Huawei Connected Campus 2020 (Career Talk, Business and HR Insights)
Huawei Connected Campus 2020 (Career Talk, Business and HR Insights) program was held on 3rd March 2020 and was organized by School of Computing. It took place in Dewan Sultan Iskandar, Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) from 10.00 a.m. to 4.30 p.m., and was divided into two sessions. Students were free to choose between the two sessions to attend the program. Since I had a class in the morning, I decided to join the second session of the program that started around 2.30 p.m. I took the UTM shuttle bus to Lingkaran Ilmu and walked to go to Dewan Sultan Iskandar. Upon arrival, Dewan Sultan Iskandar was already packed by students who are interested to know more about the program. Outside of the hall, food trucks were lined up and at the entrance, several booths were opened for students to explore. I walked into the entrance and explored a few booths before I recorded my attendance and went to find a seat inside the main hall. The program started with the grand entrance of the guests and the VIPs. Then, the program proceeded with du’a recitation lead by a student. After that, the host introduced the guests and the VIPs that attended the program before inviting the first speaker from Huawei to give a talk. The first speaker gave a talk about Huawei as a company, their visions and missions in developing new technologies in the future. The second speaker was from Human Resources talked about self-marketing and how to advertise oneself in the industries. She also gave some tips on job-looking and inspired the students to be more confident about their skills. Finally, the program ended with Q&A sessions where students were given the opportunity to ask any questions about Huawei or career in the technology industries in general.
In this program, I have learned a lot of information about Huawei as a technology company. Huawei is one of the leading global tech company and this program definitely perks my interest to join it because it includes career talk, business and HR insights where I could gain more knowledge about career and becoming one of the workers in the technology industry. I think the talks that were given by both speakers have great contents and it definitely gives me more insight into how the industry really worked. However, I think the second talk was much more interesting as I learned what kind of attributes are needed in order to advertise myself as a promising employee. One of the attributes mentioned is leadership skills that were needed in building a technology business and competing with the ever-growing industries. From my understanding, it is very crucial to be able to guide your team and become a reliable leader in order to achieve bigger things in the future especially in the fast-growing industries with a lot of competitors. Other than that, I also learned about communication skills that are very important for every student to master as it will be applied in our career when working and have to communicate effectively with every team members. Then, I also learned about enterprising skills and how to advertise myself in the industries. The tips that were given by the second speaker who is also one of the Human Resource staff are very resourceful and useful. It definitely can be practised in real life when applying for jobs vacancy. In a whole, this program gives me a new perspective and what to expect when I started my career. In my opinion, it was a really good idea to collaborate with Huawei and other technology company in the future to hold this career talk with students and prepares them for the industries.
In my experience, I think this program is quite similar to a career talk that I attended during Human Computer Interaction (HCI) Day that was organized by School of Computing. Both programs similarly talked about working in the technology industries and how to fulfil the criteria needed when you are applying for a job. However, the HCI Day career talk explained more about working experiences and the environment while the Huawei Connected Campus 2020 career talk explained more on how to appeal more as a candidate for the job and be confident about my own skills. In my opinion, I think both programs gave a lot of benefits and knowledge that will prepare me to join the industry in the future. I learned that both career talks stressed a lot about the importance of being confident with your own skills. It is important because we have to acknowledge our strength and skills in order to be more confident about it. I really valued all the knowledge that I gained from both program however, I think the career talk from Huawei is more meaningful in a way because Huawei is one of the fast-progressed tech company in the industries. I believed that I do have the skills needed to work in the industries however, I find it hard to be confident and acknowledge my own strength. By attending this program, I learned how to acknowledge my skills and flaunt it modestly when I needed to do so. I also think that the Q&A session was a good segment to be included in the program. It encouraged the students to think critically and be curious in order to gain knowledge about something. It also helped students to improve their communication skills and boosted their confidence level as they have to speak on the microphone in front of almost a thousand students that filled the hall.
For me, the most significant aspect of this program is the attributes that I gained from all the sessions that were held in the program because it helps me to improve myself basically through the experiences that were shared during the talk. In my opinion, these experiences can be taken as an example to be used in a real situation when we are working in the industries. Leadership, teamwork and good communications skills are attributes that cannot be learned through reading or observation as we should practice it. As a student, I find that it was hard to work on my confidence especially when I am an introvert. However, if we look it through a professional perspective, I might encounter a lot of this situation where I have to work with new people and need to interact with them without hesitation because software engineers are bound to work with various type of stakeholders and different colleagues. Therefore, by looking from different perspectives, I understand that this program prepared experiences of engaging and socializing with new people in a new environment to some extent. Other than that, I also think that the Q&A session is one of the important events in this program because I learned to always think critically and look for the answers to my questions. I believed that as a person we have to be open-minded in learning and accepting new knowledge from other people regardless of age, positions or social status. Besides, we also can look at a situation from different and new perspectives based on what we have learned from them. It proves that learning is a never-ending journey and we have to be ready to accept our own strengths and flaws in order to build our self-confidence. In a nutshell, the attributes that I gained and learned throughout this program are extremely helpful knowledge and experiences that I should concentrate on and learn to develop in myself.
For the next step, I realised that I have to encourage myself to take a big leap to polish my own strengths. From each of the stages in this reflection, I can sum up that Huawei Connected Campus 2020 program is an exceptional program where I learned and gained tips about how to advertise myself and also learned to enhance my own strengths. I also realized my weaknesses in some aspects throughout this program. Therefore, I noticed that I need to work hard to build my confidence, teamwork skills and communication skills. In the future, I planned to join more program that will help me to build my confidence such as programs that will involve interaction with other people. I am confident that this plan will work because I planned to start it by taking a step at a time to elevate my courage. First, by implying the attributes in the class, the place where I am most familiar with. Then, I will try to improve it by joining more programs and so forth. It will take a lot of baby steps, but I trust that as soon as I take the first step, I will be invested to do more. Nonetheless, this is not the only way that will be available to improve and boost my strong point as there are so many alternatives and ways that will match each and everyone out there. To cut this long reflection short, I will definitely try as hard as I can to improve and challenge myself to be a better person in the future so that not only me but other people too will be able to get the benefits.