:: SourceCon 2007

This by far is the greatest development in the world of sourcing - SourceCon 2007. This is a conference which will be MC'ed by non other than the legendary Jim Stroud whose video you can watch below.

SourceCon 2007 is a global conference and meant for sourcers and researchers. This conference will be held in Atlanta during 11th - 13th Sept and the list of speakers reads who is who of the recruiting space.

Here are just to name a few of them -
* Jim Stroud - Searchologist
* Amybeth Hale - Research Goddess (Still in training)
* Shally Steckerl - Founder and chief Cybersleuth of www.jobmachine.net
* Glenn Gutmacher - Recruiting Researcher







The Recruiters Lounge - Who is behind SourceCon? from Jim Stroud on Vimeo

:: Singapore recruiting trend '06-07

In an article published by Online recruiters directory call 'Recruiters in 2007' - a survey report, it was found that for most recruiters the biggest challenge they faced in 2006 was - finding qualified candidates.

This was especially true for the IT sector and most recruiters surveyed echoed the same sentiment and that the market has turned to a candidate driven market and employers were faced with greater demands from hiring perspective.

From what I've seen in Q1 of 2007 the trend seems to be pretty much the same as 2006 but at a much more acute pace.

Today, Singapore market, say unlike 2-3 years back is flooded with mushrooming recruitment firms and the competition for a share of the same pie is developing into a very fascinating affair.

We have the same group of recruiters and resourcers finding and talking to the same group of candidates and at times the same candidate ends up being represented to the same client couple of times.

This definitely does not bode well for both the candidate and the agent. The fight for the same group of talents ultimately resulted in some cases in the candidate holding on to 2 or more offers at the same time.

This truly is the candidate market! And I believe that this trend will continue in the same vein at least for some more years to come and I say this because Singapore is proving itself to be a preferred location to set up and conduct business for many of the employers in Europe and America.

I was talking to a senior recruiter with an Australia based recruiting firm here in Singapore who incidentally is recruiting for a leading bank and he confidently declared -

"Joe, I've market mapped Singapore and I know and have spoken to most of the candidates here and the same goes for India too and I am only sourcing for candidates now from non-traditional and unlikely sources/locations."

He continued to awe me when he nonchalantly declared that he has more than 80 jobs at any given time and he simply does not have the time to do justice to all the requirements and he needs extra hands.

He might have exaggerated a wee bit there but there is more truth in what he commented. Because just after a few days of receiving this great insight I was commanded in no uncertain terms by one of the recruitment manager in a leading European bank-

"We've seen all the candidates there is to see in Singapore and India and we are now focusing our attention on attracting talents from Australia or UK".

And that’s exactly what we got into doing by releasing advertising campaign down under and buying new job boards in London.

Not only do I see shortages of qualified candidates but I also observe an increasing shortage of experience recruiters by the number of calls that I continue to get from headhunters and also by the way I struggle myself to recruit consultants and recourcers for my own organization.

As we continue to operate within many limitations and demands of the market we evolve into being a specialised and effective recruiter and this is necessary in order to stay ahead of competition.

One area that we can all look forward to in the coming days is gaining success in honing our skills in international recruitment and in diversity recruitment.

After all that is what the clients and the market increasingly wants us to be and as a recruiter we have no choice but evolves with the changing times.

*** happy hunting folks***

:: HR directors in Singapore paid double compared to India and China

HR directors located in South Korea are better off than those in Hong Kong and Singapore, with the highest average base pay of US$175,800 (S$266,137), Mercer’s Global Pay Summary found.

Singapore at US$131,800 lags Hong Kong by US$ 25,000, but beats Japan (US$129,100). Singapore HR director’s average annual base salary is about double of what their counterparts in the booming economies of China (Shanghai) and India are making. HR directors in Shanghai and India are paid US$68,179 and US$55,790 respectively.

The US leads in base salary of HR directors at US$190,000, followed by the UK at US$172,392 and Germany at US$169,032.

:: Talent Plus @ Singapore

Another addition to the ever growing recruitment space in Singapore, the latest one being Talent Plus (Not related to Talent 2) who recently inaugrated their Singapore office on the 8th of May.

