Two-day event at Kowloon Shangri-La provides advice and opportunities to get ahead
Students and recent graduates sharply dressed in business attire and eager to boost their career prospects flocked to the Classified Post Career Forum at Kowloon Shangri-La in Tsim Sha Tsui on March 6 and 7.
The event, which for the first time was spread over two days instead of the usual one, attracted jobseekers from a wide variety of personal and academic backgrounds.
Exhibiting organisations covered a broad spectrum of industries, ranging from accounting, insurance and finance to public utilities, the civil service, healthcare, retail, social media and surveying.
Many exhibitors were represented by their current management trainees and younger employees, giving students a better flavour of the corporate culture of their potential future employers.
The Shadow a CEO Programme was again a major attraction. Selected forum participants who registered for the programme had their first interview on one of the two days, hopeful of being picked for this horizon-broadening experience.
Selected students will have the rare opportunity to spend three days shadowing a chief executive, observing at close range the day-to-day decision-making of a leader and senior manager.
For this iteration of the programme, the three executives are Lau Ka Shi, managing director and CEO of BCT Financial and Bank Consortium Trust; Song Hoi See, founder and CEO of Plaza Premium Lounge Management; and Vincent Ho, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Surveyors and managing director of Freevision.
Lau and Song also gave presentations as part of the forum's series of topical seminars. During the wide range of seminars spread across the two days, career options were discussed with insight on useful skills for young professionals keen on making their mark early.
The competitive world of start-ups was also covered by 9GAG founder and CEO Ray Chan, who advised on succeeding in the social media industry, while emphasising the importance of having fun when pursuing career goals.
The forum was also on hand to help with that single step that can launch a successful career journey of a thousand miles - the job interview. Participants were able to sign up for sessions with a CV doctor, who gave vital feedback about how a human resources professional would read a CV. A topical seminar from June Tam of recruitment firm Robert Walters also lifted the lid on how to ace early-career job interviews.
To round things off, forum participants who collected five stamps - each one given after speaking to a different company exhibitor - were able to apply for the chance to join company tours to Microsoft or K11 Concepts, involving behind-the-scenes insight into professional life at the two companies.
