As I mentioned in an earlier post, March marks the beginning of the career fair season, so I wanted to take the opportunity to highlight 3 of the major ones that are free and open to the general public.

CAREER 2011 (March 3-6)
www.careerseries.com.sg

Career 2011 is the largest training, education and recruiting fair in Singapore, with over 250 exhibitors and special pavilions featuring the up-and-coming Aerospace Industry, Education in Malaysia, and 21st Century Skills.

There is a long list of free seminars and talks throughout all 4 days, including a few from yours truly. I’ll be at the fair on Sat & Sun talking about “How to Find the Hidden Backdoors in Your Job Search” and “What Interviewers are Really Thinking and Looking For”

You can visit everything on the 3rd and 6th floor of the Suntec Convention Centre

JobsDB.com Career Expo 2011 (March 25-27)
www.careerexpo.sg.jobsdb.com

Similar to Career 2011, admission is free (although you need to register). Suntec Convention Halls 402 & 403

JobsCentral Career Fair & Learning Fair 2011 (August 13-14)
www.jobscentral.com.sg/careerfair

This yearly job fair event is held in partnership with the 5 polytechnics in Singapore, and aims to draw 55,000 job hunters with the vast majority of them having at least diplomas and degrees. Again, at Suntec Convention Centre.

This week’s (Sept 14) cover story of BusinessWeek magazine highlights their results of the 2009 edition of “the Best Places to Launch a Career”…and $10 says you won’t be able to guess who it is. I’ll give you a hint. I know this company better than ANY other one in the world.

First, a caveat. This article is heavily biased towards the U.S. job market, and while most of the companies on the list are MNCs (multi-national corporations), some of the specifics that are mentioned in the article apply only to certain U.S. office locations, and not necessary to what is happening in all countries of the same company. Secondly, the article’s perspective is from the eyes of an undergraduate student, not necessairly MBAs or other more seasoned professionals, although I believe many of the arguments made in the article could be applied to Master’s students as well.

Now, to add a little credibility to the article, here’s a quick excerpt of how they compiled the rankings (in their words):

To compile this ranking, BusinessWeek polled 60 college career services directors across the country; collected data from a survey of 60,000 U.S. undergrads by Universum USA, a Philadelphia research company; and required employers to submit statistics on everything from pay and benefits to training programs and retention.

60,000 may not seem like a lot, but I wouldn’t say that’s an extremely small sample size of say just a 1,000 people. So who’s at the top? Well, the top 4 companies are all from the same industry and are often collectively known as the “Big 4″. Yep, you know who I’m talking about now, right? Ernst & Young (E&Y), Deloitte, PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC) and KPMG. And the winner for
2009…where I spent almost all of my professional life at…Deloitte.

With decent pay, variety and generally a strong culture of growing and grooming fresh graduates into fairly seasoned business professionals, I can see why the Big 4 dominate the list. Some of the training programs offered are also a big attractive point to students, and the fairly large and collegial group of other young professionals at these firms definitely helps.

Now, I know many of you are probably shaking your head right now and are extremely skeptical, but remember the title of the article. It’s the best place to LAUNCH a career, not necessary the best place to work for the rest of your life. The days of a fresh grad joining the Big 4 as an analyst and staying their entire career until they reach Partner/Principal are virtually over. But whether you’re in the Accounting side or the Advisory / Consulting side, working in the Big 4 definitely opens your eyes up to a wide variety of industries; you learn like you’ve never learnt before, mainly because of the situations you’re put into (and perhaps the lack of expertise on your team), and you definitely develop your soft skills, as you’re mostly always in front of clients.

Of course, even at Deloitte, there are some not so good things, and many things that could be improved. Pay yes is okay…but some may say that’s over-stating things. Compared to the actual hours you have to work at times, the pay probably doesn’t look so hot, but from a macro perspective, as a new fresh graduate, 21 – 23yrs old, you’re not starving, that’s for sure. If you want to know more specifics about Deloitte or the Big 4, feel free to leave a comment below. There are also some good sources of insider information from sites such as the Vault. You can learn quite a bit from following the company-specific forums where insiders post, but take all comments with a grain of salt. The insiders contributing on the forums are generally those that are most disgruntled

The other point to highlight from the article is around the amount of responsibility young new graduates will be getting in their jobs today. With graduate hiring down significantly at most companies, and many places have trimmed down their workforce, those graduates lucky enough to have jobs will find that they will have to take on multiple responsibilities at one time and fill the shoes of those that are no longer with the company. So, the glass may be half empty to you, but to some, it’s definitely half full.

