5 Days of Company Visits in Singapore

On our first day of company visits I was up at 7am, still exhausted from the jet lag. The whole group met to have breakfast at 8am before half the group headed to Deutsche Bank and the other half, including me, headed to EA, Electronic Arts, the company that produces the video games. It was fairly interesting although they gave us a pop quiz on Porters business fundamentals that seemed a bit out of place and like they were just trying to be taken seriously. We met together for lunch at the campus of another business school, INSEAD, because the career services departments of the two schools often work together to help each other out. Then the majority of the group headed off to see the company presentation by Philip Morris, but myself and 4 others abstained, already knowing positively that we would never want to work in tobacco. Instead I went back to the hotel and had a wonderfully refreshing nap by the pool.

The day finished with a presentation by Boston Consulting Group at their fantastic office on the 44th floor of a corporate tower overlooking the shipping harbor. With good people, good food and great wine we were again reminded of how much we have to look forward to in our long job search process, and I got a strong peaceful sense that I should aim to make this whole process fun, enlightening, and educational, and that everything will work out in the end.

Tuesday morning found us meeting with Sanofi Aventis, a pharmaceutical company that is headquartered in France but has large operations in South East Asia. They were very interested in our 5 Chinese speakers but seemed to have a lot less interest in the rest of us, and we came away feeling disappointed. The afternoon most of us had free, with no presentations scheduled, so we split off to take advantage of vacation time. Some people went to eat lunch, some to go shopping, and I went home to go swimming and read my book by the pool. In the late afternoon we met for a short presenatation from the group Contact Singapore, which promotes business, tourism, and offers help to people trying to move to Singapore find jobs and accomodation.

That night my classmate Ting Ting took us to another Chinese restaurant, renowned for its white pepper crab legs. We had a lot of fun and made a complete mess of our table as bits of crab splattered everywhere. After dinner Ting Ting offered to take us to sing karaoke, and after some waffling back and forth on whether we were too tired or not, we all agreed we should go for it. We arrived with 8 people, but within an hour our group had grown to a rank of nearly 20, as friends kept calling friends to come out. We sang for hours at the top of our lungs, and all expected to be without voices the next morning.

Wednesday morning came early, and once again I was up a bit before 8 to quickly get ready and rushed downstairs to catch 5 minutes of breakfast before we had to leave. The breakfast buffet at the hotel is remarkably good, and served toast, croissants, pastries, cereals, fruit, green salad, eggs made to order, sausage, baked beans, potatoes, pancakes with maple syrup (reminded me of home), rice tortillas with curry sauce, fried rice or noodles, a vegetable stir fry, rice soup that is a sort of porridge that I’ve been told is very Singaporean, orange juice, coffee, and tea. It was one of the few free breakfast buffets that has ever made it worth it to get up early.

The morning presentation was by LVMH, which is Louis Vuitton, except in the end the presentation wasn’t actually on LVMH, it was on the company DFS, which is a company that operates duty free shopping complexes around the world. They have both free standing stores that are large department stores, as well as airport stores. We got a tour of the store and then listened to a presentation by the management and HR departments, including a girl from Kansas with a thick southern accent. It was pretty interesting, just different than our expectation.

It ended 45 minutes late, and so we didn’t get to eat lunch before we had to run across town to visit Abbott, a healthcare company that specializes in diabetes diagnostics, baby formula, and over the counter nutritional supplements such as Ensure. We sat through another presentation, but after the late night at karoake and the low blood sugar from not eating much food that day I was unsuccessful in staying attentive to the hour and a half long presentation, and my eyes closed many times.

We took a small tour of the plant and gulped down a cup of tea and some cake before we had to leave to go to Bain & Co. for the evening event. Bain, like all consulting firms, was located on the top floor of a building with an amazing view overlooking the harbor. Of all the consulting companies we’ve visited, Bain seemed to be the most chill, and the consultants we met all seemed to be easy going people who worked hard but enjoyed each other’s company as well. They were very straightforward in saying that the hours are long, but they didn’t seem like it bothered them that much. After about an hour with Bain we again rushed off to drive across town to go to an alumni meeting, where a professor from IMD was giving a lecture on the status of banks, home ownership, and currencies post crisis. His bottom line advice was that he thinks the dollar and the euro will drop, so we should be investing in Asia and in gold.

That night I stayed in to have a quiet night, although the being in bed early bit still didn’t work out. However, I hadn't signed up for any presentations the next morning, and Thursday was the only morning the whole week that I had free, so I took advantage by taking it easy and catching up on the deficit of sleep I had acquired earlier in the week. Thursday afternoon was another meeting, with Mars Foods (one of the more interesting presentations we saw), Thursday evening was a few more drinks at the skybar in the Swissotel, and Friday morning was the last serious meeting, with some of the class going to Novartis and the others going to Shell. The whole group had lunch together at a great Chinese restaurant to say goodbye, and then started to head our separate ways. A few of us attended one last meeting with a company called Talent2, which is a recruiting firm, and they gave us tips on what is different about conducting a job search in Asia as opposed to Europe. One example was that in Europe many companies prefer just a one page CV while in Asia companies usually want 2 pages or 3 if you have a lot to write about.

After our last meeting I went shopping for a few hours and got my first pedicure in nearly 6 months. During my shopping I realized why Asians have the stereotype reputation for shopping a lot - in Singapore, at least, you can't walk more than 50m without inadvertently walking into a shopping mall, and most locals use the passageways in the shopping malls to traverse the city so they can walk in air conditioning instead of in the heat. In that kind of environment, consumption temptations surround you at every turn.

Most people flew on to their next destination Friday night, but those of us who were left went out together to a bar in Clarke Quay that had a live band. My flight was leaving at noon the next day.
 
After a week in Singapore, I discovered that I liked the city. It is warm and humid year round, which I love because I hate winter. It is clean and safe, and the people are so diverse that I never felt out of place. The taxis are abundant and cheap, and so offer a way to get around easily if you don’t own a car. It feels small but there is a lot of activity, and more shopping than you could ever want or imagine. I will definitely be pursuing a job there as a possibility in my search.
 
 

Breakfast at the hotel.

Getting gift bags from Electronic Arts (EA).

Chilling at INSEAD's campus.

Meeting with Boston Consulting Group.

The view from BCG's office was stunning.

Dinner at the place recommended by Ting Ting.

The famous crab legs.

Playing with the tendon on the claw.

More playing with our food.

The view outside the restaurant.

Our karoake room.

Singing up a storm!

Waiting in the lobby to see DFS.

Walking around inside DFS.

Visiting Abbott.

The view from Bain's office.

Speaking with the Mars M&M.

One last view of the city at night before we left.