Talent Plus is a premier global human resources consulting firm with over 200 world-class, quality-growth-oriented clients.

Talent Plus’ design is to have a full staff assisting in building Talent-Based OrganizationsSM (TBOSM) from the office in Singapore, deploying them throughout Asia with current clients and others in the region who share an interest in recruiting, selecting, developing and promoting their best.

Talent Plus already have couple of big client that they are servicing from their US office.

My best wishes to Talent Plus for a successful operation here in Singapore.

::Yahoo to grow Singapore hub

Search engine giant Yahoo plans to "more than double" its workforce in Singapore, which may become the comapny's hub for Asia.

This news comes on the back of the Microsoft + Yahoo merger which had positive influence on Yahoo's share jumping to 17% in the premarket trading while Microsoft slipped to 1.5%. But for many outside observers this merger has a lesser chance of seeing a happy ending due to the sheer size of the two giants and also the cultural and technology differences.

Obviously this merger could not have been even dreamt by many during pre Google emergence, however lately both Micsrosoft and Yahoo have been feeling the heat from Google with Google's aggressive business expansion/strategy.

Microsoft currently trails both Yahoo and Google in the lucrative and growing business of Web search.

The growth of Google still leaves me with awe and admiration and with their increasing portfolio of innovative brand of products both in the market, in the pipepline and in research stage it is no wonder Google is where it is today - Innovation!

:: Google@Singapore

At long last the enevitiable happened and Google put paid to months of speculation by opening its regional office in Singapore yesterday.

I was approached by a lady from outside Singapore 3 months ago and she wanted me to represent her for job with Google Singapore. I did some research and found that Google at that time was still contemplating and have not decided yet on setting up their regional office here.

To me Google in Singapore was pretty exciting and I am very glad that Google is here today. It does good for Singapore as a whole because this will defintely boost Singapore image as one of the place to set up regional office.

And for some in the recruiting fraternity, it will do wonders on their resume to be able to declare some day that they were instrumental in recruiting for Google in Singapore.

:: Fair Employment Practices in Singapore - guidelines

The Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices in Singapore is composed of Singapore National Employer Federation (employers' representative), National Trade Union Council (Unions' representative) and Ministry of Manpower (governments' representative).

The alliance has come up with recommendations on how to conduct dismissals and retrenchments as part of the Tripartite Guidelines on Fair Employment Practices. The alliance also produces guidelines in the form of a booklet as part of the fight against discrimination at work place.

Singapore is a multi racial and multi religious contry and comprises of native Chinese, native Malays and native Indians predominantly Tamils. Often, as seen on various media publications workplace discrimination is a phenomenon quite wide spread and does exisit.

Against this back drop the Tripartite Alliance has produced guidelines, which by no means is a legislation but just a recommendation. It is for individual members of the Employer federation or those outside of the Tripartite framework to implement this recommendation.

This is similar with recommendations of the National Wage Council, which is again composed of the three alliances. Salaries, Annual Wage Supplement and Bonuses are to be devised within a certain percentages and thereby protecting both workers and employers alike when economy downturn occurs. This recommendation if practice will protect the employees from retrenchment by having their variable components adjusted and their basic wage protected.

Over the next two years, the Alliance will adopt a concerted, promotional and educational approach to raise awareness and share knowledge on fair employment practices. The Alliance looks forward to the support of all employers, unions and employees in making Singapore a fair and inclusive place to work, contributing to a resilient and dynamic economy.

More details avaiable at www.mom.sg

::Recruiting from non-traditional source

The poaching of private bankers and a drying pool of good relationship managers have prompted at least one bank to start recruiting older Singaporeans with no experience in banking.

In what is believed to be an industry first, HSBC is now eyeing professionals aged between 38 and 50 years old for its premier banking arm. The Hong Kong-based bank is wooing them on the premise that they know enough people — and have enough life experience — to bring in the money - todayonline.com

I guess this was exactly what the hiring managers at one of the leading investment bank were trying to impress upon us when we were invited to attend a presentation on a new talent management solutions which the bank was implementing.

