“I always had the love of explaining to make things simpler in order for everybody to understand.”
Dr. Taghreed M. Al-Saraj is currently working as a Post Doctorate fellow at University of California, Berkeley. She is the first Saudi female Post Doctorate in the history of UC Berkeley. Dr. Al-Saraj earned both a Bachelor and a Masters in Teaching English as a Foreign Language (TEFL) from the University of Miami, Florida. She earned her Ph.D. from UCL Institute of Education, University of London.
Learning a language creates its own type of anxiety in students. Something that should be seen as a positive opportunity, it often fills students with dread and shame. In fact, foreign language anxiety is a real condition that exists in the same way as math or public speaking anxiety. Students described the full range of anxiety symptoms experienced when they walked into the foreign language class. “I learned a third language, and that's when I started connecting my experience with what I heard the students were saying.“
Upskillable was created to match a person’s cognitive personality and skills with jobs. Resumes often do not accurately depict a candidate, reducing the likelihood of success in a role. By taking a personality assessment, candidates are offered more effective assessments of their skillsets and even how to improve in certain areas.
LISTEN AND SUBSCRIBE
SPEAKER
Taghreed Al-Saraj
Chief Executive Officer & Co-Founder
upskillable
MODERATOR
Anthony Scaramucci
Founder & Managing Partner
SkyBridge
EPISODE TRANSCRIPT
Rachel Pether: (00:08)
Hi everyone. And welcome back to SALT Talks. My name is Rachel Pether and I'm a senior advisor to SkyBridge Capsule based in Abu Dhabi, as well as being the MC for SALT. A thought leadership forum and networking platform that encompasses business, technology and politics. Now SALT Talks as many of you know, is a series of digital interviews with some of the world's foremost investors, creators and thinkers. And just as we do at our global SALT conference series, we aim to provide our audience a window into the mind of subject matter experts. Today's focus is going to be on language and culture in the Arab world. And I cannot think of anyone better to speak to then Dr. Taghreed Al-Saraj. The first Saudi female post-doctorate in the history of UC Berkeley. Taghreed is the CEO and co-founder of Upskillable, which with no doubt, learn more about later. She is considered one of the most important Saudi researchers focusing on language education in the Arab culture. And she's also the author of The Anxious Language Learner: A Saudi Woman's Story.
Rachel Pether: (01:17)
Taghreed has presented on the topic of foreign language anxiety at international conferences around the world. She's a certified woman leadership coach, international public speaker, and an educational consultant. As always, if you have any questions for Taghreed throughout today's talk, just enter them in the Q and A section on your screen. Taghreed, welcome to SALT Talks.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (01:40)
Thank you for having me.
Rachel Pether: (01:42)
So firstly, completely by default, I must admit rather than by design, you actually launched a new magazine today as well. So congratulations on that achievement.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (01:53)
Thank you.
Rachel Pether: (01:54)
You have such an interesting background and we've had a few conversations now and I want to dive deeper into this intersection between education and language, but first tell me a bit more about your love of education and where that stem from.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (02:11)
Love of education, I think since I was little, I was always helping other colleagues of mine or students explaining to them how did we get to either math or sciences. Those are my strongest subjects. And so I always had the love of explaining and specifically to make things simpler in order for everybody to understand. And that's one of the things to be a good teacher, let's say, is the ability to simplify the material. And so I was always that if one of my friends came to me for that. So I think it was in my genes since little, it just grew.
Rachel Pether: (03:03)
I'd love to also maybe touch upon how that simplification piece builds into what you're doing now with Upskillable. But one thing that you've studied as the anxiety that comes with learning a language and as I mentioned to the audience, you've also written a book called The Anxious Language Learner: A Saudi Woman's Story. What started your interest in language specifically?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (03:28)
Here's the book. This is the book.
