Local employers struggling to attract talent

This is a survey conducted by an agency, Willie Towers Watson. Two out of three employers are struggling to attract talent.

Now I understand why the kopitiam towkay is complaining he could not find talents for his business. He is looking for a doctorate chemist to make his kopi better, a hygiene expert to clean his plates and cups and toilets. The ‘everything $2’ shop is looking for an internationally qualified and experienced marketeer to bring his business from Ang Mo Kio to Tuas. He is expanding to every corner of Singapore.

Heard got Town Councils looking for internationally trained sanitation engineers to raise the standard of sweeping floors. The wet market also looking for engineers to computerize the lighting and floor cleaning, to be automated but also could not find the talents they needed.

With all the local operators running local businesses going hi tech, to compete across town council boundaries for talents, maybe that is why there is such a big shortage of talent for hire. Even HRs must be foreigners, with foreign or international experience, to be good enough to do the job of hiring cleaners. Administrators also must have international experience and Masters or Ph Ds.

All this will add up to the pressure for the already dearth in talent city state. Of course the said survey was talking about a small specialized field, talents in a few specific and specialized professions, not all sundries. It is not that all employers are struggling for talents like the kopitiam owners, $2 shops and wet markets, the survey was talking about cloud computing, mobile app designing, science, technology, engineering, mathematics etc etc. Wait a minute, aren’t our NUS and NTU the best among the world’s best in engineering and science and technology? Why are they not producing the talents needed? Or these graduates are not better than funny graduates from funny universities in the third world countries that are now flooding Raffles Place and MBFC, or even worse, not better than scintillating degrees printed on genuine quality papers from degree mill universities?

This is progress when the kopitiams and wet markets are also looking for post graduate holders as employees. Of course this cannot be lah. Only stupid people will take this seriously. But it is serious when anything called foreign talent is a talent and better than the local PMETs and got hired over local PMETs. 

Shit, I am also starting to confuse myself and instead of talking about Singaporean PMETs unconsciously started to think ‘local’ with no respect to Singaporeans and non Singaporeans. I must have been brainwashed after the daily bombarding from the media, that it is all about ‘locals’ not about Singaporeans. This is how powerful the media can be. All the media need to do is to keep repeating something until it becomes second nature, like it is the new truth, something unacceptable becomes acceptable. This is like the CPF, your money but if they keep repeating that it is not your money, the daft Sinkies will get used to it and give up asking for the return of their money in the CPF.