Govt to look into doing more to strengthen job market information

Tuesday, October 22, 2013

I thought the concept of Job Portal could be extended to normal job applicants like PMET and blue collar workers.

The job portal can do online tracking, matching of candidates and employers looking for job applicants.

The Job Portal should also be tweaked to track hiring and ensure that applicants are gainfully employed and not underemployed so that their skillsets and potential are maximised.

Employed a person gainfully that commensurate with his skillsets and experience - will bring higher productivity to the company and to the Economy.

Eg. if a person possess the skillsets and knowledge to win and implement a $30 million project, the company and the Economy will gain a positive Economy Output of $30 million.

However if he is underemployed and is given a job that bring $1 million to $2 million project, then it is no longer productive to the company and to the Economy - because it bring a net loss of $30 million - $2 million = $28 million as Economic Output.

This is "Deductivity" and not "Productivity" - being under-employed and did not exploit and maximise his full potential.

Saturday, January 9, 2016

ricky l

The WDA job portal provide a bird eye view of the job opportunities as well as the job applicants for the entire Economy (not all will be captured because some companies will still go through private portal or employ through their own means).

But WDA job portal is a useful tool for Economic planning, skillset planning, manpower planning, sector-specific planning etc to resolve job unemployment problem if use effectively.

ricky l
0users liked this commentThumbs UpThumbs Down0users disliked this commentRicky L • a second agoRemove

Wonder what is the success rate of the WDA Job Portal in recruiting Singaporeans - is there publish statistics on how effective is this Job Portal ?
Also if there is success rate, how long does successful candidates keep their jobs?
How many of these jobs are eventually offered to foreigners vis-a-vis Singaporeans?

ricky l
0users liked this commentThumbs UpThumbs Down0users disliked this commentRicky L • a second agoRemove

Another assessment - a rough count of the WDA job portal is about 15,000 jobs to 30,000 jobs for PMETs.
9,000 Singaporean PMETs are unemployed. With 15,000 jobs to 30,000 jobs in the job portal, there should be no problem making 9,000 unemployed Singaporean PMETs employed - but this is not the case.
Many who uses the job portal does not have a positive response or no response.
Can you deduce what happens to all the job vacancies?
Is this misinformation to the Government or should the Government look closely at the situation and try to improve the unemployed situation for Singaporean PMETs?

Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say says that the National Jobs Bank can help provide the basic platform to bring the "supply of jobs" and the "supply of workers" together. 

• By Olivia Siong, Channel NewsAsia
• Posted 05 Mar 2016 22:22
 
• Updated 05 Mar 2016 23:09

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SINGAPORE: The Government will look into doing more to strengthen job market information, so job seekers are more aware of where vacancies are, and employers know where to find workers.

Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say said this in response to one of the suggestions that emerged from an SGfuture dialogue session that he facilitated on Saturday (Mar 5).

Participants at the dialogue were discussing their experiences with the Manpower Minister, with some raising suggestions ranging from encouraging an entrepreneurial spirit among mid-career workers, to tackling imperfect information in the job market.

This is an area that Mr Lim said the Government can do more in.

"They felt one of the biggest frustrations is this imperfect information,” said Mr Lim, speaking to media after the event. “So when workers are looking for jobs, they have no idea where are the jobs. Then when companies are looking for workers, they have no idea where are the workers available.

“I would say, this in a way, is one area where we can do a lot more to strengthen the market information so that job seekers and the employers looking for workers can create a platform. So they can know the source of supply, the source of demand much better.

“And I think we do have a foundation for that, because over the last one and a half years or so, we have established this National Jobs Bank. I think the National Jobs Bank can provide the basic platform for us to nurture further into a platform whereby job seekers, as well as employers looking for workers, can come together, become a marketplace, bringing the supply of jobs and supply of workers coming together.

“In other words, can we enable more data analytics to be performed using the jobs bank as a platform?"

EXPERIENCING THE JOB HUNT

While it may be the weekend, the 65 participants of the session were “put to work” in a make believe job market, designed to help them understand the challenge of job-matching in the real world. Each took on a role either as job seeker or employer.

Job-seekers were given a card stating their capabilities in four areas, including their health and technical skills. Each capability was rated between one and three stars. Employers also had cards listing out job requirements. A job is a match if what the job-seeker has is equal to or more than what the job requires.

Participants, pretending to be job seekers and employers, were given cards to try and match capability requirements for specific jobs. (Photo: Olivia Siong) 

However, things as in life, are not so simple.

For example, participants had to deal with a mismatch in expectations or a company going bust. They also got to experience the plus side of training or job re-design.

"It's really very real,” said 32-year-old Smith Leong, who runs a start-up. “So a lot of times, people come into our company, they ask for a job, they expect a lot, especially fresh grads, we call them the ‘strawberry generation’, they expect a lot out of it. But sometimes they just don't fit the build in terms of skillset, or in terms of mentality as well."

"As employees, we should be more open. In terms of sometimes adjusting our expectations and also constantly looking at upgrading ourselves," said 45-year-old Karen Hee, a consultant. 

- CNA/ek