Rachel Pether: (03:33)
Beautiful. We all expect free copies.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (03:35)
Yes. I will send you. The whole inspiration of the book, I never intended to write the book. I was doing it for a research paper, but it was so much information that it ended up to be a book and not an article in a journal. So what was the inspiration is that my PhD was on how language anxiety can affect language learners and specifically in the middle East and Saudi and the Gulf area because how culture interacts with our way of learning and how we have the saving phase. All of these things that we grew up and the ideology that we had and you cannot fail, it's very shameful. And so that's how I started thinking is like, why is learning languages, something supposed to be very enjoyable, something that you would love to learn and to use became such a thing that people were fearing and running away from.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (04:52)
When I was teaching, before I was doing my PhD, I saw the students, when I had my masters and I was a lecturer at the time in one of the Saudi's universities here, I saw how students either dropped out of my classes and changed majors altogether, just because they couldn't have the learning language. And every time I was asking them, "So what's going on? Why aren't you putting more effort?" And they say, "We're excellent students, top grades in Arabic, but when it comes to English, I just don't know what's wrong with me. I think it's something..." They don't know what's going on and so they think maybe it's a black eye or that somebody has cursed on me is that I can't do languages, and it was so silly to think that. For me at the time, I didn't know anything existed, such called language anxiety.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (05:49)
When I did my PhD, so that gave me the motivation to look into what was hindering these students from learning a language. And when I got accepted to do my PhD at UCL Institute of Education, University of London, the more I researched this area, I found that something is called foreign language anxiety. It's the same as math anxiety, public speaking anxiety. And I was inspired by, "Could it be the things that I thought the students were not putting effort? Are they anxious students?" And that's what I was so surprised that, yes, all the symptoms that they were telling me they had was the anxiety they were feeling when it came to learning the language.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (06:39)
Some students said to me, the minute I come into the class, I start getting headaches, stomach pains and palpitation, sweaty palms. And it was like, "What?" I didn't know the symptoms. I didn't know. But the more, when I researched, I found out that there is such something and it's called foreign language anxiety, and those were the symptoms. So then at the end, it's not enough to know the problem, you now have to cure it. And so we learned the techniques to calm the students down in order to show them that languages is something you should enjoy, it's not something you should be feared from. And the minute you start changing the mindset then comes the enjoyability of learning that language, whichever language it is, but in our case was English at the time.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (07:33)
And so when I did my PhD, I did it in a way as if it was a story. So when I was in my viva, the professor, the examiners, when they came in and they said, we love reading this book, and it's a viva. When you write your viva usually you put it in there after you finished the examination and you get your degree, they put it in the library barely anybody looks at it again, unless they're doing research. But what's the most enjoyable compliment I got was, "We really loved reading this book." And it was like a story because the whole thing was stories after story of what the students were going through, but with statistics and everything scientific. Then I started teaching there and I learned from what the students were giving me even more now being a researcher expert in the field. I thought, "You know what? It's not enough to hear from other people to get their experience. How about me? If I learn a language, would I go through all the things that these students were going through?" And that's what I did.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (08:46)
So I went and I learned a third language, and that's when I started connecting my experience with what I heard the students were saying. And that's when I thought it was going to be an article in a journal and it turns out to be getting bigger and bigger and we ended up with this book. And it was an enjoyable experience writing it, going through the things and analyzing it even in more details and reflecting on my own self and how I learned English and how I learned my third language, which was Turkish. And so it was an eye opener, even for me as an even language expert in the field in applied linguistics.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (09:35)
That was, I think one of the things that people, the reviews that I guide, and it was so good is that people connected. A lot of people had the same symptoms, but they didn't know what they had. So they just thought, I'm not good at languages and they just left it. But when they saw and they read the experience I went through, the students went through, they were like, "I felt that too." So again, why don't I give it another try, but this time with a new eye and a new mentality and a lot of comments were really good.
