Data Mining

Since it’s on again, I went to the Career 2009 & Education 2009 exhibition at Suntec today.

I do this almost every year and I must say that it’s almost the same as usually. Despite the talk in the media that there are over 10,000 jobs on offer, the fair is more of an education fair than a career fair

Nothing unusual as that’s the case most of the time. One new thing I immediately discovered is that this time you have to register before you can enter. My immediate question is why!

Why does a Career & Education exhibition required people to register before they can go in? Not only does it make no sense, I have to question where does the data go to. It can’t be to the exhibitors as most of them are schools and companies who have no need for the data. That leaves the jobs seeking companies, but almost all of them require you to register with their own website anyway so they don’t really need the registration at the door.

Clearly this is data mining. Personally I don’t really mind it that much but I question how and why would the biggest career and education fair in Singapore (and in the region) allow this to happen. I hope it will not happen again next year.