Recruiting from non-traditional source using non-conventional methods are increasingly becoming more of a reality rather than a fad. This practice however could increasingly find relevance in many industries wherever there is a scarcity of talents.

Take for instance, as most investment banks prepares to move their development and application support to APAC and India the economy of demand-supply will come to play at some point in time. To counter this imbalance hiring managers will be increasingly compel to scout for resources outside of the common pool.

The key here is to “Hire for Attitude and Train for Skills” – this cliché generally does not go wrong.

Some examples which may be applicable within the investment bank are –

• Level1 support engineers: Instead of looking for 5-6 years banking IT project experience hire 2-3 years if not fresher with good attitude and communication skills and provide an in-house training on the business domain.Reasoning: Since L1 involves mainly phone and email support one does not require a seasoned software programmer to man the desk.
• C/C++ systems programmers: There is a huge shortage of good C/C++ programmers and that’s true even for India. The solution here is to recruit fresh graduates and provide them training for a year or two before putting them onto projects. Reasoning: Instead of relying on a market pool which is drying up it is rather sensible to proactively train fresh minds and incubate them for any eventuality.
• Business Analyst(BA): BA’s are breeds apart. Not everyone can be a successful BA. And not many BA’s are available in the market. To excel in this role one must have a combination of good business knowledge and understands full SDLC and at the same time communicate with stake holders and translates business requirements into technical specs, etc. Reasoning: Instead of wasting months trying to find the perfect BA which does not exist, hire someone with good BA experience from industry/domain that is relatively closer and train her on the required business domain.

These are just few examples off the cuff, I am sure options are aplenty if only we, meaning hiring managers are prepared to think outside of their comfort zone and explore the available talent pools around them.

As for us recruiters, we need to progressively partner our clients and manage their expectations at every single stage of the recruitment process and constantly provide our clients with realistic market feedbacks.

This will in turn give them the required time to make necessary changes in their talent management strategies and streamline their effort to the options that are viable and prudent and most of all in line with the current market condition thus allowing them to stay ahead of competition.

*** Happy Hunting folks***

::Two out of five workers in Singapore are foreigners

Singapore – Two out of every five workers in Singapore are foreigners, according to the latest research by Watson Wyatt.

The survey found that 19% out of the 43% foreigners in the workforce comprised permanent residents. While the poll made no distinction between S-pass holders and employment pass holders, the survey had a total headcount of 80,000, and is said to be “representative of the larger working population in Singapore”.

Out of the 79 companies surveyed, only 14% of companies had a different pay structure for foreigners, with a percentage of premium increase of 10% to 20%.

Source: By Lisa Cheong Human Resources Online

::10 keys to being a successful recruiter

I. Focus on relationship-building rather than on resumes
In recruiting, who you know is as important as what you know – and the more people who know, like, trust, and respect you, the better the reputation you’ll build for yourself and your company. That reputation will translate, down the road, into more great candidates and successful hires. So cultivate your candidates and your contacts, treat them fairly and courteously, and do good turns for them wherever you can. Base your relationships on sincere good will and long-term cooperation, rather than on short-term gains, and you’ll establish relationships that will benefit you for years to come.

II. Establish a network of top-notch candidates
You won’t find the people you need simply by depending on job boards and resume banks. Instead, build your own network of great candidates, and add to it weekly. Your network will provide you with three essentials: great employees to satisfy your demanding hiring managers, referrals to other stellar candidates, and valuable information when you have questions.

III. Use technology in as many ways as you can
To recruit effectively, one must embrace technology. In today’s recruitment scene the importance of technology cannot be said enough. From drafting JD’s to posting jobs to sourcing, shortlisting and arranging interviews to networking on the internet we can see the use of technology at every stage and sans technology it becomes rather difficult to even imagine, considering the pace of recruitment needs these days.

IV. Understand the need for speed at all levels of the recruiting process
A successful recruiter posts open jobs quickly, begins networking with contacts immediately, schedules phone screens and interviews with top candidates right away, and extends offers to winning candidates without delay. Every day you shave off your hiring process doubles or triples your chances of success.

