Graduate Studies Blog
Article written by Venkatsubrmaniam , Nanyang Fellows MBA
Nanyang Business School conducted its annual NBS Career Day on 24th Jan 2017. Typically, it was a half day event, scheduled between 12:30pm to 4:30pm. This is a joint event for both the NBS Undergraduate and NBS Graduate students and was held at the Nanyang Auditorium.
This event was split into 2 phases.
Phase 1, between 12:30pm and 2:30pm, was primarily focused on the Undergraduate (UG) students. For the UG students, the event was organized like a job fair layout, where NBS students can walk to each stall and chat with prospective employers. My apologies, I don’t recall the exact number of companies that participated in this event and if I must take an educated guess, I would say, roughly 40+ employers participated in this fair for UG students.
Phase 2, between 2:30pm and 4:30pm, was targeted at the NBS graduate (MBA, Fellows MBA, etc.) students. This slot was exclusively for NBS graduate students, where a tea session was conducted to allow the students to meet up with prospective employers. A total of 30 corporates participated in this event including BIG names like Apple, Adidas, Axa Insurance, Changi, EY, PWC, Grab, Kraft Heinz, Lego, Microsoft, Nomura, SAP, IRC, Dell, DHL Consulting, Maersk Consulting and many more…
Typically for Graduate Students, the career office maintains a resume book, where the profiles of all the students, both present and past, who are seeking jobs included and shared to the participating companies, at-least a week prior to the actual event. Basis this resume book, the corporates perform the initial screening and invite some students for a job discussion. Alternatively, students may also check for current openings, from the list of registered companies and reach out to the recruiters on career day, to initiate first level discussion.
For my fellow students back home in India, placements are a different ball game in the international B-schools, unlike in India, where placements are almost guaranteed. In short, placements outside India could be directly attributed to the student’s networking ability.
Personally speaking, the biggest take away from this career day event, was to network with recruitment team from desired companies. Often, while applying for roles in the career page of MNCs, the built-in algorithm filters out most of CVs (this is done basis specific keywords and other logics) and the candidate receives an automated reject email, even without the HR viewing the CVs. This event, enables the candidate to bypass this algorithm and connect with the recruiting HRs, thereby increasing the chances of being called for the interview.
Overall, NBS Career day was a very well planned and executed event by the NBS GSCDO office. Three cheers to the NBS GSCDO office for putting their best foot forward, in providing their candidates with an ideal platform to connect with the corporate giants.
