Rozee’s Job Fairs seem to be disruptive for universities

April 24, 2007 5:29 pm 4 comments

Share this Article

Author:

Monis Rehman recently stated that Rozee’s Job Fairs held is Lahore, Islamabad, and Karachi attracted over 90,000 job candidates on each of the three days.

In Islamabad it sure felt like it, where by mid-afternoon there was a serious lack of oxygen in the main hall.

At the same time though, we were invited to (and went to) Campus Job Fairs at both LUMS and GIKI. Both of these were held to highlight graduating seniors, but I must say the turnout for companies was shockingly bad. At the LUMS fair I counted a total of 5 companies and some 25 odd students walking around.

Among the short amount of polls we’ve received on Green & White, it suggests the same thing (i.e. Rozee Job Fairs are better for finding candidates than Univ Job Fairs)

Given that this is just the second year Rozee organized the fairs, the shift in turnout is pretty impresive and displays characteristics of a “killer app”.

Why would companies prefer to go to Rozee Job Fairs and not to campuses?

Here’s my top 5 reasons:

5- There is too little time in the day to do work.

If you are going to ask important people to take interest in employer branding and management, they would rather just go on one such day rather than go to every college.

The interesting effect of this is that the experience for the candidates increases as well — at LUMS e.g. I saw team leads to lowlevel managers of the companies, and mostly interns, distributing promotional material and collecting resumes. At Rozee’s fair, in the morning you had some of the leading people walking around as well.

4- Big Events attract deep pockets as sponsors.

Newspaper Ads, Radio Ads, even GEO TV spots was what it took to get the average jobseeker out of his home and attend Rozee’s fair, and salesmen, marketing teams and media and production teams got companies into the fray.

Universities may not be able to do much here, but for what they can do I think they do a good job. LUMS gives out invitations to new companies doing innovative work to present at the fairs.

3- Everyone is more serious

At LUMS most of students were either hanging around with friends or just getting out of class and happened to drop by — they may not have been in the mindset to engage the companies effectively. I heard similar feedback about the students at the GIKI fair, i.e. not many were actually interested in finding jobs or engaging companies.

At the Rozee fair, an average candidate will find the opporunity to talk to atleast 20 companies, and most of the people were more dressed up on that day than they do in many interviews I sit through.

One of the obvious reasons for this would be that actual jobseekers or unemployed professionals from the market attend the job fair.

2- It has to be about having a good time

Most HR and Training related activities are centered around having a good time, and Rozee’s fair is no exception.

You have some opportunities for networking there, you get to discover new companies, trainers often set up voluntary training sessions there, there are company interviews running around the hallways — in short, it is a proper event.

1- Professional Management

If I had to pin it down to one reason, though, it would be professional management. The feedback received from both GIK and LUMS was that there wasn’t enough hands-on participation by the management committees.

Rozee’s team shined at this, so kudos to Rozee.

Share :
  • Print
  • Digg
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google Bookmarks
  • email
  • Twitter

Facebook comments:

4 Comments

  • I think if we can rephrase the heading to –

    “Rozee’s Job Fairs seem to be disruptive for job seekers and the job providers ”

    I have participated at Rozee fair and fair at LUMS as well. You cannot compare the two because the objective is a bit different. I want to share the outcome and pyhschological impact of these events on both the seeker and provider.
    In Rozee fair I have noticed one very serious matter that our people seriously need direction, I think we need to decide what we want to do and where we want to go.

    90% of the CVs have MBA Marketing, Finance, IT and HR. Do we need these MBAs and with these subjects? This myopic approach will not work!

    I recently interviwed one of the young, energetic gradaute (who resigned after serving just 2 months in a growing company) from a renowned university here in Islamabad, there are 50 female graduates with MBA – HRM who passed out with ambitions and enthusiasm. For all of them please please do not loose hope and work with passion and face chanllenges. You will not find a single organization where every thing is set.

    In Rozee fair 70% who applied are looking for changing their present employer when asked, the reply was: We need growth, chanllenging apportunity and more money. Let me tell you guys the best opportunity one can have is the current one.

    I found two potential Chemical Engrs from LUMS and called them for interview, you know what they said after doing MBA they have changed their fields and are now working in finance department in Banks. They have wasted their engineering degree to some extent. Again lack of will and direction!

    Organization has to understand empolyees expectations and its own and employees need to understand organization expectations and their own.

    I was unable to find a single good candidate out of this massive explosion of CVs at job fairs. Reasone being MBA Marketing is doing Finance job and MBA Finance is doing Marketing Job.

    Career Planning and Parents counseling is the need of the hour.

    Fahd Khan

  • is there any search engine which gives true jobs im not getting any responce by any of the company i have applied theough rozee.pk ang gulf also and many more but im not getting any responce they all are fake im intermediate and doing bs in psychology i have good comannd in wrriting and speaking in english and i have knowledge about computer too but its of no use can anyone can tell me yyyyyy

  • simi, there are a lot of reasons that might be happening
    go through some of the guidance articles on this web site regarding resume writing and following up
    (they would be under HR tag on top)
    make sure you are applying to jobs for which you experience and expertise matches the employers requirement, also revamp you CV if you are already qualified for a job and still not getting any interview

  • Fahad the point that you are making is quite common it happens one can always switch carrers its how you feel and what comes along. I would like to give you two examples which can be taken as a precidence

    1. Carly Fiona the CEO for HP was a bachelors in history before doing her MBA and she brought along the major change in HP and transformed it from a printer company to a leading company in the IT industry.

