boys and girls, be prepared to be multi-skilled and to take up
jobs you might not be specifically trained to do. the world is
changing:
Careers
An evolution takes root
Global changes pushing a large number of Singaporeans to work in
jobs outside their degrees; further shifts ahead.
By Seah Chiang Nee, littlespeck.com
Jan 6, 2007
AFTER returning with a Master's in mass communications in
Australia, Phyllis fretted as she shot off one job application
letter after another.
She had heard horror stories about the tough market here and
worried that she would be unemployed for some time. To her
surprise, she landed her first job within two weeks and discovered
a career trend.
Her job, however, had nothing to do with what she had expected when
she first went to Melbourne six years earlier, which was
journalism, advertising or public relations.
She made it as a junior executive at a beach hotel on the
flourishing island of Sentosa.
What she and many Malaysians seeking jobs here have discovered in
recent years is a growing disconnect between their university
degrees and subsequent careers as a result of the changing global
economy.
It merely follows the trend in the developed world as old
businesses disappear, sometimes overnight, and new ones spring up,
creating problems for graduates with an inflexible job
expectation.
My friends son who graduated in civil engineering from one of
Americas top colleges, for example, is now teaching in a secondary
school instead of working in construction.
Lawyers have become journalists or musicians and doctors are now
managers. An IT graduate I befriended is a professional
photographer and a few trained biologists have done well in
sales.
Cases of people working in jobs unrelated to their training have
become so common that interviewers have stopped asking candidates
questions like: Why should a trained scientist like you want to
work as a junior executive with us?
In the past, parents used to send their children to study
accountancy, law or engineering, the so-called secure careers, and
see them move single-mindedly into these professions.
A doctor was then a doctor, a biologist generally worked in the lab
and a civil engineer, more often then not, would end up wearing a
hard hat square pegs in square holes, so to speak.
Scattered stories of graduates working outside their studies have
been around for some time, but the numbers really took off around
the mid or late-90s.
The reason was two-fold: the large loss of industrial jobs to
countries like China and India, and new economic demands that cause
some jobs to disappear and others to flourish.
People were also responding to Singapores own economic
restructuring to move into higher technology and services that
required retraining and reorganising of the labour market.
The economic downturns of Sept 11 (2001) and the SARS crisis (2003)
caused large unemployment and career dislocation.
In the first half of 2001, for instance, four in 10 of the 9,000
people retrenched were executives and 16,500 tertiary-educated
Singaporeans were jobless by September. This resulted in
professionals having to move into new unrelated work.
In the years ahead, multiple skills and career flexibility will be
a fact of life as a result of further changes. Careers will blow
hot and cold due to rising and falling demands.
In some years, skills like IT, construction or accountancy would be
in demand; in others, especially now, it would be personal banking,
healthcare or teaching.
Any professional sticking to one career choice or skill stands the
chance of being left behind, said an executive head-hunter.
Whether working in Singapore or abroad, the ideal 21st Century
graduate will be one who is anchored to one or two disciplines but
who has also covered a spread of diverse elective courses.
To its credit, before the world economy changed, the government
argued that economic restructuring had to begin in education.
Today, eight out of 10 Singaporean students get post-secondary
education that is steadily moving into a multi-faceted
approach.
Firstly, it abandoned the old exam-oriented model and adopted a
large part of the American system.
The two biggest universities, National University of Singapore and
Nanyang Technological University, now allow students to pursue
courses outside their immediate fields of specialisation.
This is filtering downwards to schools. By end-2007, upper
secondary students in 40 schools will be offered 40-hour courses in
five polytechnics.
We'll cover subjects like tourism services (accommodation, food
and beverage, and tour planning), IT, Media and Design, Chemical
and Life Sciences as well as Game Design, an official
explained.
This will move to the pre-teens with the opening of Singapores
first primary school of the future in 2008 (with 14 more by 2015)
to prepare children for a life dominated by technology and
information.
We want to teach children from young to be comfortable with the
latest technology, said a senior official.
Increasingly, students will be offered a wider range of courses and
electives, allowing school dropouts to have a better crack at a
meaningful job.
Some special schools are moving into non-academic studies. A case
in point is North Light School where students can be seen playing
games on Xbox 360 consoles during classes.
At Townsville Primary, a small supermarket has been set up, at
which children take turns to work giving them lessons in
arithmetic and working skills.
When the two S$10bil (RM22.9bil) casino resorts open in 2010,
further career shifts will likely follow. You may well find a
medical practitioner working in a casino and I dont mean in a
clinic either.
