdocs Ltd. (NYSE: DOX), Check Point Software Technologies Ltd. (Nasdaq: CHKP), NICE Systems Ltd. (Nasdaq: NICE; TASE: NICE), Matrix IT Ltd. (TASE:MTRX), Cisco Systems Israel Ltd., Google Israel Ltd., Intel Israel Ltd., Oracle Israel Ltd. SAP Israel Ltd., RSA Israel Ltd., Galil Software Ltd. and other companies visited the President's Residence in Jerusalem yesterday to review the MaanTech Program's development.
Applicants can submit their CVs to MaanTech's website, and human resources managers counsel applicants for job interviews, provide training through workshops and career days, and direct applicants to over 20 leading high-tech companies that answered Peres's call to participate in the venture.
At yesterday's event, Peres said, "Israel has no formal legal discrimination, but there is definitely discrimination in practice. We must protect minorities, especially in the economic sphere. I call on you and ask you to continue your efforts so that next year, we can announce that the program resulted in the hiring of 1,000 employees."
HP Israel has hired 22 Arab employees since MaanTech was launched. HP Israel CEO Joshua Bakola said, "Beside the belief that we are doing something good, we believe that the program benefits society. The friends-bring-friends method of hiring has proven itself and lowered barriers. It turns out that managers who have hired Arab employees want to hire more."
Intel Israel has hired 31 Arab employees. Intel Israel CEO Maxine Fassberg said, "There are things that we have learned and done differently. We have learned the difficulty caused by the lack of English, and we have provided special training to enable Intel to hire many Arabs."
Published by Globes [online], Israel business news - www.globes-online.com - on November 14, 2011
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