V. Recruit all the time
There’s no such thing as a 40-hour week in recruiting! Instead, be willing to spend extra time and effort to research where the talent is hiding, and then go there to start building relationships. This means talking to people every where – airplanes, professional events, conferences, you name it. It means hanging out at happy hours, attending charity events, maybe even going to karaoke bars. It also means joining recruiting groups, and using recruiting forums where you can network with others willing to share advice and offer help.

VI. Develop and in-depth understanding of your company and the jobs you need to fill
When you know your stuff, your candidates will see you s smart and savvy – and they’ll get a good impression of your company as well. Develop an extensive knowledge of your company’s (and your competitors’) products and customers, as well as your (and their) strengths and weaknesses.

VII. Get everyone involved in the recruiting process
A successful recruiter enlists hiring managers and other employees in the effort to get jobs filled. How? By encouraging every employee to spread the word about how great the company is, and by educating hiring managers on the current job marketplace, the market value of certain skill sets, and the need to move quickly to capture good employees.

VIII. Measure your efforts
To refine your recruiting efforts, you need to know what’s working and what isn’t. How many positions did you fill last month? What was the time to fill? How many interviews did you conduct? What was your interview-to-hire ration? Use your results to fine-tune your recruiting process and make changes where they’re needed.

IX. Develop strong, sales, marketing, and communication skills
Huge part of recruiting involves marketing your company and your job openings to your candidates, and marketing your candidates to your hiring managers. As such it is very important that one understand the art of sales opening, negotiating and closing.

X. Use multiple recruiting resources
A successful recruiter doesn’t rely on a single source to find the best talent. By combining an in-house database, employee referral programs, outside recruiting agencies, advertising, campus recruiting efforts, and online recruiting, you’ll maximize your recruiting power.

Source: Recruiting & Retaining Employees for Dummies by Jennifer Brugh and Paula Manning

::Cartoon series 1

"We are never going to reach our recruitment targets if we let a little thing like death get in the way.."
Cartoon source: www.cartoonstock.com

Blogreview: John Chow dot com

I stumbled upon John's blog while searching for related blogs on SEO. Am glad I found his blog for the simple reason that I consider him a successful blogger, a legend and just reading his blog does encourage me to shed any inhibitions that chain me and gives me the courage to dream.

John Chow dot Com is blog that helps you make money online. It’s a great read and he’ll link to you if you review his blog.

Just to give you an idea as to how successful his blog is try observing the number of comments that he gets for his posts. Its mind boggling, its even humbling.

His blog is all about making money online and he is one of the best in the business. But more importantly he is generous, resourceful and industrious and I say that because he is not afraid to share his knowledge and his success receipe to his readers. That’s the hallmark of a great man!

:: JobWatch | AT&T to add 120 jobs here this year

Source: TODAY, Friday, March 23, 2007 by Ashraf Safdar

United States telco giant AT&T plans to expand its Singapore capabilities, adding 120 managerial and technical jobs over the next year. Singapore will also become the main service and support hub for the region, offering multilingual, round-the-clock help.

:: Internet sourcing techniques

Internet recruiting is slowly but surely catching on in this part of the world. Time is not far off when we will have to increasingly employ internet search for finding resumes, but of course this is besides the traditional method of sourcing.

I’ve been doing a bit of research on the net and managed to compile some of the most commonly used techniques for internet recruiting and am glad to share this with you.

Before we try and understand the techniques for internet recruiting let us first understand what are the search engines mostly used by experience recruiters.

Some recommended search engines on the Web:

• http://www.Google.com
• http://www.live.com
• http://www.Yahoo.com
• http://www.MetaCrawler.com
• http://www.Atlavista.com
• http://www.Dogpile.com

The search strings for each of these search engines will vary and therefore to maximize your search please do read the tutorials in advance from the respective search engines site.

What techniques to use and when and under what circumstances to use will depend on how well you master each techniques. To achieve optimum success one must also have a fairly good idea about the recruitment industry, the specific job requirement, the key words within the requirement and also differentiate the "mandatory skills" from "good to have skills."

