First of all, let me assure you that I am not standing on
anyone's side. Technically, I am not a local, I am a Canadian
born Chinese, both parents are Malaysians from Sarawak but I have
stayed in Singapore for more than 10 years and had received my
Singapore citizenship in that time.
While I am sure some of you are sore from the fact that I
am a Singaporean who did not serve NS, let me assure you that I
have nothing but the utmost respect for the Singaporens who had
built this country into what it is today.
So let me share with you a disturbing trend that I observed
recently.
I work for a local company that is a subcon for one of
the ISPs, we are the frontline helpdesk assisting the ISP's
customer with any technical support. After being with the company
for over 8 years, I had worked my way into the middle
management of the Operation department.
Now I am sure, if anyone of you had called technical support
before, you would find that most are staffed by FTs. 6 years ago,
mostly by Pinoys, 3 years ago, mostly by Indonesians and recently,
Burmese. Out of our staff of 60 customer service officers, we
have never had more than 2 locals working there at any one
time.
While many are eager to blame the employer for this
problem, I would like to share my experience on the recent
recruiting drive.
Recently, 3 positions opened up for our department. After
preliminary screening by my HR department, 40 candidates are
shortlisted for interview by me. 30 locals and 10 FTs.
Now, this is great news for me as I do prefer hiring locals
over FTs. Please understand that this is not a personal choice,
as I said before I am not pro-local or pro-FT.
My preference in hiring locals are unfortunately due to the fact
that most of our customers are racist. Nearly half our calls start
off with "Are you a Singaporean" asked by our racists customers and
these racist customers insist on being served by locals
only. As we do not lie to our customers, the 2 locals out of
our 60 member staff usually handles half the workload.
OK, back to our main story, the interviews.
1 - only 4 out of the 30 locals showed up for the interview.
10 out of 10 FTs were present.
2 - highest qualification level for local is NTC cert with
asking salary of over S$2000
minimum qualification level for FTs is Degree, granted, I
myself do not really trust overseas degree (I had a PhD Burmese guy
from the University of Rangoon who does rubbish work, fired him
before his probation was over) but some of the FTs actually have
NTU, NUS degrees. FTs asking salary is around S$1200-S$1500
range.
My boss (a born in Singapore, Singaporean) of course insist on
getting FTs. But after reminding him of our racist customers,
he relented and decide to get one Singaporean.
Come first day of work, the other 2 FTs showed up for work on
time but the local is missing. After a few hours, we finally manage
to contact him. He told us he had accepted another job and he would
not be coming to work for us.
In conclusion, I got 3 new FTs as my staff.
Looking at this, is it really the employer's fault?
Would you not say that the locals need to rethink
their attitude problem?