Hello Everyone,
Baby and I were at the Career Fair @ Suntec City Convention Centre today and we basically registered ourselves as walk-in visitors so as to take a stroll around and see what were the career and educational opportunities available nowadays. Just a heads-up for those of you whom are actually seeking for a job or a career change, there are a few upcoming jobs/career fairs that will be taking place this year, so, don’t fret if you miss this one.

1). Career Expo 2012 from 23-25 March 2012 [organised by JobsDB.com]
2). Jobscentral Career and Learning Fair 2012, date not yet confirmed [organised by Jobscentral.com]

So anyway, Baby and I took a look at some of the exhibitions by the various exhibitors and I could see that the event was very well-organised and managed as the education booths and careers booths were demarcated properly. To begin this entry proper, let me first talk about the education booths at the career fair.

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One important point that we noted at the career fair was that there were more education booths than careers booths. In fact, most of the educations booths were set-up by private education providers and some of which are clearly unheard of. Being the curious me, I decided to stop around some of the education booths and ask questions about their programmes; and as anyone could guess, the staffs whom attended to us were like sharing how good their programmes are and how recognised their school is and etc. There were even schools that gave away freebies and incentives such as a free tablet and a holiday trip to Phuket just for signing up for their programmes. While I do understand the tough competition in the private education industry, I do wonder, is there a need for such aggressive marketing tactics? In fact, I am not surprised that Kaplan, MDIS, and MIS did not participate in this career fair and I am glad they did not participate in this career fair because it would have been a waste of financial and logistical resources.

Now, for the career booths at the career fair. The key point that we noted here was that insurance companies such as AIA, Prudential, HSBC Insurance, and NTUC Income dominated and occupied large amounts of space at the career fair. This seemingly implied that they were aggressively recruiting individuals whom are interested in a career in the financial services industry. Well, don’t be fooled here. A financial planner or a financial consultant is also otherwise known as an insurance agent [different words/titles but same job scope] and  the job entails selling insurances, savings programmes, and investment-linked policies. Please don’t get me wrong. I am not against insurance policies or insurance agents or “financial planners/consultants”. In fact, while I do encourage you readers to purchase insurance, please also be wise to know how much insurance you really need and where to park your money. If you have any questions with regards to investments and savings, and you are unsure of certain financial terms, please feel free to drop me an email at admin@awinsomelife.org and I will share with you more. In fact, in time to come, I would be blogging about how individuals should approach investments and financial planning.

Ok, I’m getting out of context here so back to the topic, the career booths are mainly made up of the 4 big insurance companies in Singapore and the rest of the career booths are made up of other companies like Marriott Hotel Singapore, PICO, Burger King, Wildlife Reserves Singapore and etc. While I shan’t comment on the positions that are available, I would have to say that the choices available are quite limited. So, I personally felt that this career fair didn’t have much to offer and wasn’t really that interesting. In fact, as education booths seem to overpower the career booths, it kinda imply that companies are cutting back on hiring and people ought to go get themselves educated and trained to further their career opportunities.

Also do note that when attending a career fair, you are not the only one vying for a particular position. So, just because you deposit your resume and managed to strike a conversation with the recruiters doesn’t guarantee that you will be granted an interview. In fact, when you deposit your resume with potential employers, there are three things that might happen:

1). Your resume fits the criteria and the employer grants you an interview
2). Your resume does not fit the criteria and is discarded/incinerated/shredded
3). Your resume does not fit the criteria but is kept for marketing purposes [meaning to say, your particulars/personal information is given to the companies’ marketing department to market their products to you. This is one thing you must note so don’t be surprised when you start receiving unsolicited phone calls from telemarketers asking you to buy products such as insurance]

Overall, while this particular career fair didn’t appealed to us, I wouldn’t say that this career fair was a complete waste of time as Baby and I were able to takeaway with us two big volumes of The Green Book [similar to the now declining YellowPages] which I believe would be extremely useful for our business. There are two more upcoming career fairs to watch out for and I believe those two should be more substantial as we see an increasing trend in local SMEs and MNCs recruiting  for employees via online job portals.

Stay tuned for more updates from us!

God bless!

Author

Melvin is an Entrepreneur, Life Coach, and Chinese Metaphysics Practitioner. He holds an EMBA and he is a passionate and engaging teacher, known for his unique combination of science, research, and spirituality.

2 Comments

  1. […] March 2012, we actually put up an article about the Career Fair 2012 that was organised by the Singapore Professional Centre and the IIR Exhibitions Private Limited and […]

  2. […] March 2012, we actually put up an article about the Career Fair 2012 that was organised by the Singapore Professional Centre and the IIR Exhibitions Private Limited and […]

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