Rachel Pether: (10:13)
And so when you were learning Turkish, did you go through the same symptoms learning that language as your students had also gone through and that you found in your research?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (10:24)
Yeah, that was the most interesting part is that I thought I was an experienced researcher so that I would know what's going to happen and I can control it. Apparently, we're humans. We say we could do, but the reality and the fact is that, yes, you can tell your brain this is the best way to do it, but unless your subconscious is ready, it's not going to happen. So the most important aspect is our subconscious is that controls our conscious, but we think it's the conscious that controls the subconscious. So without going too deep into this, is that yeah, and we're all humans at the end and we feel these experiences and these feelings and emotions that come out and that's the journey that I took the readers in, is that how I learned it.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (11:27)
And I specifically chose Turkish at the time and explain in the book why I chose that is that I didn't want anybody around me to speak that language. And I was at London and London at the time, [inaudible 00:11:45] University of London and I wanted nobody around me to help me or to practice. I wanted it to be like a foreign language and that's how... When I went to UC Berkeley, I continued and that's where I actually finished writing the book. It was in 2015.
Rachel Pether: (12:05)
And so when you're looking at language and I want to move on to the work you're doing in Upskillable and other places shortly, but when you're learning a language, what is it about that specifically that makes people anxious is it because of... So I guess, public facing and outward facing, and it's this interaction, like, if you make a mistake, it's very prevalent and obvious. What are some of the reasons associated to language?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (12:32)
So when you're young, very little, you're a year or two years old, you make so much mistakes, but your parents fix those mistakes, right? You don't get embarrassed because you don't know what embarrassment is. So it's okay if you don't pronounce things right. It's okay if you make a mistake, nobody is going to take it seriously. But now you're older, you're mature, you want to save face, you don't want anybody to laugh at you. So there's a lot of things that come in this area, the emotions that come out that you want to protect yourself.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (13:12)
So that's when it makes it much harder to learn a language while you're older than when you're younger. That's one. How you're being taught that language is also very important. If there's somebody that motivates you and is very understanding, very simplifying. That's why the simplification is very important. If you're just being forced to memorize things and you are like, "I have to do it." There's a difference and that's where my coaching comes in is that there's a difference between what you have to do and what you want to do. And so those are the things that can make a difference in learning the languages.
Rachel Pether: (14:03)
And you mentioned saving face, obviously someone that's lived in this region for 12 years. I know that's a very prevalent disposition, I guess. Are there other cultures where you've seen this in practice [inaudible 00:14:17] failure?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (14:20)
Yes. And I was fortunate enough to be chosen by the Japanese ministry of education to come into to lecture at Waseda University in Japan, in Tokyo. And so when I went there, at the time they thought I was British because I came from University of London and there was a lot of students that were trying to do research and couldn't find any resources on language anxiety. And so when I went there, gave lectures, they took me to classes to see how in schools they taught English. Now, I went into thinking that I am going to see in Japan, all the students were with iPads and the high technology going on here, learning these languages. And then when I was in there, I was like, "Hey, this is how we teach in the Arab world."
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (15:23)
And that's not a bad thing, it's just basically focused on memorization and what I had in mind how they were teaching is totally different from what I saw. And it came to me that the cultures are the same. They rarely speak or volunteer to speak because they don't want to make a mistake. They want to save face and they don't want to do that. And it's the same thing with the Arab culture. In the Western culture, even in America, we also say, if you can't succeed once, try and again. But in the Arab culture, in the Asian culture is like, you want to say it right the first time round because you don't want anybody laughing at you.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (16:16)
But in a way if you want to learn languages, you got to accept you're going to make mistakes, people will laugh. So what? You laugh with them, it's not at you, it's with you. As always I tell my students, if we make a mistake, we're laughing together. We're not laughing at each other. And so you got to have that mentality that to be humorous it's okay. So what? It's all in the sake of learning the language, so let's make mistakes together. And so there weren't accepting that. And that's how I found that Asian culture is very similar to the Arab culture as well.
