At the entrance, we were shoved with a free goodie bag, which was filled mostly with useless brochures and a thick women's fashion magazine which weighed a tonne. After some deliberation on whether or not give it to my fashion-conscious flat mates, I got rid of the magazine and the bag was significant lighter with more space to collect many more (mostly) useless brochures and leaflets handed out by various companies. I had to sort my bag three times to keep only what was useful. I was rather disturbed by the wastage of paper that was going on there. In addition to a handful of useful marketing material, there were so much of un-targeted distribution going on which littered the floors and clogged trash bins with unnecessary paper.
So many trees, animals and habitats elsewhere on the Earth die for NOTHING
Fairs are also a great place to get free diaries, organisers, post-its, fancy pens and drinks! When I first came to Singapore and participated in student fairs, I went beserk with excitement seeing the fancy freebies and shamelessly collected more than I was probably entitled to or needed. As time went on, this 'third world freeloader' mentality wore off and now I only take what I need, otherwise later on, I have to worry about finding rightful places and owners for all the excess ones I collect... and it's very uncool to go on a greedy rampage like that!
There were many booths representing companies in multiple industries, recruitment consultancies, educational institutions and other advertisers. I spoke to several people at these booths and handed out copies of my resume to others. It seemed to me that the number of participants in the fair vastly outnumbered the number of jobs advertised by the participating companies. I was done in about an hour, but had to stick around for another hour for the free seminar that I signed up for. Several weeks before the seminar, we were given a complimentary offer to complete a short questionnaire (mostly on workplace-related questions) and told that a free personalised report would be provided at the job fair. So this one, I had to see.
It's rarely that I have the guts to ask people who know me closely to tell me what they think of me. I fear it might be easily misunderstood as me being needy or fishing for compliments when what I actually need is an objective opinion from an outsider's perspective so I can know what facts I am missing that needs fixing. For example, only on the last day of my previous job (after two years of working there) did I finally ask my boss what he thought of my work and I found the feedback very useful. Also, most of the feedback we picked up or received while growing up were probably incomplete, biased and most certainly outdated now. And that's why I have grown a liking to psychometric tests which are based on science, research and statistics, to help decrypt Shu. As a small side effect, I have also grown a little more tolerant of other's differences.
The seminar was on Emergenetics - another type of (relatively new) commercial profiling system, similar to Myers Briggs or DISC assessments. These are usually used by HR professionals to get insights into employee thinking and behavioural preferences to improve work place dynamics. However, it is also helpful to understand how individuals think and act in other personal life situations as we use pretty much the same preferences. Results were presented on a simple one-paged report with colourful charts and on scales with percentiles, rather than pinning an individual with a final label. The next few pages consisted of a written explanation of the results. Apart from its simplicity, I thought it gave a better picture (than other assessments I have tried) combining both thinking and behavioural patterns.
Basically, they say that we are what we are as a result of both genetics and life experiences. Hard to disagree with that. Thinking patterns, statistically speaking, are of four types - analytical, structural, social and conceptual. People can have a either one type or a combination of two, three or even all four types decided by percentage scores. Similarly, behavioural patterns were judged on three separate scales - assertiveness, expressiveness and flexibility.
I could not find an image with better resolution, however, examples can be viewed here
Add all these variables with varying IQ levels, varying personal belief systems, a dash of madness (i.e. abnormal mental complexes) and viola! we have 7 billion unique individuals gracing the planet.
I also liked the fact that they stressed that there is nothing wrong or right about what we are. If life experiences partly influence what we are, then it can be projected that our profiles will continue to change slightly in the years to come. What we make of what we are is entirely up to us. The way I see it, knowing all this helps becoming more self-aware, having better relationships with others, doing things in better ways by overcoming the 'blind spots' and making the most of our situations. The downsides to profiling might be obsessing over results, mistaking its use only as a tool and not a destiny report, having limiting beliefs of oneself and one's abilities or even running after more seminars to find self-conviction (that last one, I was kidding).
The job fair wasn't all a waste of my time. I came out of the seminar somewhat feeling like I got a new layer of understanding about myself, why I function the way I do and how it applies in the bigger picture.
On a positive note, all the email chasers I sent last week to follow up on pending interview outcomes are slowly returning with responses, one at a time. Soon I am to have a swim test and a 2-hour written English test from two different interviews. And then there was finally some closure on another. Come on Shu, let's try to get employed soon.
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