Some of the most common internet search techniques are as given below.

X-RAYING:
A method of looking inside a specific web site to find what's there. Using this technique, recruiters can find documents and web pages that aren't directly accessible via links on the main public home page. When you 'x-ray' a website, you effectively get to examine every document that resides there so long as they are not behind firewalls or password protected.
Example: To find any “software engineer” - could be a document/file or a word/phrase within a document that resides within the website Oracle.com.
In Altavista search - host:oracle.com AND software engineer
In Google search - site:www.oracle.com AND software engineer

FLIPPING:
Flipping is an effective method used to find the relationships between web pages based on how they are hyperlinked together. This search is especially useful for finding people who have links to the company or have worked for a specific company.
Example: To find any “software engineer” – could be a document/file or word/phrase that links back to Oracle.com.
In Altavista search - link:oracle.com AND software engineer
In Google search - link:www.oracle.com AND software engineer

PEELING BACK:
As the name suggest Peeling back is the process of “retracing the path” of the url especially when one gets an Error 404 (File not found). This process is engage so as to locate the information elsewhere on the site or locate the specific “root” folder where one can find similar or additional data specific or related to the search.
Example: By peeling back or keying backspace starting from the point where the url ends we can then access the people link from the ce.uta.edu homepage and find the names of all the faculty members.
url: http://www-ce.uta.edu/people/faculty/hoyos/research.html

HARVESTING OR MINING:
Harvesting involves reviewing a document, such as a resume or home page, and finding key words, links, references and locations that assist with subsequent searches.

SEARCH STRINGS USING BOOLEAN KEYS:
By constructing complex search strings and conducting the search in major search engines one can hone in on the exact information/resources with great accuracy.

Some of the commonly used key words for a search string are given as below.
Common resume Words: Resume, Homepage, CV, Vitae, Bio, Qualifications, Objective, Experience, Education, References, "Work History", "Technical skills", "Project duration"
Common words to avoid: Submit, Opening, Recruiter, Send, Benefits, Requirements, Opportunity, Apply, Job, Jobs, Careers, Eoe, Reply, "my client".

Example on how to construct a complex search strings:
Requirement: A project manager with PMI certification or a 6 Sigma black belt having atleast 5 years of project management within an Investment bank in the areas of Equities connectivity or trading software development. Must have good technical skills in J2EE, EJB, Websphere, XML and DB2.

Search strings credit to – Glenn Gutmacher of Advanced Online Recruiting Techniques

Google:
(intitle:~cv OR inurl:~cv OR intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) "project manager" Java "investment bank" ("equities connectivity" OR trading software) -inurl:~efinancial*
Search result: 87 pages

Yahoo:
(intitle:cv OR inurl:cv OR intitle:resume OR inurl:resume) “project manager” Java "investment bank" "equities connectivity" OR trading software -eoe -opening -post -preferred -reply -send –submit
Search result: 1,740 pages

Live Search:
(intitle:cv inurl:cv intitle:resume inurl:resume) prefer:resume “project manager” Java "investment bank" "equities connectivity" trading software -job -jobs –careers
Search result: 10,038 pages

The search results from the above three searches gives us different amount of results and the task of sieving through the hundreds of pages sounds rather a dauting task. However, the strings above could still be further refined so as to achieve a much more specific results. For example by including SCJP or Sun certification or SDLC, etc I believe one can derived at a much more accurate results.

Caveat:
If you, by applying the techniques as discussed above expects resumes to pop out every time you hit the search button you might end up disappointed and even frustrated. The internet is a storehouse of information and is just an augment to a recruiting process vis-a-vis bigger and better hunting ground and not a complete substitute.

*** Happy hunting folks!***

:: 15 Things You Can Do To Protect the Environment

Well, this is rather a deviation from what I've normally been posting but I thought this post does deserve an exception to the norm. The subject on environment has always been very close and dear to my heart and the cause for cleaner environment will be what I would always like to pursue, support and advocate. Let us all join hands and make this place a better place to live in..this and the generations to come!

