Jenny Cheah reckons that she would have become a banker, had not it been for a DFS recruitment talk.
Not wanting to eat alone in the university canteen, she had tagged along with her girlfriends to the talk and was blown away by the charisma of one of DFS’ C-suites, Saw Phaik Hwa.
“She came across as someone who was very dynamic and powerful. At that time, there weren’t many successful role models who were female, so she was such a breath of fresh air,” said Cheah, who was then a business administration undergraduate at the National University of Singapore. She promptly signed up for DFS’ management trainee programme along with her friends.
She was the last to be called up for an interview. Then she lost her voice due to a weekend of hawking an industrial aerosol for clogged pipes at a trade convention. Her interview lasted only 15 minutes compared to everyone else’s 60-minute slots and she thought she had blown it. But she got the job.