My search for a part-time job (Part I)

NOTE: this is like a reaaaaaaaaally looooooooooong post! you have been warned! hehehe

Before I start my account of my (unsuccessful *sobs*) foray into the part-time job market, I would first like to conclude that looking for a part time job seems more difficult than looking for a full-time job (at least in my case). After all, I have restrictions that are unfavorable to any kind of job seekers: 1) flexible hours (since I'm still studying), 2) only able to commit for at most 3 months (since I may be going for my grad trips after graduation)

And so, here are the jobs that I considered/applied:

1) Tuition Teacher

Of course, I do know that being a tuition teacher requires long commitment terms and so I searched for part-time positions in tuition centers (at least they can find a replacement if I quit). Then I realized that despite my *ahem* rather good qualifications (well, I believe I can teach Chinese language, Mathematics and all Science subjects up to Secondary 4 level. buay paiseh, haha!), my lack of experience is much in my disfavor. :(

Then, opportunity came knocking at my door! Gladys has a senior who has recently opened a tuition center in Tampines (yay east!) and was looking for tutors. When I visited the tuition center on the day of its opening, it happens that there's already Chinese classes lined up so technically I can start teaching once the students are ready. YAY right? Well, no! Turns out the there's a 1 year commitment expected of me (which is totally reasonable) but because of my travel plans later in the year, I have to reject this position. And I felt so guilty and 不好意思, as I have already agreed to take on the Chinese class, then I had to email Gladys' senior to reject the position (and hopefully she finds a more eligible Chinese tutor >.<)

2) Recruitment Officer / Sales Coordinator

Well, this is a post that I found in many job search websites such as freelancezone.com and singapore.gumtree.sg. The pages are flooded with similarly worded advertisements with the following details:

"Job scope: Post ads online, arrange candidates for interviews, coordinate between company and client;
Work from home; Flexible working hours; No cold calls; No meeting clients; No experience required
Basic pay + Commission;
Earn 2K - 5K / mth!"

It's everything that I wish for! Minimum effort with good pay, sounds good right? Well, I learnt the hard way that all that sounds too good to be true are definitely not what it seems to be. :[

So, this is what happened (it's gonna be a long story so be prepared):
As there were numerous posts advertising similar jobs but by different 'recruiters', I applied for a number of them (about 4-5). The first one replied to my email. The recruiter, by the name of Abby Chew, whatsapp-ed me and she proceeded to arrange an interview slot with me. I asked what was the organisation and she replied that it's a property company. She did not reveal the name of the company then and on hindsight, this is definitely something fishy (but I guess I was too desperate for a PT job so I didn't think much of this). So anyway, an interview slot was then confirmed and I got the address of the company. Now, with the address, I could easily do a search on the Internet and realized that it is a real estate company by the name of ECG Property, which is a subsidiary of ECG Holdings. I did a rough research on the internet and all seems well. A pretty established firm with proper websites, contact channels yada yada. And so, I happily went for the "interview" at the stipulated date and time, thinking that this is probably gonna be a job in the HR department.

When I reached the office, I was led to a room that looked kinda like a training room (with white boards and screens in front, a projector hanging from the ceiling and rows of chairs). There were already about 8-9 other people sitting in the room. It was only then did I came to the full realization that I was probably conned into attending some kind of talk under the disguise of an interview. (Yeah I know, I'm slow. :( Oh wells, I guess I was just too shielded in my uni life and didn't get to experience these kind of marketing gimmicks. I digress.) I thought to myself, since I was there, might as well sit down and listen to what was on offer.

So this is the deal: there are several positions available,
1) Recruitment Officer/Recruiter (who posts those online recruiting adv that conned me into attending the "interview");
2) OJT (which I have no idea what it stands for as the speaker didn't elaborate but I shall just call it a 'Coordinator' role, who matches clients with the company's property agents according to client's requirement for a house; and
3) UREAP program (this is some certified training program giving you basic knowledge about the real estate industry, it's mainly for those who wish to be a property agent in the long-run, but note that there's another course and exam that you must take in order to be a property agent)

Those who attended the "interview" (it was actually a job briefing) were given a choice of (a) taking up all 3 positions; (b) taking only the double role of (1) & (2) or; (c) only a single role of (1) or (2). The speaker then proceeded to teach us how to calculate our earnings by simply being a recruitment officer-cum-OJT. I shall not bore you with the details but it's those kind where you draw commission based on how much you work (note: NO basic pay at all, contrary to what was posted in the online ad!!) And the motive was apparent: to show how easy it was to earn that stated "2K-5K/mth" and there's also a possibility of earning more than that! She also taught us tricks and gimmicks to get more viewership for the online advertisements and lure candidates to go for the "interview". This was when I really felt that the whole recruitment process is really deceitful.

