First of all - big props to Dalia. She clearly worked her behind off to earn those offers.
Second - this definitely, to me, proves that Manara has a good business model. I actually don't think the fact that the Manara students are from MENA is all that important though. However, I do think that their extremely hands-on, and intensive "bootcamp for FAANG interviewing" model is clearly an advantage for early career technical candidates.
Thinking back to my college days (in the US, mid 2010s) - we were not given any sort of class that focused on professional interviewing. The college career center was also very general, and not knowledgeable about the specifics of passing the coding interviews. The best advice I got was a recommendation from a guest lecturer to read "cracking the coding interview" (which to be fair, was better than nothing).
As a result, the people from my school who did the best right out of the gate, were largely people who already knew people already in a FAANG roles and who could rely on that person for a referral, interview advice and practice feedback. Our school was not in SV (or anywhere close), so realistically, that was not an option for most of us. Additionally, I always applied for internships at FAANG companies while I was still a student - but never even got called in to interview - so it wasn't like I could practice that way either. I ended up doing fine for myself by accumulating a good base of practical experience from local non-FAANG companies before graduating, but I really believe my peers, and aspirational novice engineers of all backgrounds would have benefited greatly from having a hands-on course like Dalia described. I especially would love to see efforts like that extending out to under-served communities here in the US as well (native american reservations, appalachians, rust belt cities).
Thanks so much for sharing this perspective! I'm Manara's Co-Founder and CEO. I wish that we could tackle all these communities at once because you're right - there's undiscovered talent in many underserved communities and everyone (them, employers, society) would benefit from bridging the small gap they're facing to world-class employment.
We chose to focus on MENA for a few reasons. First, it's the region that we know best and can therefore be competitive in.
Second, it truly is a large, exceptional pool of diverse STEM talent - it will soon be as many STEM grads as Eastern Europe (and more than half of them are women!)
Third, we can scale our impact by building a brand for this talent pool & referral networks. Similar to what happened in Eastern Europe.
Finally, our focus helps to attract precisely the resource we need to fulfill our mission: highly talented engineers from top tech companies around the world. Some are alumni, most are currently volunteers who care about MENA. They volunteer to do mock interviews, mentor the participants, etc. We could never do this without them.
My co-founder Laila (who is from Gaza, and like Dalia, made it to Silicon Valley... but back in 2016) and I are both passionate about untapping human potential. While we can't tackle all underserved communities at once, we are actively sharing lessons learned with organizations doing similar things in other regions. :)
Thanks for responding! It absolutely makes sense that Manara is targeting a specific talent pool in order to leverage the founders' personal skills, experiences and connections. If anything, targeting the entire MENA region seems like incredibly ambitious undertaking on it's own. I certainly didn't intend to imply that the burden to serve those other communities in similar ways should fall on Manara in particular!
Rather, I think everyone who cares about those communities I mentioned should be paying very close attention the work you're doing, and the exceptional results you're seeing. The fact that you are already sharing those lessons with other regions - well, that just gives me another reason to keep cheering you on. Wishing you all the best!
Second - this definitely, to me, proves that Manara has a good business model. I actually don't think the fact that the Manara students are from MENA is all that important though. However, I do think that their extremely hands-on, and intensive "bootcamp for FAANG interviewing" model is clearly an advantage for early career technical candidates.
Thinking back to my college days (in the US, mid 2010s) - we were not given any sort of class that focused on professional interviewing. The college career center was also very general, and not knowledgeable about the specifics of passing the coding interviews. The best advice I got was a recommendation from a guest lecturer to read "cracking the coding interview" (which to be fair, was better than nothing).
As a result, the people from my school who did the best right out of the gate, were largely people who already knew people already in a FAANG roles and who could rely on that person for a referral, interview advice and practice feedback. Our school was not in SV (or anywhere close), so realistically, that was not an option for most of us. Additionally, I always applied for internships at FAANG companies while I was still a student - but never even got called in to interview - so it wasn't like I could practice that way either. I ended up doing fine for myself by accumulating a good base of practical experience from local non-FAANG companies before graduating, but I really believe my peers, and aspirational novice engineers of all backgrounds would have benefited greatly from having a hands-on course like Dalia described. I especially would love to see efforts like that extending out to under-served communities here in the US as well (native american reservations, appalachians, rust belt cities).