Here's a reprint of the public campaign issue by the Singapore Environment Council (SEC).

The Environment is by far one of the issues most of us take for granted. It's somwhat invisible, intangible and the vastness of it somehow puts people off as to where to start or how their little efforts can do any good. What most of us forget that by being Green/environmentally aware ourselves is only the beginning; we often overlook the need to influence and affect people around us to be aware and lead environmentally mindful lifestyles. We are not asking everyone to become a vegetarian, go around hugging trees or protest against hunting endangered species, the list below is a good start which we think everyone can do...

15 Things You Can Do To Protect the Environment
1. Reduce your driving (walk, bike, ride, take public transport, carpool).Choose a more fuel efficient car.

2. Don't leave your TV, computers, DVD/VCD players on standby; it uses more electricity than the little red LED light!

3. Choose more energy-efficient appliances, especially major ones like refrigerators, aircons and water heaters.

4. Recycle everything you can; newspapers, cans, glass bottles and jars, motor oil, scrap metal, etc.

5. Don't use electrical appliances for things you can easily do by hand, such as opening cans. 6. Plug off your Handphone charger when charging is completed.

7. Re-use bread bags and the bags you bring your produce home in.

8. Store food in re-usable containers, instead of plastic wrap or aluminum foil.

9. Take unwanted, re-usable items to a charitable organization or thrift shop.

10. Don't leave water running needlessly. Save some of your washing machine water. Gargle your mouth with a cup of water instead.

11. Set your aircon temperature to 24-26C instead of below 23C.

12. Turn off the lights, TV, or other electrical appliances when you are out.
13. Fill a 1.5/2L drink plastic bottle and leave it inside the WC; this will save you that same amount every time you flush the toilet.

14. Do not use the water heater on a hot afternoon! Use cold water in the washer whenever possible.

15. Print or copy on both sides of the paper. (pls use the other side of this paper!)

Pls contact Joe Lim at joe@sec.org.sg if you want them to come over to your school/org for a Free green talk; For more info on how you can save money on water and electricity at home, do visit -
http://www.everydaysuperhero.com.sg/
http://www.sec.org.sg

And if you would like to support SEC please click on this image

:: Boom in Singapore IT market – more jobs and higher pay checks!

As per the survey conducted by Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) - a rebound in the IT market in the later half of the year is expected. This is in line with the survey conducted by Manpower - which conducted a polled recently and found that over 55% of the employers said they would step up hiring in the April-June months.

The Manpower report also found that of all the 27 countries covered in the survey the Net Employment Outlook for Singapore at 53% has the brightest job prospects for the next three months, even outshining India which is at 31%.

Singapore’s economy is set to grow at 5.4 percent this year an increase from the 5.2 percent predicted in the last survey in December.

A certain feeling of positive outlook for a bullish market is felt all around for the year 2007. This ripple effect of the current good economy outlook is being felt especially in the job market.

A new and positive trend is being felt and echoed by most search firms here that 2007 will be a good year for IT boom. As more and more MNCs set up their operation here or augment their staff strength, especially amongst the investment banks, the market definitely is looking good for those who are in banking and finance sector.

According to Roger Olofsson, associate director Robert Walters as quoted in The Straits Times, IT workers can comprise up to 30 percent of the entire staff of a large MNC investment bank.

This is because of the fact that most investment banks in Singapore have segmented a large chunk of their resources to providing support to the existing applications and users and traders spread across the globe. Most of these activities used to be operated out of their office in New York or London or even Zurich.

Robert Walters also reported sharp increases in salaries in Singapore’s tech industry. These increases range from about $10,000 a year for a business solutions architect to about $100,000 a year for a chief information officer, compared to figures in 2003.

The last 2 year has seen a sharp rise in the number of IT workers coming to Singapore to join one of the investment banks here. This influx is also felt very severely in the areas of real estate. Especially in areas like Simei, Tanah Merah, Tampines and even Bedok the rental has grown to 10-30% for both HDB flats and condominiums. These areas are being preferred by many IT workers due to the fact that Changi Business Park (CBP) is situated near Singapore Expo which is at a close proximity to the above addresses.

