It's 3:20am, 29 April, 2007 now and finally I am back in my room, after a trip to Singapore and KL which started on wednesday. Tired? Yes, I am. But also quite glad as I am one step closer to what I had set out to do for the past 2 weeks.
The interview in Singtel on 26 April, 2007 was good. It was a wet thursday morning. I had just sat thru a 10-hour bus ride to get there. The bus ride wasn't that bad. It couldn't be, I paid RM70 for the 'snoozer seat' with individual LCD TV screen in front of each of the 18 seats in the bus. Imagine a first class flight seat and you will know what I am talking about.
After 2 movies and dozens of mp3 songs, the bus finally arrived at Tuas checkpoint instead of the normal Woodlands. It was a very welcome surprise if you know what it's like at 8am in the morning at the JB customs and Woodlands checkpoint in Singapore.
When we arrived at the Golden Mile Complex in Beach Road, it was still raining, or rather drizzling. From there I went on to hunt for breakfast and later took the mrt to Raffles City. After a quick change of clothes there, I took the mrt again to Somerset station. I reached the Comcentre where the walk-in interview was being conducted around 9am. Waited in the lobby for almost an hour before the interview was scheduled to start at 10. Talk about being kia-su. hahaha..
Anyway, all that paid off because I was the first one to be interviewed for that position. Not bad after all. After that I went back to Raffles City, got the daily paper and started flipping thru the recruitment section when I bumped into Ken Chee. I can't remember when was the last time I met him, but he could recognise and remember who I was. Maybe it was cos i wrote nice things about him in his friendster testi. (Hehe). Justin Timberlake, you're right, what goes around comes around.
After a few disappointments and encounters with so called 'con' multinational companies seeking to recruit people who can 'start immediately', I decided enough was enough and took the mrt to Bugis station to go to the Malaysian bus terminal to take the SJE back to JB.
That was the jist of my 'business trip' to Singapore.
Reflection of the trip: The position which I walked-in to interview for was a Performance Management Executive position in the Contact Centre of Singtel. What made me take the step to go to the interview was that, I was really confident that my experience was relevant to the job which they advertised for. My 2-year Mobileone stint and my 1 year manegement experience was in line with what they wanted in the candidate.
Another thing was that, I was attracted to working for such a big and well known organization coming out from Singapore, which can be considered among the stars like SIA, Creative Technologies, ST Engineering etc. Singtel is up there among the top. After all, I wanted something which is more long term and gives me the motivation to stay on for the next 25 years maybe? In 25 years time, when it's time to retire, I can't boast that I had worked in a certain industry for the past 35 years like my parents did, but at least if I got in to a good reputable company, I could at least boast that I had worked in Singtel for the past 25 years. Now how's that for staying power?
This was the first time I had gone for an interview with my resume and all my documents in tact and I believe that I was well prepared to handle all the questions being directed at me. Although there were 3 of them inside the room interviewing me, the other 2, were merely observers, because they hardly spoke a word. Maybe it was a tag team in their marathon interview run for the whole day. Being the 2nd one in there I couldn't judge the effectiveness of the system they put in place because the day was still fresh and 3 people conducting an interview is quite a waste of resources.
Right now I am building up my faith and hope that the position is already mine and they are drafting the offer letter to me now. Time shall tell what the result may be.
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