P&G versus Citibank Career Talk, and then some.

I've only been to two career talks held on campus: the first one was by Citibank, and the next by P&G, which I wouldn't dare to miss. Actually the first one was supposed to be by DBS bank, but they turned me away because I wasn't dressed appropriately. That gave me an excuse to go to the mall on a weekday and splurge on appropriate clothes for such events.

The one by Citibank has turned me off and made me think I am unsuitable to be in the corporate world. It's like everything is stiff, you always have to put your best foot forward, and you'd always have to plaster a plastic smile on your face whenever you network with other people, which is an integral part of your career. At least that's what was impressed on my mind after attending their talk. I appreciate the effort of their bigwigs to come down and talk to us students who are eager to learn what's out there beyond the four corners of our school, but then...they were super boring, can. We are students, not your stockholders or CEO's of your client companies.They spoke about how great their company is and gave us charts after charts, figures after figures, dollar signs after dollar signs of their net revenues and anything else that would serve as evidence of their 'greatness'. At first I was, WOW...then eventually my reaction turned to ZZZ.

I went away feeling that this whole banking career thing is so not for me, thankyouverymuch. And it's just ironic because Citibank was just recently ranked as employer of choice by graduates in Singapore. Well, to each his own.

But for P&G, it's different. Their people came in wearing nice corporate clothes and all, but they were all very casual in the way they gave their presentation- and they were very engaging. I found myself on the edge of my seat, hanging on to every word of whoever's speaking, yearning to learn more about this great company. They all made it seem like it's such a nice, fun company to work for, without compromising the fact that they are all smart people who could deliver. They are not intimidating, and they do not alienate newbies.

I've been to the P&G Roundtable discussion last year, and I've had similar reviews even back then. Every one of those who spoke were full of energy (as opposed to the Citibank representatives who seemed bored even of themselves), and everything they said made sense.

Oh by the way, one of P&G's representatives tonight was a Filipino and I'm kind of proud of him because when he spoke, everyone in the lecture theatre gave him his/her utmost attention. He exuded this certain charm, that even if he's already a bigwig in the company, he doesn't make a fuss out of it and he spoke to us like we're his buddies. Of course, I approached him after their presentation and I introduced myself, and I even asked him if he knew my aunt who also works for P&G. Then he said 'Dina? I HIRED HER'. Hah! Jackpot!!!It was so nice of him to give me his email address and told me to email him if I have any questions, and he'd help me clarify my doubts

Maybe I can't really directly compare a bank with a company that deals with fast-moving consumer products such as P&G because each deals with different things. And maybe it's unfair to judge a company based on their campus recruitment talk representatives. But in the viewpoint of a penultimate year student looking for my options of what's next after school, the fun/dynamic/casual workplace factor is a big part of my decision-making process, because I am still young and young people usually gravitate towards these things. When almost all the speakers are boring, it makes me think 'So these are the people I'm gonna work with at the office...heh no thanks.' And it makes you wonder why it seems that the dementors from Azkaban in the Harry Potter series came and sucked the life and happiness away from these fellows.

Back to P&G. It has been my dream company even in highschool. I dug up archives (Daydreaming, P&G part deux) from my old blog to remind me why, as well as this post of why I thought I'm not cut-out to be a civil engineer .

Hmm, but recently I have come to appreciate what I've been doing for my FYP (related to environmental engineering-I'll blog about it some other time), and I was thinking maybe I finally found my niche in this world. BUT after attending the P&G talk, all those feelings of excitement and whatnot from the mere utterance of the name P&G came rushing back to me.

God, where do I go from here???