What the speaker, Joey Tay, who is also some senior HR manager in the company) taught us (just a few of the things I could rmb):
1) Post online advertisements in popular categories such as part-time jobs / general / admin / Marketing / IT
(for those serious job seekers looking for a proper full-time job in say Marketing or IT, coming to this "interview" would be a total waste of their time!! And for those looking for a PT job in the first place, who would be seriously thinking about being a property agent? But apparently Joey Tay couldn't care less about that. All she wanted was more exposure of her online advertisements and hopefully con people into her system of recruiters and coordinators.)
2) Post in 6 categories in each of 16 job searching websites
(And imagine tens and hundreds of recruiters, each posting the same 6 advertisements in the same 16 websites!! So basically the whole website is flooded with the  same advertisements for the same company for the same job. This explains why I find so many similar advertisements when I was doing a job search despite different "recruiters" for each advertisement.)
3) Certain words are not allowed to be used in the advertisements: property, licence, the company name etc
(I couldn't rmb the list of words dis-allowed as the speaker just ramble them off not giving us a chance to note them down, when she had previously stressed to us we must absolutely note down how the commissions will be calculated. and then i realized why Abby did not reply me when I asked for the company name before I confirmed the interview with her. And of course, all these are done so that people will be conned into at least attending the "interview" and some of them might be persuaded to join them after hearing the briefing.)
4) Telling people that they are going for an "interview" and not a "job briefing"
(reason being that again, Joey want more people to listen to the "wonderful" prospects of earning big bucks and hence get conned into the system

Ok, so I've mentioned many times that this is a conning system. And readers might think, there's nothing to lose by joining as let's say, simply recruiters. We just invest in a few minutes posting ads online everyday, people respond to the ads and viola! You can now draw commission when those people referred by you joins the system. And the commission is quite substantial:
 - $125/pax (if candidate joins UREAP + OJT + Recruiter)
 - $100/pax (if candidate joins OJT + Recruiter)
 - $75/pax (if candidate joins OJT/Recruiter)
There's also a bonus of $800 if you manage to recruit 18-29 people per mth; $2,000 if you manage to recruit >29 people per mth.

BUT, here's the catch: there is a freaking JOINING FEE!!!
Never expected that huh?
Here's the joining fee rate if you are interested to join as:
1) UREAP + OJT + Recruiter: $700 ($499)
2) OJT + Recruiter: $600 ($400)
3) Recruiter/OFT: ($299)
The number in bracket is the discounted joining fee if we agree to join the company before 12am on the day of the briefing (and the briefing was from 7pm till 9pm plus, so we technically only have about 2.5hr to decide.) And that's NOT the only cost involved, everyone who joins must take a set of professional photos (with blazer and wearing the ECG tie). This costs another $29. The reason given by Joey was that she needed a face to match with our names or she wouldn't know who she's dealing with when she's paying us our commission. I snorted at this. This is such an apparent scheme to con us of our money!

At the end of the day, I have to admit the whole scheme was presented in a very appealing manner and Joey was a very convincing presenter (then again, she has been doing this for who knows how long), making the job seem like one that requires minimal effort with high pay. I ALMOST got tricked, almost! The 3rd option of joining as simply a recruiter seemed to promise a definite positive payout! I invest an initial amount of $328, and the minimum I should recruit would be just 5 recruiters/OJT. Easy huh?

Looking at the turnout of the briefing for the day I went, there were about 15 people in total. It seems that more than half of them were students looking for casual part-time jobs with no consideration of venturing into the real estate business (come on, who would look at the advertisements posted and imagine that that's the kick-start  of their career as a property agent right?!), so these people are probably wouldn't wanna fork out money before they see their payout (and I noticed that most of them sprinted out of the room the moment Joey ended the session. Haha). There's also a minority of serious job seekers who unfortunately wasted 2hrs of their time listening to bullshit. The potential is down to about 1/4 of the attendees. I don't know how many would actually join the company. And from the name list where I had to fill in my details and recruiter at the start of the briefing, I noticed that each recruiter managed to get about 2-3 people down to the briefing for the session I attended. Now, looking at how aggressively Joey is expanding her network of recruiters, I daresay the likelihood of getting enough people to join the company in order to cover our initial investment would be pretty low.

And the reason I would label this as a scam is because, Joey Tay, being the one right at the top would get all the benefits from the increased exposure of her ads (due to many many many recruiters). All new entrants to the company is considered to be recruited by her and she gets a large bonus/commission from ECG. Whereas for the many many many recruiters under her, it's practically a perfect competition where we are all posting the same ads and hoping that lady lucky would be on our side. Yeah sure, Joey promised the bonus and stuff, precisely because it's a bonus, this means that it's a difficult target to meet! So, not only does Joey gets the commission/bonus from ECG, she'll also be earning the Joining Fee from us. Yet, she made it sound like she provided a lot of opportunities for us to earn big bucks. Pooh! Yeah I'm pretty sure there'll be a couple who manged to earn a lot, but definitely not the majority!


