Feature

Career Fair: Days n Nights

Afsana Islam

The Department of Finance, University of Dhaka organized a day-long Career Fair and Workshop titled as “Aktel Career Fair 2007” on the 31st of May, 2007 at the premise of Faculty of Business Studies, University of Dhaka. As the students of one of the graduating batches of the department it was our responsibility to organize the program and make it a successful one. Me and my friends worked day and night to bring this dream project to a reality. When we first started working in this project most of the people thought it was impossible to arrange a career fair in a large scale in such a short time (only three weeks!!). But we took it as a challenge and we gave our very best to show the world that nothing is impossible if a united group gives its very best effort!

All of us are really grateful to Mr. M. Aminul Huque, General Manager, HR, TM International Bangladesh Limited (AKTEL). It was he who had the faith in us and agreed to be the title sponsor of the event when only one company agreed to participate at the Career Fair! Hats off to him and his entire team for having faith in us and making our dream come true.

Working for the Career Fair has opened a new horizon for us as we had experienced many tough as well as funny situations. The toughest part was to convince our teachers that we can actually organize this program in this short time. The organizations that we approached also could not believe that we are going to do it in this time frame. But at last 16 national and multinational organizations participated at the Fair, Corporate Presentation and Panel Discussion. We were really very fortunate to have all the HR personnel like- Mr. M. Aminul Huque(Head of HR, AKTEL), Mr. Q.M. Shahed (Head of HR, BAT), Mr. Sandeep Mookharjea (Head of HR, Standard Chartered Bank), Mr. Arif Shahriar (Head of HR, Rahimafrooz), Mr. Emad Ul Ameen (Head of HR, Grameenphone Ltd) and Ms. Sayeda Tahya Hossain (Head of HR, Citibank NA) with us. We are also grateful to Process Industiral Co. Ltd. as they gave us the first cheque of the program. We are also grateful to Standard Chartered Bank as they agreed to participate at the fair within one day and also gave us a big amount for an advertisement in the souvenir.

The total organizing part was full of fun and amusements as we all the friends stayed days and nights together preparing proposals, budget of the program, schedule of the program, layouts of the posters, banners and souvenir, preparing each and everyone's schedule of the next day- this became the everyday routine for us. The department gave us the permission to use the Placement Office for the Career Fair and that office became our second home as we used to spend 24/7 there! The most horrible part of the Fair was our phone bill and the conveyance that we have spent! We almost became empty pocket at the end of the Fair. We had division of labor and each and everyone was assigned with a particular job; like- Nazmul, Rayhan and Arefin at Stall Management & Finance, Binyta and Saika at Food & Entertainment, Imran at Creative Designing, , Towfiq and Ovi at Media and me at Public Relation (and unofficial telephone operator!!). We used to return home so late that our parents eventually started to ask whether we are going to return home on that day or the next day!! In fact we returned home at 2.30 am on the day before the Fair and our friend Rayhan stayed the whole night at the Faculty premise to look after the stalls.

We would like to thank our Chairman Dr. Mahmood Osman Imam, our Placement Office Director Mr. M. Mujibul Kabir, our BBA Program Director Mr. Waquar Ahmed and all other teachers and staffs of the Department for giving us endless support in organizing such a big event. We also convey our thanks to Mr. M. Shabbir Ali, Mr. Abir Shawkat Haiat, Tanvir Bhai and Selina Apu from the HR team of Aktel and Sadat Bhai, Razia Apu and Sabbir Bhai from the Marketing team of Aktel. We would also like to thank the media partners Channel i, The Daily Star and Radio Today for being with us.

We did so many things in this three weeks time span that we can even write a whole story on it. This is only the beginning of the story and there is much more to say. That's all for this week. We will again come next week with more stories on Career Fair.
A bientot!!

(BBA 9th Batch, Department of Finance, DU)