Know your why when attending career talk…

Yuri Hung
Yuri Hung
Aug 31, 2018 · 2 min read

I’ve always been interested in how people, especially students, secure their job offers.

As the new academic year is going to start again, the cycle repeats for penultimate or final year students — attending recruitment talks, interviews, again and again, endlessly.

I’m going to cut off the bs about career talk, or let me write it structurally later… but long story short, here are my 2 cents…

A career talk is only useful if

  1. You know the company is spotting talent actively. This is different from you attending a career talk and leaving a good impression. The latter still relies on the performance and so-called assessment taken during the formal procedures. Yet, the former puts emphasis on eyeing and pursuing actively from the company’s side on the right talent.
  2. The people you meet in the talk are the people you will have interview with later. This is tricky, as very often times you wouldn’t know who you’d be meeting in case you get shortlisted, though you might have information from previous alumni to share (as a standard, some companies you must meet 1–2 of their key decision makers in that particular country) Following on point 1, this time, it is students taking the initiative.

Otherwise, trust me, it is just a branded show of leaving a good impression. And indeed, people come and go, just as busy as city life like in advanced economies.

In particular I remember one episode where a bank is conducting a recruitment talk. An Alumnus of my uni, back then working as an analyst,

When during the Q&A, some chit-chat on what is her favorite movie (I have absolutely no idea who raised this question and why)… she said:

“The Internship (2013), because…”

And then as you observed carefully, she had pretty much no idea what she’s saying. Rather, it was the first timer experience, filled with the emotion of excitement and pride, that pushes one’s ego to the end of the world.

As the classical saying goes, “companies don’t buy, individuals buy”. At the end of the day, sometimes it is not really what you know that make you to be a senior manager within a company, but rather who you know (and how you deal with the interplay well).

Remember, Career Talk is a show.

Yuri Hung

Written by

Yuri Hung

A Hongkonger, Founder of The Lean Academy. Curious about the world in general. TED speaker for 2 times. I like Maths, Chinese Calligraphy and tea/coffee.

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