Angry Jobseekers Slam “Largest” Kedah Career Fair for Scamming Their Money

It’s hard being an unemployed jobseeker out there so you try to remedy the situation by attending career fairs. You hope to score the job of your dreams but when you find out that it is a scam, then that’s just rubbing salt into your wound.

Source: facebook

Well, that’s exactly what happened to this group of jobseekers recently. According to several viral posts on social media and Mstar, a career fair that was held at TH Hotel in Alor Setar, Kedah from 30 September to 1 October suffered severe backlash. 

The fair which advertised itself as “The Biggest Career Expo in the North Zone 2017” was organised by JobSifu.com, a career portal and was eagerly awaited by many hopeful applicants. However, when the day arrived, they were sorely disappointed because it was not like any other job fair that they had experienced.

Source: facebook

Source: facebook

This is allegedly what took place during the expo:

1. Applicants were asked to choose five companies they were interested to apply for. After that, applicants had to purchase “application forms” at RM10 per piece as they would help them submit the application forms. That’s RM50 per person! These were also forms from Job Sifu themselves and not the respective companies’ forms.
2. When the applicant could proceed for an interview, they were shocked to find out that the interviewers were not even from the companies but were Job Sifu’s staff. Apparently, this was a “screening” process before they would send the resume and application form to the company. An interview “script” was also prepared.
3. Once they entered the hall, they were surprised to see that there were hardly any companies’ booths but were mostly all booths selling products and services.

Source: facebook

Source: facebook

Not only that, the queues to enter the hall were super long and the applicants had to stand under the hot sun while waiting. There were also jobseekers who had travelled all the way from Kuala Lumpur just because they wanted to look for a job. It would probably be all worth it, if they had an actual chance of getting in a good company.

One of the hopefuls there summed it up perfectly, “Job Sifu is not a job fair, it’s just like a carnival and funfair actually.”

Source: facebook

These angry applicants took to Facebook to share their woes and slammed Job Sifu for their so-called ‘career fair’. Awin, one of the hopeful jobseekers interviewed by Mstar said, “I stood there in the hot sun queuing for two hours even though I had a fever. I told myself that I had to be strong but then I found out that I had to pay for the forms and these forms would be posted on our behalf to the companies. They should have told us that we needed to pay before this.”

It appears that after all these backlash, Job Sifu has deactivated their Facebook page but a new one has popped up in its place with less than 10 likes so far.

Source: facebook

Utusan reported that the Kedah state government has denied all knowledge of this fair, even though the banner had the image of Kedah Menteri Besar Datuk Seri Ahmad Bashah Md Hanipah on it. Although he had received an invitation to attend, he had declined to go.

Hopefully those poor applicants can manage to find jobs soon!

Also read: Most Malaysian Fresh Graduates Unemployed Because Expect RM6,500 Salary