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How’s a career guide with industry leaders made possible
ABROADER October 22, 2022 7 minute read
Last week, our proudly organized event with Swinburne University – “Career connections – Your career in South-East Asia” has successfully taken place hybridity in Study Melbourne Hub Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam, and at the same time on Zoom with smooth interactive. What insightful things has happened, check it out on this blog!
About the event
Career Connections – Your Career in South-East Asia is an event proudly organized by ABROADER and Swinburne University of Technology in Australia and Vietnam for Swinburne students, alumni, and public guests. Coming to this event, you could hear from our human resources experts and industry representatives as they shared their start-up experiences, job opportunities, and insights into building their careers and networks in South-East Asia. The event also comprised Australia scholarship opportunities for graduates and a Q&A panel with Swinburne alumni.
The organizer
This time, it’s our great honor to first time become the co-organizer, with Swinburne University and the efficient support from Study Melbourne Hub, Ho Chi Minh City. Thanks to their professional and effective collaboration, we have achieved our goal in this event.
The guest speakers
The event welcomed many experts in the field of career development, start-up, scholarships, and Swinburne alumni to attend as guest speakers. They brought up their inspirational stories in their journey to find the right career path, intending to help students gain a clearer view of job opportunities after graduation, and give answers about whether to choose Big Corp or Start-ups… And let’s see who our special guests are!
Ms. Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong Founder and Lead Consultant of OCD Management Consulting Company – Top 1 Consulting Company in Vietnam Co-founder of OOC Technology Solutions Company Vice President of Human Resources Association Board Member of Asia Pacific Federation of Human Resources Management.
Mr. Wesley Thorne Head of University Partnerships for GradConnection 20-year experience in career services at universities across the United States.
Acknowledging the fact that students these days find it hard and confusing to decide on their future career path, this event targeted enthusiastic and passionate undergraduates and graduates from Swinburne University and other universities. Coming through two sessions, the audience could gain insightful and incisive tips and sharing. Besides, participants joining this event also had the chance to expand their network with peers and seniors in their desired fields while enjoying delicate tea breaks. From then, leverage their career connections for a better path later.
So what to learn from the event? Let’s find out!
From how to “get hired smartly in Vietnam and Southeast Asia” to “create your own opportunities in academics and entrepreneurship”. Opportunities are on your hands, just hold them and try your best!
Session 1
In the first session on how to get hired strategically, Mr. Wesley Thorne, Ms. Nguyen Thi Nam Phuong, and Ms. Anna Champion discussed the key point to get a job – to know yourself first before knowing the jobs and companies outside. So how can we get to know ourselves? It’s to answer these three questions: what are your dream, your strength, and your opportunity are. You can try taking some tests like MBTI, DISC, IQ, and EQ to know more about your inner.
After understanding yourself, it’s time to figure out what aspects and characteristics an employer is looking for. According to the guest speakers’ sharing, they are your ability, adaptability, EQ, AQ, IQ, life-long learning skills, and flexibility. What’s more, they also need your communication skills and cross-cultural experience. By obtaining these things, you will be an outstanding applicant in the career world. Also, in this session, we received some interesting questions from the undergraduates, they are worried about their job-seeking journey, and about the mistakes, they might make. Sympathized with these anxieties, our guest speakers showed them that: “Do not worry too much at the first period time seeking for your career and widen your career connections!” Why? Because employers look for seeing what you are in the future, not in the past. Besides, deeply researching the thing you can do for the company, and the things connecting you and them.
Session 2
Moving to Session 2, we met Mr. Le Yen Thanh, Mr. Truong Doan, and Mr. Tennyson Chia. We stood a chance to listen to the admirable start-up journey from an undergraduate to the CEO of Phenikka Mass of Mr. Thanh, also the way Mr. Truong Doan and Mr. Tennyson started their career. One piece of advice from them is that: there are a lot of things to learn, especially in the 4.0 generation, therefore, you need to know what exactly you should learn to support your career. Receiving the question “Should I change my major that I do not like that much?”, our guest speakers shared that we are living in an ecosystem of jobs, where we learn something but we totally can apply for other things we like. Nothing is useless. And so does open up your career connections, because they will support you a lot during the startup hard time.
How did we do it?
It’s our first time organizing a professional network and sharing event like this. Also, it was conducted both offline at Study Melbourne Hub, Ho Chi Minh City, and online on Zoom, which was quite struggling to handle at first. But finally, we did it seamlessly and interactively. And here are how we did it.
Technology
Due to the hybrid aspect, both participants offline and online can follow the event and give questions to the guest speakers. To the audience who joined in person at the venue, they can watch directly and clearly what the speakers shared on the screen. For online participants, we prepared the modern camera system, micro, and camera crew focusing on the guest speakers simultaneously and projecting it on the Zoom screen to ensure the most realistic and smooth experience.
The support
Without assistance from Swinburne University and Study Melbourne Hub, we would not have made it a memorable day. From the very first day of planning to the preparation process and effective feedback, we step by step settled and finalized a presentable event like what you are seeing. Although we did run into many technical problems throughout the event such as Mic problems, the maneuver from our MC Linh helped the event to keep going with her professional skills and knowledge of the speakers’ field of work with insight-gaining questions and interactive questions between online and in-person speakers along with questions from attended student participants.
What did we learn and you can prior?
The result
With 50 participants (registration limited), the event lasted 1 hour more than expected. But compensating for it, all had received answers for the confusion of career path, useful tips for both studying and working, and inspirations to dream and do. And we believe that everyone joining this event can gain at least one thing memorable for them, from sharing and spreading to others. As guest speaker Truong Doan shared on his page, he was grateful for being given an opportunity to share his experiences with graduates. That is the mission we always aim at: Pay it forward!
The lesson
This event was not just about our team having an opportunity to be more professional and creative in organizing such an event but also fulfill our core values, which is to take the local community as a motivation to drive our work, to put education the first priority and to shape our own definition of International – connect and expand the global network just in Vietnam.
Future events and collaborations
Driving similar missions and values, we believe that, in the future, ABROADER and Swinburne University can together create more events and workshops for undergraduates and graduates, with a view to supporting them in their career connections, especially with our internship programs.
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