You should be able to find this specific issue of BusinessWeek magazine on store shelves now. (Always wanted to say that)

Here’s a link to the online story.

Ensuring that MBA candidates, who’s English is not their native language, can handle the rigours of the classroom and academics is a big concern for the Admissions Committees (AdComs), especially given the huge increase in applications from both India and China. In addition, AdComs are always trying to ensure that the applications, essays & test scores all come from the same person, the candidate. That’s why virtually every top business school today insists on a face-to-face interview, as part of the admissions process.

The new English test, known as the Pearson Test of English Academic (PTE Academic), seems to be another way to help filter and legitimize the candidate pool. Pearson is one of the worldwide leaders in technology and assessment for education. They have been working since 2006 with the Graduate Management Admission Council (GMAC), who runs the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT), on developing this new test that will debut on October 26, 2009 for non-native English speakers.

Part of this computer-based test involves providing a 30-second voice sample / recording for schools to assess your English proficiency. While I’m not sure how much you can tell in 30 seconds, the new PTE Academic seems to be gaining momentum and according to the official press release, schools already signed-up to accept these new test scores include London Business School, University of British Columbia, Queen’s University Belfast, University of Edinburgh, HEC Paris and Yale University.

John Elliott, vice president and dean of Zicklin School of Business, Baruch College, City University of New York, says enabling admissions committees to listen to a recorded speech sample will help accurately identify whether an applicant truly is proficient in English. “This element is critical in making difficult admission decisions,” he says.

“We also like its innovative design and other capabilities — and we know that it will be administered with the same high standards of security that characterize the Graduate Management Admission Test (GMAT) — ensuring us that the test taker and the applicant for admission are the same person.”

During the launch period, the test will be available in a minimum of 20 territories including China, Taiwan, Australia, the United States, the United Kingdom, South Korea, India and Canada in a price of range of $150 to $210 USD. No word yet on what this means for established tests such as the TOEFL and IELTS.

For those of you based in Singapore, and studying at Oxford, Cambridge, Imperial College or LSE, your Career Centres have put together what looks to be a can’t miss event.

Singapore Careers Fair
Monday, September 7, 2009
2:30pm – 4:30pm
Suntec City, Singapore

You must register in advance, and submit a resume that will be sent to all employers ahead of time. Unfortunately, it looks as though this event is restricted to those currently studying in the UK.

More details can be found here.

NOTE: The deadline to register is Friday, August 14th, 5:00pm

Companies attending include:

• Accenture, Bain & Company, Barclays Capital, Bloomberg,
• Cadbury Schweppes, Citi, Contact Singapore, Credit Suisse,
• DBS Bank Ltd, Health Promotion Board, Gallup Organization,
• HSBC, Infineon Technologies, Lee & Lee,
• L’Oreal, Ministry of Education,
• Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Monetary Authority of Singapore,
• Norton Rose, OCBC Bank, Oliver Wyman, Pratt & Whitney,
• Roll Royce, Schlumberger, Shell, Standard Chartered Bank, Unilever

In a few weeks, JobsCentral is hosting one of the larger career fairs this year, with over 50,000 people expected to attend. The focus looks to be not only on jobs but also learning, with a host of educational providers sitting up booths. While not many MNCs (multinational corporations) are on the exhibitor list, there are definitely some large local companies, including almost all the different government ministries.

Some of the companies that will be attending include:

• Changi Airport Group
• Great Eastern Life
• Manulife
• Marriott
• Representatives from all areas of the government

Click here for the full list of participants.

The list of seminars and guest speakers appears to be quite strong. I’ve posted the schedule below. You can find the a short summary and biography of each speaker here.

Seminar Schedule

22 August 2009
1:00PM – 2:00PM Be Your Own Boss
2:30PM – 3:30PM Children are our Future
4:00PM – 5:00PM Personal Branding for Corporate Success
5:30PM – 6:30PM ERP and SAP Consulting

23 August 2009
11:30AM – 12:30PM Schmooze Your Way To Career Success
1:00PM – 2:00PM Be Masterful, Start Right and Perform like a STAR
2:30PM – 3:30PM Proactive Career Management & Job Search Skills
4:00PM – 5:00PM How to Face Career Challenges

Find out more details and register for the event here: http://www.jobscentral.com.sg/careerfair

JobsCentral Career & Learning Fair 2009
August 23 & 24
Hall 404, Suntec City