Rachel Pether: (16:57)
What you just said, the "let's make mistakes together." That's a beautiful segue into entrepreneurship. Obviously you have multiple failures along the way to success. So you did make the switch from academia to entrepreneurship. What drove that switch?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (17:15)
Well, when I was at UC Berkeley, I got headhunted by Mackenzie and so at the end we were... [inaudible 00:17:27] older interviews and we came to the last stage. Then they found out I was Saudi and they was thinking... Somehow I got back to Saudi because at that point when I was finishing UC Berkeley, I wanted to go back to London. But through McKenzie, when they was headhunting me, my CV was sent to two ministries in Saudi, and I got offers from both. I chose the ministry of human resources and I was heading the department for online training. It's a national platform. So I love that, is that I created the department with them and we saw how the training and development was, but it wasn't enough with that is that, I was telling, "Okay, so we're doing all this training on this platform, but how does the students know what to be trained on?" So how do I know what I'm lacking and how do I know what I have a strength in?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (18:42)
So with that, me and my colleague started talking and we came up with an idea of, wouldn't it be really nice to map the things that I lack and connect it to what training programs I need to have, so I can be in the right job and so with that, me and my colleague talks came up with an idea and from that it grew and we developed Upskillable and I have two other co-founders. The third one came on board. So I'm the Saudi, we have an American and we have a British. So the three of us put our heads together. We have expertise from different areas and we completed each other and we came up with what Upskillable is now.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (19:39)
And so if we talk about Upskillable, Upskillable is a platform that can assess people on their cognitive behavior and... Sorry, cognitive personality and skills. So our aim was to get the right people connected with the job description. So we wanted the right people in the right place for them instead of hiring somebody based on their CV. And we know from research shows 54% of people, what they write on their CVS is lies and that's the reality. And it's not only in Saudi, it's all over the world, this statistics. And so we wanted to do it scientifically. And how are we going to get these people without looking at their CVs? We wanted to see, do they have the capability to perform the job that they're going to be hired for before they get into that position?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (20:44)
And so that was it and then that's how we started and now we're also mapping it out. So now we have a platform when the candidates take these assessments, we now know their strengths and their weaknesses. And from there, we can map what they need to take in order to become better and target those weaknesses and make them much better for further development from themselves. And the platform is so much interesting is that we also can help companies restructure their company, because we know the strength and weaknesses of all the employees when they take our assessment. So they know who should go where. If you're downgrading, we also know who the important people to be there in the company. So there's a lot of usage for upskillable for companies.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (21:46)
And now on November 16th, and we're very excited with that is that we're launching a campaign to help in the IT sector to handle employment in the IT sector. So we're opening our platform for free assessment for all candidates in the technology field to take our assessments and the companies can come and see who's the highest rated in that field and they can recruit them. So we're doing that all to support the Saudiasation of the IT sector. So a new initiative in Saudi is to Saudilize 25% of the IT sector jobs. So with this, we're trying to help, not only Saudis, but all over. So we're opening the platform and because we're an international company anybody in the IT sector can come and take our assessment, and then we can map them. And when companies come and see their abilities, who's strong in what, we even give percentages for each person and we can compare candidates. So I can compare my abilities with you and companies can see who's strong in what. So the capability of Upskillable is just endless.
Rachel Pether: (23:10)
That's fantastic. And then, I'm assuming all this is virtual now, and if it wasn't in the pre COVID-
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (23:22)
Yeah, it is. It was always virtual.
Rachel Pether: (23:22)
Excellent. And when you do identify the gaps and the weaknesses, are you then providing support in terms of how they can improve these weaknesses? I think you mentioned that you could map them to courses and things like that as well.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (23:36)
Exactly. Yes. So they know what they lack in, and so they can start training and search. And even for HR, the companies, when they ask us to assess their employees, we can tell them that, your employees lack so-and-so and so. They can start doing training programs for their employees specifically in certain areas. And so this is beneficial for the employees, as well as the companies.
