It was a day of brilliant exchange of experience, views and insights for the participants of the first session of the Plugged Series, Challenge.
Despite examination period, undergraduates from as far as Universiti Tenaga Nasional (Uniten) in Bangi braved the heavy traffic to be present for the session in Starbucks Jaya One, Petaling Jaya. Apart of listening to the opinions of the guests, these 20 participants were also voicing out their concerns on some of the challenges they faced in building their skills as per the expectations of the prospect employers while being in unicollege. During the discussion, many solutions addressing the concerns were also presented.
Among the respectable guests who were present in the session were Siva Chandran, Marketing Director of MalaysiaKini and Managing Editor of Voize.my and Wong Mei Kuen, Recruitment and Integration Manager of L’oreal Malaysia.
The session of Challenge covered important questions such as what are typically the challenges faced by employers when recruiting fresh talents and what are graduates’ barriers to
learning in acquiring soft skills besides academics while being in 
university and college. Subsequently, some of the potential solutions were explored.When the crowd present were being asked about the question whether it is true that youths today think they know everything, the guests brought out really good points to be pondered. Regardless of the amount and intensity of the knowledge they have, positive attitude apparently is what employers value the most as Jonathan and Siva put it, “Confidence and arrogance is only a point different. It is the matter of how you strike the balance because too much of confidence will project the attitude of arrogance.”
Identifying the preferred style of the employer is easy but how you “sell” yourself can be difficult. However, the crowd brought out interesting ideas in going against the norm in impressing your employers. However, they are all summed up by Mei Kuen in the ability to being effective during the selection process, “Read the interviewer.”
The crowd also came to the point to understand that it is important to be ourselves during the interview. It is important to understand the interviewer and at the same time bring out the best in us according to what is valued is never easy, as how Kenneth, a student from Uniten put it, “Even if you have the best idea in the world, if you can't talk, you can't excel still.”
Some claimed that passion, instead, is the key to success, as Tilibban, another participant from Uniten said, “I agree that passion is important but academic excellence is what you can offer to the employers.”
Tilibban: “I agree that passion is important but academic excellence is what you can offer to the employers.”
The guests and participants of the day concluded with thoughts shared on how far self-regulation and initiative-driven attitude can assist the fresh talents although it is not something that everybody is aware of, when Michael Tan said, “We refuse to initiate because we have no goals and direction in life.” Siva added, “The gap can be closed by getting students to involve in more practical elements in campus.”
The first Plugged session was proven to be a gathering of pro-active undergraduates and compassionate guests who are willing to share and learn from each other.
“It was really a good session as it promoted mutual understanding towards challenges faced by each other (employers and fresh talents). More sessions like this should be done. Will definitely ask my friend to attend the next session in the series,” said Ming Nyet, a student from UTAR.
Plugged series had continued with its subsequent topic, A Choice of Path last 10th November 2009 in the same venue. Among the guests present were Ahmad Zakir Jaafar, Co-Founder and CEO of 1901 HotDogs and Ramkumar, Former Regional Manager of Corel and current Director of Zuna International Ltd.
For more information on Plugged series and other initiatives of PluggED, you can also follow us on Twitter: http://www.twitter.com/TEPlugged or you can be updated LIVE from the session day by following us via http://search.twitter.com by typing #TEPlugged in the search bar.