3) Marketing Assistant (or some other irrelevant title that I can't recall now)

This is a story that guarantees another loooooong post by itself so I shall save it for another day.

Tada~

My first cuppa green tea...

...and it taste yucky >.<

I was never a fan of green tea. I find it bitter with a weird taste. I would much rather drink plain water. But just for the sake of getting rid of my excess weight, I shall drink a cuppa green tea everyday. Only because one great benefit of green tea is that it increases our metabolism rate. Some substance in green tea called polyphenols stimulates fat oxidation.

Perhaps I should also try peppermint tea. Other than its calming effects, peppermint tea can also relieve pain and used to ease headaches, sore throats, puffy eyes, menstrual cramps etc. It is also speeds up digestion and hence might help with weight loss, though I don't see many articles supporting this view.

Confessions and Resolutions

So I haven't stepped on the weighing machine for about 1 year (or maybe longer), and I know I have been gaining weight. After all, I have been snacking a lot with zero physical activities to burn off the calories that I had shamelessly and un-hesitantly absorbed (who could resist that refreshing cuppa milk tea with its chewy pearls in the midst of the hot weather? or the burst of flavours from the ever-increasing ice-cream outlets sprouting up in all corners of Singapore? or the tiny bites of joy and sweetness to keep lethargy and boredom at bay during lessons?).

And now, with J's endless taunting of my ever-expanding tummy, I am starting to examine my own body and I have to say I am highly alarmed. I finally plucked up the courage to step on the weighing machine again today and lo and behold, the number displayed jumped past my delusional 54kg!! (which is already bad enough to begin with >.<) I shall not announce my exact weight as I would still like to maintain whatever image left of me, but anyways, J's taunting and the number on my weighing machine has raised a high alarm and I am looking at my weight issue seriously.

I have in fact, started on simple workouts (mainly squats and sit-ups) for the past week since school started, and boy, it's tough! Having not exercised for so long, my body felt so rusty and badly out of condition. :((

BUT, I have resolved (I hate using this word because I rarely keep to my resolutions but let's hope it'll be an exception this time round) I shall continue with my simple workouts and add some cardio activities (jogging/skipping) for the coming days. Cardio workouts' really effective, or that's what everyone else says on the internet.

So, 30-45 min for each jogging/skipping session and at least 4 sessions a week. I really hope I can pull this through!

Hwaiting~!

p.s. and I read somewhere that green tea boosts the metabolism rate, so it shall be my new drink of the day instead of coffee from now on. :)

我 < 3 帅哥

这两天走运，总在路上看到帅哥。
昨天看到一位长得像韩星李准基的，今天看到一位长得像仔仔的。那位长得像仔仔的相似度应该有80%吧！(*o*)

喜欢、不喜欢

男生如果不喜欢你，

不会坐在你旁边听你唠叨一整晚，

也不会听你唠叨完了陪你吃宵夜，

更不会吃宵夜时贴心地帮你夹菜。

男生如果不在意你，

不会三不五十地逗你开心，

也不会计算着多久没见面，

更不会找各种借口见你

男生如果在意你，

即使嘴里说不愿意，却还是送你到家门口，

(Update: This post was a draft that was somehow unpublished. It was written long ago when things were still going sweet between us. I was changing my blog layout and tidying up my old posts and I guessed I published it by accident. Reading this now, at least it's proof that things used to be good. I hope to remember these good times and only these.)

I will be strong!

Received an unexpected call a few days ago from the ex.
Turns out he was in school for his dental checkup and the call was to check if I was in school (to presumably meet me for a short catch up). I was still sleeping then (even though it was almost 11am at the time) and thus ended the call with a curt reply that school has yet to start for me and went back to sleep (on hindsight, I wonder if my tone was hostile :/). When I finally woke up about an hour later, I started to question the existence of the call and I had to check the call history.
Time flies. It was been more than a year since the start of that relationship. One year ago, I had received similar calls and would have happily agreed to meet up with him. Now, one year later, I only thought how spontaneous and inconsiderate he is.

I am feeling a slight bitterness and resentment. I know the reason for these feelings. I just hope that I can let everything begone.

And I hope I never have to be troubled by affairs of the heart ever again.

No, I mean, I hope my heart will grow stronger, strong enough to withstand all the nonsense.

Homo...?

这几天在看仪部几年前的偶像剧，叫“死神少女”，题材涉及当今的社会问题及一些青少年的烦恼，如自杀，同性恋，校凌等。其中一个单位描述了一段三角恋，值得一提的是，三位主角都是女生。看着剧，我想到了自己，我有点迷惑。。。