Rachel Pether: (24:10)
Excellent. And we've actually had an audience question come in, which is spot on and relevant to what you've just been discussing. So thank you for your question, Steven. He's asked, how can the USA education and immigration systems help make attending school for Arabic students more enjoyable and therefore attract more students?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (24:31)
Okay. Repeat that again. I didn't get that [inaudible 00:24:41].
Rachel Pether: (24:40)
So how could the USA both education and immigration systems attract more Arabic students and make it more enjoyable for them attending school in the US.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (24:53)
Oh, attending school in the US? Well, anything to be enjoyable, and that's the key word. I like that word, enjoyable because education should be enjoyable is that we have to have gamification elements in it especially if it's online. Face-to-face, I have both systems. I have three systems that I have studied there, at the US and I spent so many years of my life. I'm a graduate of University of Miami as well and as well as the British system and the Saudi system. Always to make anything in education, you have to make it enjoyable if you want the students to continue learning, to get them on board, but the education also has to be very relevant because when the students graduate from the university, the job market is totally different. It's not completely, but there's a gap always between what we teach and what the job market needs.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (26:04)
Making the education very relevant is getting what the job market actually is asking for and adding that in the curriculum before they graduate and that's the most important, that's how we can make the education more important and relevant. And if you tell these students, because I always look at the motivation factor, anxiety, and motivation is what my focus is always on is that if I tell the students that this is what the job market needs, but it's and you should focus on that. Of course, these students don't go to universities thinking I'm just going to study there. Everybody goes to the universities, the end result is to get a job and to get a really good job. So if you're telling them in advance, your education is relevant, we've added elements of what the job market needs and making it for the time now, of course, they're going to put more effort, it's going to be more enjoyable and they there'll be more motivated to learn.
Rachel Pether: (27:04)
And when you talk about those gaps, are you mainly focused on the soft skills or the hard skills or it's a combination of both?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (27:11)
Well, it depends on what's the major. So soft skills were for sure all the different departments or any anything that you're studying, you're going to have to have, because that is just a must. But it depends on what if you're engineer or medicine, it's different according to the major that you are in.
Rachel Pether: (27:33)
And you also mentioned about the Saudiaization, the 25% and the IT sector with unemployment being quite high in Saudi Arabia. And this isn't just a Saudi problem, globally. with unemployment rising, how do you think this affects fresh graduates or people and highlighting, how does this affect them psychologically when they go in and also when they come out of study?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (28:06)
So, because there's a 25% Saudiaization, it gives them a lot of motivation into learning because they have a better chance into getting into the IT sector. So that's a very good thing for them for fresh graduates. But the second thing is that, you can't rely on anybody. I tell my students in the US and the UK, you cannot rely on what you learn at the university only. A fresh graduates, still as a fresh graduate. you can't come out of the university with just a one page of CV. You need to start either on the summer programs, go into volunteer. You need to start filling that CV while you're still in the university. I don't want to see any graduates coming into the end of it and graduating and saying, I don't have no experience. Where have you been in those four years?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (29:06)
Okay, let it go the first year. How about the other three years? What did you do in those three years? You have summer, what are you doing in the summer? Are you volunteering? If you are a business major, go into the business world. If you are in the IT, volunteer in any company that is on IT and learn how things are being done. And then when you come to class, the education you get becomes relevant because you've connected the theory with the actual work, a physical thing that you saw and that's when become more employable, because you're going to put that in your CV. I volunteered for this, I learned this which puts you at the top or at edge. It gives you an edge to other fresh graduates that didn't do anything.
