News & Insights
From Palestine to the Netherlands: Khaled Halawa, Site Engineer
We recently launched a new series of interviews with our staff who have gotten a visa to come and work with Mercury. Our fourth interviewee is Khaled Halawa, a Palestinian Site Engineer working on a Hyperscale Data Centre project in the Netherlands.
Can you tell us a bit about your background?
“I grew up in a small city in Palestine called Nablus in the West Bank. After finishing my high school studies, I attended university in my hometown to study Building Engineering, ultimately achieving a BSc degree in 2015. Due to the difficult economic and political situation in my country, I moved to Dubai where I worked as an Environmental Engineer for almost 3 years in a local company there called ACE. I got married then and moved to Sweden in 2018 where my wife was living while learning the language. This was a particularly challenging period of my life, living in an unfamiliar country with a completely different climate, culture and language to what I’m used to.
How did you first hear about Mercury?
“During my time living in Sweden, I applied through a recruitment company for various engineering roles. Fortunately, I had a Swedish contact, that worked for Mercury, Oskar Larsson, who realised that I could fulfil a required role in Mercury. I was not at all familiar with Data Centres or the European construction industry in general, but I discovered that Mercury was one of the key players in the construction world in Europe.
How was your experience getting a visa?
“Going through the visa process to work in the Netherlands was actually one of the easiest things I experienced. As a Middle Eastern, you become used to going through a lot of frustrating administration processes associated with visas in your life. However, from the minute Mercury started processing my paperwork, it took only two weeks before I was flying out to Amsterdam to begin my new adventure in early 2019.
Would you recommend other people from Palestine or across the world to work with Mercury in the Netherlands?
“I would definitely recommend anyone from Palestine or the Middle East in general to apply for Mercury. The experience of working in a company that welcomes diversity and treats all staff equally is really positive. In addition, I love having the chance to work in Amsterdam, one of the most beautiful cities in Europe with its charming canals and tulips”.
Mercury Visa Interview Series
Tom McKelvey is an Australian Senior Quantity Surveyor works on a large Hyperscale Data Centre in the Netherlands. Click here to read the interview.
Fabio Iseki is an Brazillian Quality Assurance Manager working on a Data Centre project in Germany. Click here to read the interview.
Deblina Bhaumik is an Indian HR Administrator working in our Dublin Head Office. Click here to read the interview.