    2. Steve Jobs was an expert in calligrapy has nothing to do with graphics and he is the CEO of apple.

    So these examples are good enough to prove that people are free to do what they like and do best

Leave a Reply


*

Recent Posts

  • General Qurtaba takes their Urdu App to Kindle

    Qurtaba takes their Urdu App to Kindle

    Team at Qurtaba have added another front to their impressive Urdu language based apps, they have launched their Alif Bay Pay app for Amazon Kindle, as well. Earlier it was released on iTunes.

    I love what Qurtaba are doing in a niche area of Urdu Language. Although their start was from Nan-Map for which they now have an iPhone App.There love for Urdu language related apps has been flourishing in recent months. Most of their apps are doing very well on app store, some impressive numbers for their popular Urdu apps are as follows.

    Urdu Writer: 10K downloads in 3 months – average 200 downloads…

    Read more →
  • Featured Startup General Food Connection Pakistan

    Food Connection Pakistan

    I happened to be in Quetta on a business trip last month with no idea of where to dine alone. Being a typical Lahoriite, a die-hard food lover, it matters to me that I try the best food of the place I visit. So this is where FCPakistan came to my rescue. I simply logged in, typed in my desired specifications and got atleast 5 suggestions.

    The listing included their opening times, specific facilities like ease for physically disabled customers, credit card acceptance, smoking areas, take away facility, whether valet parking was available or not, and even directions to get there! What more could you want.

    Although that was the…

    Read more →
  • Featured Startup General FourQuants.com Jawwad Farid’s new venture

    FourQuants.com Jawwad Farid’s new venture

    If you have any thing to do with entrepreneurship, its impossible you have not come across Jawwad Farid either in person or in virtual world of his blogs and judging different events realting to startups in Pakistan.  He is also the author of Reboot which we reviewed a while back.

    Jawwad has been writing on Finance, Risk and Treasury for some time now on learning corporate finance.

    I guess that has lead to  FourQuants.com. FourQuants helps people understand concepts related to finance. Following topics are mentioned in about us section of the website

    • Risk management
    • Derivatives products
    • Option pricing models
    • Basel and capital adequacy regulation
    • Financial modeling
    • Treasury

    Read more →
  • Coffee Session General Marketing/Adv OLX Pakistan Investing heavily in advertisement

    OLX Pakistan Investing heavily in advertisement

    OLX is a global online retailer and auction site. They have an impressive footprint in a little less than 100 countries, each with their own specific domain (like .pk for Pakistan and .in for India).

    In Pakistan they have been operating under olx.com.pk for some time with people using it to sell things online.

    Recently they have started advertising heavily on Television, a medium seldom used by online businesses previously. The ads (two of which have appeared ) are witty and fun to watch.

    The most important factor of these adds is that they are being advertised on media which previously none of our online businesses have used.

    Most of…

    Read more →
  • General TiE, All Asia Business Plan Competition

    TiE, All Asia Business Plan Competition

    Round 1 of TiE is about to reach its completion on 22nd of Jan, 2012 at Marriott, Islamabad in which ten teams will participate. Four teams will be shortlisted for the level 2. I also had the opportunity to participate in TiE All Asia Business Plan Competition 2012 along with my team members in the first few stages of level 1. Although we didn’t have the chance to go beyond stage1 but just participating helped us understand our own idea better and to polish our proposed technique along with development of a solid business plan. TiE all Asia Business Plan Competition provides a platform for generation and development of new…

    Read more →
  • Announcements General Mobile Apps Software & I.T. TenPearls Launches Multi-Platform Mobile Apps for Dawn Media Group

    TenPearls Launches Multi-Platform Mobile Apps for Dawn Media Group

    TenPearls has announced the successful delivery of mobile apps for Dawn.com on multiple platforms,   including Apple iOS (iPad and iPhone), Android and Symbian (Nokia). The mobile apps have received great feedback from the users from around the world. It may be worth mentioning here that DAWN.COM is the #1 English News website from Pakistan averaging over 16 million page views a month, and 3.1 million unique visitors from around the world.

    More details can be accessed at mobile apps for Dawn Media Group by TenPearls.

    Read more →
  • General Second Pakistan Blog Awards by CIO Faces severe criticism

    Second Pakistan Blog Awards by CIO Faces severe criticism

    CIO Pakistan started blog awards last year. Its is a good sign when some one takes initiative and starts some thing new. However its also difficult to introduce this into an already budding field of new media in Pakistan. Last years (or two years back now since its 2012)  Awards were initiated so as it is expected it faced initial growing up pains. It always takes time for such thing to wins the trust of the community. And bloggers are one of the most hard people to win over, most of these are rebels in their own rights people who have started blogging to show the world their opinion…

    Read more →
  • Featured Startup General Do We Vote : A great statistical tool by PakReport.org

    Do We Vote : A great statistical tool by PakReport.org

    Pakreport.org a tool which was instrumental in gathering statistics during the massive flooding in Pakistan, has created another study/stats gathering tool for our electoral activities. Interestingly its called do we vote

    With political scene in Pakistan heating up it provides very valuable information to party supporters and their leaders.  A quick look at it shows the all known facts that people in rural areas take their voting more seriously than all of us supposedly educated and enlightened urban population.

    Pakreport.org was an initiative launched by Faisal Chohan of BrightSpyre during the floods, the effort enabled people on the ground to send sms (the most spread out communication medium in country)…

    Read more →
  • Featured Startup General Stay for the work not the perks

    Stay for the work not the perks

    This is a revelation that came to me when I recently quit my comfy corporate job for the second time. If you are below 40 and some one asks you about how is your job going and your answer is not in tune of “I like my job because I love the work”. 

    You need to pause and asses your career, last time I answered this question my answer was “I like the job, because the benefits are good”, and that made me think (offcourse there were other factors as well). But if you are doing a job in which to satisfy your own self you have to look at…

    Read more →