Rachel Pether: (29:59)
Absolutely. And we take on interns all the time as well. And it's also great for the company because they're just so refreshing and that's so interesting to get involved, right? So it definitely goes both ways in terms of advantages. And I'm also interested, you mentioned because companies are so used to just looking at CVs, going through CVs, matching it to profile. It's always been the very standard way of doing things. Are you also seeing uptake from the companies themselves? They appreciate that you need more than just to box tick a CV to actually hire someone. How have you seen that evolution since you [inaudible 00:30:41]?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (30:41)
Yeah. And this is the newest technology. So why even look at CVs and waste time looking at CVs now because, and this is When we're now, let's say we are demoing because it's this new concept in, especially in the Gulf area, with Upskillable, when you're demoing it to the clients, they're looking like, "So we don't, we don't look at CVs anymore?" And we're saying, okay, now at the beginning, you don't look at any of the CVs. We assess them the results we can give you the top three or the top five, and you don't waste your time with the 500 that applied for this position. You want to be very efficient. You don't want to leave your HR to do the most important things. And that's comes after when they got assessed. You got the top five or the top three, they look at those people's CV, that's it. And from there, you get to either interview them and and see their personality actually goes with the company profile, the people that you want or the community of the company that you want. So that's what we are looking for.
Rachel Pether: (32:00)
Yeah, certainly I think we've probably all been in jobs where you appreciate that it's much easier to hire someone than it is to get rid of someone. So you'd better be super sure when you hire someone that is the right fit within the organization. We have some more audience questions that have come in some specifically related to language and some Upskillable. So I'll start with the Upskillable one first. Do you have a plan to market an API for vocational or higher education organizations so that you can have other partners feeding into from their own online platforms or at the moment is it all just your proprietary assessment tools?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (32:43)
So we have our own assessment tools, but you're saying that you want... I'm not understanding the full question.
Rachel Pether: (32:55)
So you obviously have a number of higher organizations and other training facilities that would have online courses to offer. Is this something that you are incorporating or you will look to incorporate [inaudible 00:33:09]?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (33:08)
Yes. We are looking and we are trying to get connection with other universities, other training centers that can provide so we can match the skills needed for specific jobs and for specific sectors. So, yes, please do get in touch with us.
Rachel Pether: (33:29)
Perfect. And thank you so much for your question. We have another question from Sebastian and thank you for being such a great supporter always, Sebastian. He has said, how critical is the learning of grammar to learning a language? He is fluent in three languages yet he's never mastered grammar. Am I missing something in speaking these languages?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (33:54)
No, you're not. As long as you speak the languages and people understand you, that's it. You're way ahead. So don't be caught into the little details. Hearing the language so much and I always tell the students, whatever language you want to learn, start hearing it a lot. The words become very familiar. Structure of sentences become easy. Then when you actually say it, you might have not learned formal grammar structure, but you've listened and you heard it and your ears just picked it up and structuring it becomes easy because they become engraved in your memory. That's how the sentence is. But this is at the beginning. This is chunking it up like that. But as you go along, you are able, and that's how there's a difference between learning language when you're smaller and when you're older. When you're older, you have transferable skills that whatever you've learned in the first language, you can understand how to learn it in the second language.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (35:06)
You can transfer the skills and say, "Oh, you're older. So you can analyze the language." And you can say, "Every time I say this, this comes with it." And so they're always joined. And so it becomes easier as an adult to pick up that grammar or structure of the languages. I'm not saying you don't do grammar. Of course, you have to, but at the beginning, you get chunks of languages and you learn that. And then you start saying, they're adjusting the language. Why is it always a disposition that this word comes in? And that's how you understand. And that's when grammar comes and becomes important.
