Job Discussion Forums

QatarChic · Joined: 06 May 2005 Posts: 445 Location: Qatar

Saw this job ad for Oman. Pay is surprisingly quite high.... Rolling Eyes

unless I missed something. Anyone heard of this place? What's the catch?

MOD edit

veiledsentiments · Joined: 20 Feb 2003 Posts: 17644 Location: USA

Yes, 1600 a month is higher than we normally hear about, but I noted that it refers to the Ministry of Education, not the Ministry of Higher Education as are the jobs we usually hear about.

But, that number includes all allowances AND the gratuity, so I wonder if the monthly pay is lowered by the gratuity amount. It has a short summer holiday... only 48 days rather than the usual 60.

Also, it is asking for very specific skills and experience. I believe that it is not a teaching job, but a textbook writing job and you must have knowledge of their system. Knowledge of MACs and Quark Express? Haven' heard of that one.

Nice pay though. I haven't heard of the OTI company... a training company it appears. It is not clear if you would be working for them or for the Ministry.

Note that they have two ads on the Jobs page today, but no information on salaries and benefits...

VS

Tazmin · Joined: 04 Jun 2007 Posts: 9

OTI - Occupational Training Institute. Been around for years doing technical and vocational training. No catch - they are an excellent company and rarely have vacancies. I believe they are part of the Tawoos group. They do some private company training and mostly government funded training.

flutterbayou · Joined: 01 Apr 2006 Posts: 244

Quark Xpress is desktop publishing software. While Adobe photoshop creates images, the Quark shapes and develops content.

You can follow a tutorial online.
http://www.graphic-design.com/Photoshop/tutorials/0312-02.html

One position is for authoring, and the other is for editing English learning textbooks.

I noticed that the position requires a driver's license, so it must mean skipping about. Interesting.

Stephen Jones · Joined: 21 Feb 2003 Posts: 4124

Quark Express is pretty horrible, unless they're using an older version. Quark outsourced its last version to India, didn't bother to check it for bugs, and pretty well collapsed when its loyal customers found how horrible it was and immediately ran off to get the Adobe equivalent. Rarely has a company committed suicide so dramatically.

I completely fail to understand why they are asking for authors to have experience in Quark Express or with the Mac. In the US publishing industry, the standard is for the author to submit the publication in Word format and then the publisher adapts it to whatever publishing software they are using. Even for the editor it would be more realistic to buy a copy of the DTP software he uses, and a PC if necessary, than to limit the applicants to those with experience with Quark and a Mac. But those that write adverts are normally people in HR who understand only how to tick boxes (unless they've already chosen the candidate and are trying to narrow the field).

flutterbayou · Joined: 01 Apr 2006 Posts: 244

Right on target.

In the US, we used Word with a storyboard format, then pasted the content on to a PowerPoint setup. When it was developed to finish,graphics staff imported it through a portal for web-based learning, and as far as I'm concerned, these similar methods are just as easy to convert to regular desktop publishing for preparing hard copies.

To bring this all full circle and back to the original thread, this job might be frustrating, due to the software being used.