AIT Industry/Job Fair

The AIT Industry/Job Fair, which was held 24 November 2006 lured AIT students, and alumni, as well as students from other universities. Organized twice a year to strengthen the link between industry and academia, the event this time marked the launching of the AIT Career Center.

In his welcome address, AIT President Said Irandoust said it was encouraging to see enthusiastic participation from many partners, AIT students, faculty and staff. He encouraged the companies to see this event as an opportunity to explore collaborative activities with AIT in terms of recruitment, as a contribution to AIT and as an opportunity to collaborate in research, consultancy and professional training.

Prof. Peter Haddawy, vice president for academic affairs, in his opening remarks, said the event was important not only because there were many high quality companies joining but also because it marked the opening of AIT new Career Center.

“As educators, we should occassionally pause to ask ourselves exactly why we strive so hard to run a high-quality institute of higher education. And the answer that I personnally find is that we are here to enrich students intellectual life by helping them to educate themselves,” he said. “But that’s only part of the equation. The other part is that we must help our students to develop meaningful and productive careers as a vehicle to realize the benefit of that education and as a means to share those benefits with others in society around them. And that’s why the opening of the career center is so important.”

Joining the event this year were more than 20 well-known companies, such as NTT Communications, Magnecomp Precision Technology, Mahaphant Fibre Cement, Bloomberg L.P. (Singapore), True Public Company Limited, Exxon Mobil Corporation, Thai Nippon Steel, Kawasaki Motors Enterprise (Thailand) Company Limited, iSoftel (Thailand) Co. Ltd., CUEL, Bovis Lend Lease, Minebea Group of Companies (Thailand), IBM (Thailand) Company Limited, Thai Beverage Public Company Limited, NXP/Philips Semiconductors, and ENSR (Thailand) Company Limited.

Why did these participating companies join the event and how did they view the job fair?

Apicha Sorahongs, Human Resources Advisor, HR Operations II, True Public Company Limited

“Our company joined the School of Management Job Fair in the middle of this year and this is the first time we joined the AIT Job Fair. We came here because we feel that there are a lot of students studying technologies and we are looking for those with technological knowledge. And we get good feedback. We look for the students with telecommunications and electronics, IT or MBA background, but there are some students in different fields applied today. We also provides internship program with any period of time. Usually, we deal with the institute on whether the internship can match with the institute’s curriculum. If the students themselves would like to have an internship, we have no problem. There are a lot of job vacancies available now.”

Ms. Malaiporn Lamlow, Recruitment Officer, Thai Nippon Steel

“Our work involves onshore and offshore engineering, but today there are not so many students with these backgrounds applying. Actually, we are now touring various universities, collecting the CVs and make appointments for the interviews. If any of them passes the interview, we will wait until that student graduates and works with us. We have more than 100 international employees, and our management staff are non-Thais. Therefore, we accept non-Thai students, especially Indonesian, Malaysian and Indian graduates who mostly have experience in the fields of oil and gas, which Thai students don’t have much. We also accept Thai graduates who have master’s degrees in civil engineering.”

Mr. Tosaporn Kongkerd, Gasket Technic, Hoya Lens Thailand Ltd.

“HOYA is expanding our plants to Vietnam, where there will be some Thai employees. So we are looking for Vietnamese graduates who are familiar with Thai language and Thai people to join that plant. And we found that AIT has the largest number of Vietnamese students, but today there were no Vietnamese students showing up at our booth. We prefer those with the background in production, production control, quality control, and environment. We will come back again next time.”

Ms. Yaowarat Sangthong, Resource Development Manager, Reuters Software (Thailand) Limited

“This is the second AIT Job Fair that we joined. Last time our booth was quite small and we got not so many students applying. We prefer to have Thai graduates since our company is supported by Board of Investment. With that, we have the limitation in applying for work permit to international staff. If necessary, we would recruit international graduates. Our process starts with a written examination. We ask for the students’ profile and resume before contacting them back for having the examination at our office. If we can get five candidates, we think it is quite successful for our recruitment today. We are happy to join the event since our company uses English as the official language.”

Ms. Archawee Chatkul Na Aryudhya , ExxonMobil Corporation

“Our company’s manager told us that he is impressed with an AIT alumnus who works quite well at our company. Therefore, we contacted AIT to recruit the graduating students and fortunately we found out about this event from the Student Office at AIT. We would like to recruit the persons with IT and engineering background. In Thailand, the company serves as a business support center which transfers the work from abroad, so there are a lot of job vacancies available, with 400-500 positions annually. Today, we will bring the applications forms filled by the students back to see at our office and will ask for qualified persons to interview. So far, most of them seem to have the qualifications that the company needs.”

How did the job fair’s visitors find event?

Miss Nita Yuanita, a doctoral student, Water Engineering and Management, said this was the best fair she has ever attended. She found it to be very well-organized and the students were able to get the information beforehand from the Web site and from e-mail. However, she didn’t see any position that matches with her qualifications because the participating companies were more on information technology and industrial engineering and management fields.

Mr. Abednego, Martinus, a doctoral student in Computer Science and Information Management, found that the participating companies were more active in approaching the students, explaining on what positions they have and what they are expecting from the student, which is very helpful to the students.

Miss Pavinee Prasertchai, a master’s student in Environmental Engineering and Management, said she applied for several companies just to play safe since she doesn’t have work experience which is usually preferred by most companies. The AIT Career Center for her is good and very helpful because it provides the students more information on the qualifications needed by the companies than the ones posted in some recruitment Web sites.

Mr. Vikram Godbole, a 2005 graduate in Mechatronics, joined the event because he received an e-mail from the alumni association. The event so far he thought was very good because this time there were many companies showing up, not only locally based in Thailand but also in the Asian region such as Bloomberg in Singapore. He applied to about five companies and probably will have interviews.

Miss Rojalin Pradhan, a master’s student in Microelectronics, said the job fair was really a good opportunity for the students and alumni to apply to any company they want according to their criteria. On that day, she applied to just one company, Western Digital.

Miss Shuprabha Shakya, a master’s student in Information and Communications Technologies, said the event was a platform where the students can get the opportunity to know about the participating companies, which was good for their career in the future. She applied to a few job openings and one internship and had some interviews. She was hoping that she will get some offers. Graduating in May 2007, she is currently more focused on having an internship for six months.

Miss Yin Aye Moe, a master’s student in Computer Science and Information Management, was thankful to the Student Union for organizing the event and the launching of the Career Center. She applied for jobs at two companies and expected to have interviews in two weeks.

Mr. Gunnar Kristoffer Wold, a 2006 School of Management alumnus, who is working in a consulting company in Thailand, came to know about the job fair from an e-mail from the alumni association. He is looking for new opportunities of staying in Thailand or going in the region. Therefore, he joined the event to have talks with participating companies. As an SOM alumnus, he encouraged SOM to combine its own career day with the AIT job fair and work together by integrating the AIT Career Center and SOM career center.