Rachel Pether: (35:52)
No, that's an excellent advice. And when I think of language as someone that has studied badly, I might add. And you see that they are science part and I guess the spoken form is often the art form a grammatical part is slightly more scientific and structure focused. We do just have time for one more question. I know you've answered a number of really difficult questions. So I'd like to end on a slightly easier one, but what would be your advice? You have this experience in academia, you have this experience in entrepreneurship, you have such a global perspective. What would be your advice for a fresh graduate that's about to enter the so-called real world?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (36:46)
I mean, I always say, please do not come to the end of the university or the degree that you're taking and you don't have any job experience. It's a shame. In all universities, there is a career center. Please, make use of it. Go see what they have. They will have a lot of training going on there at the career centers. They review CVs for you. They help you with that. So you do utilize it. And I've seen that people don't go and utilize the career centers until their last year or the last semester. And that's wrong. Year one, the minute your foot is in college, you got to have... That career center should be your friend. That's the go-to place. You go to, and you start seeing what schedule they have, what courses they have. I
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (37:45)
t's non-academic, and it's fun to go to there an hour or so, but it is good to have that knowledge, especially if you're, let's say, engineering, it's very specific. Go get something in a different field just to give you, so when you come out of it, you have a different perspective. It's not only very focused on one thing. And this is where I wrote an article in Arab news. And I said that the world needs more multipotentialite and this is the key word. I like to underline this very strongly, bold multipotentialite. There are people that are specialists, generalist.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (38:35)
So they have knowledge in so many different fields. You put those people with very specific consultant or very specialized consultants, they can do magic and wonders for a company, because they bring so much background experience in different fields. And this person that is very specialized in one thing, they can see the world in another direction. They just know this is how it's done. This is how it's always been done. But when they pair them with a multipotentialite, this person has a different idea and he's done some work here, he's done some work there. And from that knowledge, he transferred that knowledge and then they would tell, "So what if we do it this way? How can you try to make it done this way?" So to push them to think outside the box, and that is fantastic.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (39:31)
And that's what the job market now needs. A lot of people in HR might not agree with me and they say, "No, we need people that are specialized in this field." And I'm like, "Fine, get one, but get three, four multipotentialite that have a different perspective from different fields." Because that's what's going to make you... You want them to think outside the box and you need these people to help you, think outside of the box.
Rachel Pether: (40:00)
I absolutely love that. I'm going to take that and pretend it's mine. If you don't mind me.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (40:07)
I already wrote about it. So yes, take it.
Rachel Pether: (40:11)
Do you know I've always refer a closing, maybe comment from you is that I've always found it weird from such a young age, people are always saying what do you want to be when you grow up. And from age four you're supposed to have a one word answer. Like I want to be an astronaut. I want to be an engineer. I want to be a doctor. And yet, so many of us, I'm still waiting to grow up. I'm still not entirely sure. [inaudible 00:40:35] thing we have to do one thing that we have to do one thing, but in reality, there are a lot of multipotentialite.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (40:43)
Exactly. So why limit yourself? And there's so much out there to be experienced. Don't limit yourself, ever. Go with the flow. And this is my new article. Actually, I just submitted it yesterday in Arab news. It's called go with the flow, but I ended with a word or the sentence go with the flow, but in the right direction. So yeah, why not. Don't limit yourself.
Rachel Pether: (41:10)
Don't go against the flow.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (41:13)
Yeah.
Rachel Pether: (41:14)
So Dr. Taghreed, it has been an absolute pleasure. We have had a number of people actually say, how can they contact you? So what's the best way for people to get in touch if they have further questions for you or for about Upskillable?
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (41:29)
Upskillable, yes. So if you go to the website of upskillable.com, you'll have contact us and that's how we can get in touch with that. But also my social media accounts, you have my Twitter account. T-AlSaraj, A-L-S-A-R-A-J. So, yeah, and you can do a search on my name and you'll see articles, but the best way is to go to a Upskillable.com and you'll see the contact as we'll get the messages, especially if it's for Upskillable. But please do if the people that are listening to me, not only Saudis all over the world, we're opening this platform on November 16th for everybody to go on and assess their skills in IT sector. And they will have a report to show them what they're strong in and what their weaknesses so they can learn and take that on board and go and develop themselves. Completely free.
Rachel Pether: (42:32)
That's an excellent initiative. And it's great to end on a positive, optimistic note. So from my side, thank you so much for your time, Taghreed. It's been an absolute pleasure. So thank you for joining us.
Dr. Taghreed Al Saraj: (42:44)
Thank you for having me. Bye.