PDW: Reflections

(↓) "Financial Literacy for Fresh Graduate" by ALLIANZ
(↓) "Career Readiness & Employability Success" by MBSB BANK
(↓) "Succeeding in a Multi-Role Creative Media Industry: ..." by WSVS STUDIO
(↓) "Best Practices in LinkedIn & Professional Online Etiquette" by PwC
(↓) "Challenges, Empowering Change & Future of Circular Fashion" by LIFELINE CLOTHING
(↓) "Acing Your Interview at Assessment Centers: ..." by GSK

"Financial Literacy for Fresh Graduate" by ALLIANZ

The first talk was a finance talk by insurance brokers, what a way to kick things off. With my full scepticism on deck, I still tried to go into it as open-minded as possible, & it turned out to be actually a very insightful, yet fundamental talk. We learnt about things like the 50/30/20 rule, disposable income, EPF/insurance, investment risks, & liquidity (my favourite subject, eat my a** Elon).

The topic I took away the most was the interesting way they framed insurance-based investments versus others, as them having the unique characteristic of "being there for you when you're down", a.k.a. having a waiver for when you come down with critical illness of disability that it will pay for your misfortune.

I mean, hell yeah, overall we would all be in a much tighter spot if this info didn't exist to help us play ball in the vast landscape of modern finance, especially being a freshie at the bottom of the ladder. It may not be the most in depth talk, missing out on advice for more recent investment developments like REITs & even crypto, but depth is probably a giant non-goal for this breadth-first, foundational info dump.

Overall, did I have fun? Mildly.
Would I listen to something like this again? Most probably.

"Career Readiness & Employability Success" by MBSB BANK

Bankers speaking banker things. We let them cook & they delivered, as it felt like the manifesto of a corporate employee stuck in their corporate paradise for the last 30 years. Nevertheless, it peeled back things like how companies work in pyramid hierarchies, core factors/accelerators/opportunities, how to be a decent human being & not be outcasted by all your co-workers & superiors, work-life balance, "professional arguing", & my favourite of all, mirroring the body language of interviewers to make them feel like you're in-touch with what they're saying.

The topic I found the most interesting was actually of the soft-skills side of things. Basically, how to be as unoffensive as possible in a hostile work environment. These included basic things, like getting to know the culture, not throwing unnecessary shade, under-promising & over-delivering, etc. On the flipside, it also included things such as when caught in a conflict professionally, don't give solutions, instead seek to understand & share facts that may help other parties come to a conclusion themselves. What a game.

From everything said & said again, it really was a tightly packed booster for anyone looking to board the elevator parallel to the corporate ladder. Is it for me? Not really, but I do feel like I took away good information that will help me through my, soon-to-started, contributions to the general workforce.

Overall, did I have fun? Slightly.
Would I listen to something like this again? Most probably.

"Succeeding in a Multi-Role Creative Media Industry: ..." by WSVS STUDIO

Hm... a talk about the creative media industry... I wonder who that's for? Mystery aside, the talk itself was great, done in a much more laidback fashion that made absorption much easier. This is proven by the fact that I have the most notes on this talk & that I did actual research on things said like spec ads, Besides that the talk also goes over things like a producer's role, dealing with clients (💀), the mirroring of +/-ve experiences on campus beyond campus, the "jack of all trades and master of one" approach, & the need to share work orthogonal to personal opinion of it, whilst not learning/creating just to share work.

That last one struck a chord, specifically A major (project). I've definitely found myself huddled deep in that hole just burning out, & hearing it hashed out as a terse punch to the noggin, is refreshing. It's not like the other advice were much farther in semitones either, as the world just keeps spinning the same & experiences differ only in nuance.

All that said, it felt like a retiring superior sitting the intern down & wasting 1 out of their 14 days notice just to reminisce — in the best way possible. I can't believe I have to carry groupmates for the rest of my professional career, but at least I'll be ready when that happens.

Overall, did I have fun? Above average.
Would I listen to something like this again? Yes.

"Best Practices in LinkedIn & Professional Online Etiquette" by PwC

RAHHHHH LINKEDIN!!!! The excitement is 💦FLOWING💦 through my veins!!111! As a person who dislikes posting on social media, dislikes regularly updating anything, & dislikes LinkedIn, I can't believe I have to use LinkedIn. Unfortunate circumstances aside, at least this talk will prepare me for doom. It spoke about how recruiters get paid to stalk recruitees online, the separation of professional content, keeping profile headlines terse, point-form & summarised reflective experience postings (🪬), no "?"-invoking profile pics, no asking of easy/googleable questions to companies, double check correspondences on email/etc., & POsTuRe.

