Opening doors for Omani talent

Inspired by Nortal’s Summer University – Estonia’s top IT training program – Nortal decided to launch a similar initiative in Oman with the aim to identify and welcome Omani top fresh IT graduates with a proactive mindset and hardworking nature to Nortal.

An Omani IT internship plan that came together as a teamwork between cold and snowy Tallinn and warm and sunny Muscat, was put into action in 2020 at the largest student career fair at Sultan Qaboos University (SQU) in Muscat.

For me, recruiting fresh graduates is one of the most challenging tasks. It takes a lot of time and effort to recognize that “sparkle in their eyes”. One would even compare it to a treasure hunt. For a fresh graduate, however, entering the labor market is even more difficult. How to choose the right company, how to write a good CV, how to prepare for an interview – these are only a few of the questions they are facing for the first time in their life. But if supported in this quest for the best suited career, it can be very rewarding.

In Oman, Nortal is delivering large scale digital transformation projects to help build a better society. And the biggest resource is our people – young, smart, committed, and hungry for innovation. That is why Nortal supports young Omani talent in kickstarting their IT careers.

One of these young talents is Marwa Al-Nummani. She entered Nortal’s internship program in Oman after graduating from the Higher College of Technology with a bachelor’s degree in e-Security. She was onboarded onto a major project for the Ministry of Manpower. Marwa said that the internship taught her a lot, not only about her specialty, but about everything else as well, For example, how to create Pentaho reports, work on a TomCat server, Jenkins, DataGrip and GrayLog. Her advice to all the graduates and juniors is never to give up because the struggles you face could be the key to your success.

Delivering meaningful impact

“Technology is the new magic, it improves lives and creates new opportunities,” believes Mohammed Al-Barashdi who found out about Nortal’s internship program through WhatsApp after graduating from the Higher College of Technology with a degree in Software Engineering.

Mohammed wants to become a professional backend developer. During the internship he worked on the Invest Easy project, got to learn the architecture of the system and how it works, implemented and generated reports for the government entity and much more.

He says he’s not exaggerating if he says that the internship at Nortal is the best thing that has ever happened to him.

Mohammed Al-Haddabi is a Computer Science graduate from the German University of Technology in Oman (GUtech). He is passionate about diving deep into the realm of software development and driven by the desire to help Oman prosper. When he’s not spending his free time playing video games to destress, he is exploring the latest technologies in the field, trying to understand how they work, and when given a chance, uses them in client projects.

Mohammed found out about Nortal when he visited the job fair hosted in SQU and was immediately interested when he learned about the kind of projects Nortal works on for the Omani government.

After applying and being accepted to the internship program, he was onboarded to the Managed Operations team handling projects and requests for the Ministry of Commerce and Industry (MOCI). He works on creating and updating BI reports using Pentaho Report Designer and configuring them to be published at a specified interval.

“I’m happy at Nortal because it’s a place where I can experience different aspects of software development and maintenance,” Mohammed explains. He is eager to implement the new skills he has learned at Nortal.