Employing a highly skilled asylum seeker from Syria

Mohamad came to the UK in 2015 as an Asylum seeker from Syria. Despite his experience and qualifications, he struggled to find a job in the UK that matched his skills and interests. That was until he joined RISE. 

Mo’s story

Mo has a BS in Business Administration with a specialisation in accounting from Beirut Arab University. After graduating, he worked as a Finance Assistant for the United Nations for 10 years. 

He always enjoyed learning and studying so when he came to the UK he decided to keep learning and got an MSc in Business Information Systems from the University of East London with merit.

He also started a competitive tasked based IT course called ‘Code your future’, run by a non-profit organisation, supporting refugees with the dream of becoming developers.

“I always look to continue to develop my skill set.”

Mohammed

But despite his background, Mohamad struggled to find suitable employment in the UK. After 6 months of working as linen porter in a hotel, he started feeling frustrated and dejected by the lack of progress in his career and being unable to get work in Finance or IT. That was until he joined our RISE programme.

Working with Mo

When Mo joined RISE,  which provides free employment and training services for refugees, he was matched with an Employment Advisor – Krista.

They talked through his skills, qualifications and interests as well as his future career goals. She asked him about what kind of roles he had been applying for to try and get a better picture of what challenges he was facing and what stumbling blocks he had encountered. Together they created a SMART action plan to help Mohamad overcome his barriers and help him find a job in line with his skills and interests. 

During the programme Mohamad had access to:

• Work-focused ESOL (English for Speakers of Language) classes
• Employability support, such as CV writing, interviewing techniques and assisted job search
• Wellbeing activities including confidence building workshops 
• Access to vacancies from our employer engagement team, who source vacancies according to each participant’s needs and skills

Krista learned there was an internal vacancy at Renaisi for a finance and quality assurance assistant and encouraged Mohamad to apply.

“Immediately I knew he had to go for the job because he’s the perfect person for it! He’s very qualified, neat and punctual with a great memory. He’s also a very creative person.”

krista, renaisi employment advisor

Results

Working closely with Krista, Mohamad was able to confidently apply and interview for the position at Renaisi,  with success!

He was offered the job and joined our team. Krista continued to mentor and support him for his first 6 months in the job

“I like working here. It’s much better than the job I had before. People are nice. Thank you to Krista for helping me.”

mohammed

Find out more about RISE

RISE launched in April 2017 and was available in 10 London boroughs. We delivered it for five years as part of the Big Lottery Fund and European Social Fund (ESF) Building Better Opportunities (BBO) programme.