It was, in depth, covering basically every avenue you could cover on "acting appropriately" online. I feel like the only actionable thing right now is to Google myself eventually, especially if I want to push off LinkedIn as far into the future as possible. Will I do that any time soon either? Probably not.

At the end of the day, snarky-ness aside, the talk was quite insightful, just un-meshing with me. Am I going to probably use a lot of what was taught here in the near future? Most probably. Am I going to like it then? Most probably not, & that's okay. Work is work & this was the best way that this topic could've been delivered. I'm grateful that I had the opportunity to attend & listen in, but burn & perish, LinkedIn.

Overall, did I have fun? Ehh.
Would I listen to something like this again? ...I'll think about it.

"Challenges, Empowering Change & Future of Circular Fashion" by LIFELINE CLOTHING

If you were to guess the contents of the talk based on the title, there were two ways you could go, emphasis on Fashion, or emphasis on Circular. *Dice sounds*... 1. This talk was about Circular. Now, this talk wasn't bad or anything, far from it, the speaker was entertaining & chatty, & content was full. It just, wasn't what I, & a few of my friends, were hoping for it to be. Nonetheless, it spoke about designing clothes to last through quality materials, 5Rs (?? since when did they gain 2Rs), using waste fabric as soot in cement, fashion mingling as a top dog in polluter rankings, fast fashion as a response to consumer demand, & eroding traditional clothing making techniques.

Overall, I get it, this topic is very much pressing in current times & a lot of the things said, need to be said. Fast fashion needs to go out of fad as fast as possible, & no, it's not only because I can never keep up. It's a very interesting problem, with an equally interesting process of coming up with a solution for it — how does one reduce consumer demand whilst retaining consumers' ability for self expression & producers' profit-driven interests? Could Zuck even be right all along???

OK that's enough metaverse speculation for one day. Accounting for everything brought up, I can't complain. I was unexpectedly very captivated by the talk's topic & there's nothing more beyond that I could ask for. This is the only company's talk that I came out rooting for them wholeheartedly. Burn them clothes & build them buildings, bestie!

Overall, did I have fun? Mayhap.
Would I listen to something like this again? Probably not.

"Acing Your Interview at Assessment Centers: ..." by GSK

Being interviewed is an unavoidable part of life. They're just so interested about you!! So clingy, so caring!! Assessment centres on the other hand, are very much weird way of coming at it. They are a battle-tested technique for recruiting, created in WW2, clearly at the peak of recruitment-drives around the world. It very much is a conglomerate's take on the manpower problem, & it goes beyond producing penicillin. I don't know, I had never heard of assessment centres up until this talk, & apparently PwC from before uses it too? Fortunately, the talk mostly did just focus on the interviewing process in general, & that condenses into generalisable information that we can readily use anywhere. That includes, scenario/behaviour/strength-based assessment types for interviewers to gauge interviewees, preparation/research steps before the interview, personal branding in fashion, communicating pausing during interviews to structure thoughts, be genuine, focus on non-academic experiences, & finally, "CV MUST BE EASY TO READ, THE FORMAT, LEGIBLE/EASY ON THE EYES" (the speaker was VERY insistent on this; the speaker was probably a recruiter).

A lot of information, & a little more insight added on top of that. Whilst the contents of this talk were probably the most commodity out of the rest, it's still nice coming from a perspective of a (probably) recruiter, & it really shows what annoyances & pain-points that turn them off a potential candidate. My main takeaway is to take my sweet time during my interviews, telling the recruiter to "give me 15s to think", & then stare at the view before speaking. It also probably means I'm using Microsoft Word for my CV from now on.

In conclusion, it was definitely a talk one puckers down for. Tonnes of advice & strategies to internalise, things that would probably benefit from a few practice interviews at companies you aren't that interested in, before moving forward to one you really wanna be at. What's the worst that could happen? You get hired? Just kidding, the economy.

Overall, did I have fun? Eh.
Would I listen to something like this again? Maybe right before I interview for Vercel or something.

🔎

PDW