I remember Marcus Phua, one of our Co-founders, saying, “I still don’t know myself as a person, and don’t know what I want to do in the future.” The rest of us nodded our heads in agreement. It was interesting how we all came from different backgrounds and studied different things, yet faced a common problem—uncertainty about our career paths.
Anxieties about our professional future
I had majored in communications and new media because I thought I wanted to go into design. However, when I had my first internship at a local startup as a design intern, I was exposed to marketing, which intrigued me. There were several areas that appealed to me, such as content marketing, digital marketing, social media marketing, brand marketing, and more. I did not know what suited me or what I should do. To be honest, it did not even occur to me that these were different fields. I dabbled in everything and finally decided that I want to go into digital marketing.
My job search process was difficult. Companies were not looking for someone who only went through one internship in social media as job experience. Many hiring managers wrote back to me to say, “Sorry, you do have a lot of experience in different areas of digital marketing, but you are not specialized.” That meant rejection.
After completing five internships and going through at least 50 interviews, I saw how hiring managers often referred to the most annoying question they got from interviewees: “Sorry, what is this role about?” Asking this does not reflect well on the student. They had the mentality to spam and mass apply to see where it would take them, which shows that they are still unsure of their career paths. It is important for students to understand the golden triangle formed by one’s personality, passion, and role to apply for jobs that really suit them. With that in mind, I founded MatcHub to provide students with targeted job recommendations and make their journeys a little easier.
Founding MatcHub through a common vision
The idea for MatcHub came up when our core team was in Shanghai, having a casual dinner. We were in the NUS Overseas College (NOC) program when Rayse Yeo, Vivian Chan, and Noel Wong told us that they were struggling as interns. They felt like the scope of their work was not aligned with their personalities and passions.
Click here to continue reading on Oasis, the brainchild of KrASIA.
