Students try a day in the life of a Thrive journalist at career fair
Daryl Choo
EVER wondered what journalism in the digital era is like?
Students from various tertiary schools on Saturday (Jul 22) got to try their hands at creating social media clips of street interviews and skits for Thrive, the young audience initiative of The Business Times (BT).
This “job taster” was one of several activities that Thrive ran at World X 2023, a day-long career exploration event at SkillsFuture Singapore’s Lifelong Learning Institute at Paya Lebar.
The event was organised by the institute in partnership with non-profit group The Astronauts Collective (TAC).
At Thrive’s session, participants were walked through the process of creating videos for social media before they were given 25 minutes to film and edit either a street interview, skit or an explainer about a topic of their choice.
Participants also had the chance to try out different jobs at the taster sessions, such as military intelligence experts and software engineers.
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Billed as a “career exploration carnival”, the event drew more than 1,000 participants throughout the day – mostly polytechnic, junior college, Institute of Technical Education and university students – and featured professionals from more than 100 different occupations. It was TAC’s fifth year running the World X career fair.
The careers featured at the event were grouped into three “worlds” – healthcare, sustainability and digital.
These are the same three sectors that SkillsFuture had previously identified as emerging growth areas, based on Singapore’s economic priorities in the coming years.
Skills in these sectors are also highly sought-after. In a report last year, SkillsFuture said that demand for skills in software testing and user experience had doubled or nearly doubled since 2018, while that for green facilities management had grown by 23 times during the same period.
At a separate workshop organised by Thrive at World X, career coach Adrian Choo shared with students the career advice he would have given his younger self.
“Your friends today could be your business partners in the future,” said the founder of Career Agility International, pointing out that many people who succeed in business benefit from wide networks that range from classmates to army buddies.
Beyond networking with friends, students should seek out mentors in jobs they wish to pursue before they even graduate, noted Choo.
One way to do that, he told students, is to connect with their parents’ friends who are in careers that they are interested in, and ask them what skills are needed to do their jobs.
Responding to a student’s question on how one should recover from mistakes, Choo replied: “Treat your career like a game.
“If you fail one round, it’s okay because there’ll be another round. The only time you lose is if you give up. As long as you’re trying... it’s okay to make mistakes.”
Participants also attended a networking session where they could speak to Thrive editor Vivien Shiao and BT’s associate editor (audience) Chan Cheow Pong, alongside some 100 other professionals from jobs ranging from outdoor educators to criminal investigators.
Meanwhile, subscribers of Thrive’s weekly newsletter and followers of Thrive’s social media pages had the chance to win prizes such as movie tickets and portable speakers at a claw machine.
“I feel that content creation on social media is an essential platform for reaching out to younger people who may not be reading the broadsheets,” said undergraduate Koh Tong Chun, 21, a career fair attendee.
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