In fact landlords these days insist on not only increasing the rental but letting out the flat to only those who are willing to sign a lease agreement for a minimum of 2 years. Fast forwarding to 2007, the scene is much worst with the real estate boom which is almost comparable to the economy boom of the early 90’s with expats willing to shell out 4k for a condominium accommodation.

Singapore is truly experiencing what to me is the beginning of good time and for most search firms here the pie is getting bigger and everyone is expected to have a share of the pie; the size and the amount of the pie largely depends on how well you position your organization in identifying and capitalizing on your core strength.

:: IT Resourcer/Recruiter opening!

Are you comfortable doing the following:

• Source for IT candidates on the net, if need be make headhunting calls
• Validate resumes that are received through job post or email responses.
• Compile long and short list of candidates
• Forward the shortlist to the consultants
  

Do you have most of the stuff as below?

• Very good with internet search
• Excellent in identifying good resumes and knowing what it is worth
• Knows how to exploit the various tools of jobsites such as monster.com and jobs.db
• Understands Boolean search strings
• Recruitment experience in technologies/domain/areas – Infrastructure, Banking and finance, software product development, SAP, Project management
• Good knowledge of Singapore local IT market both for contract and permanent

If you fit the bills as listed above and you love to work in a multinational company along side some cool dudes from successful search firm backgrounds and at the same time have lots of stress-free work life and earn above industry standard pay you might as well write into this id – neitham@gmail.com .
I will then give you a call and perhaps guide you on your way to working for one of the most exciting recruitment company in Singapore, I promise.

:: International Women’s Day – Singapore

Related site: International Women’s Day

Today is 8th of March, International Women’s Day(IWD). This day is celebrated the world over for the economic, political and social achievements of women.

Here at home in Singapore, the day is celebrated in many places notably - "Active lifestyle" message for International Women's Day celebrations at Raffles place, - Discovery hunt commemorates International Women's Day.

While most women in Singapore celebrate this day, sadly some section of the society still practices the extreme form of women oppression.

I am of course referring to the headline in the Home section of The Straits Times, Thursday, March 8 2007 – “Girls raped by dad seek leniency for mums who aided incest” by Elena Chong. In the report the father who is a religious teacher told his multiple wives and scores of children that according to the Quran a father “owned” his children and this is extended to having sex with his daughters. How gross!

He has in the course of many years of teaching and living with the wives indoctrinate in them and moulds their minds to the extent that the wives believes and are convinced that it is a sin to disobey the head of the household (the father) and it is ok for the father to have sex with any female member of the family.

Hard to believe but sadly the story is true and significantly this story happens to be published in the leading daily news today on the International Women’s Day.

Some other statistics related to women in Singapore –

• The ratio of Women to Men in Singapore is 1.07 male(s)/female (15-64 years)


• Employment rate (25-64 years) female – 62.6% and male – 89.1%. Statistic source: MOM


• 7.3% of women are obese compared to 6.4% of men (source: Singapore National Health Survey 2004)


• The MiWA index for Singapore is 75.92 for 2007 as compared to New Zealand(89.85) the highest and Malaysia (57.91) the lowest. MiWA – MasterCard MasterIndex of Women’s Advancement is a composite index that measures women’s socio-economic advancements in relation to men.


• World Economic Forum(WEF) gender gap study finds that Singapore women get 65.5% of what the men are getting in four areas: economic participation and opportunity; educational attainment; health and survival; and political empowerment.


• Average Singapore women earns US$16,489($25,194) per year


• Eight out of 10 Singapore women aged 40-49 only had secondary education or lower


• Literacy rate: female – 88.6% and male – 96.6%

The 2007 Resume sourcing survey – Jim Stroud

This survey was conducted by Jim Stroud – “searchologist” and a living legend! And for all those of you out there who are in the business of conducting internet search for sourcing the best candidates on the web, this survey result will give you more than what you bargain for. Very informative, very useful and a must have for all internet recruiters/researchers.

With permission from Jim I am herewith presenting to you some of the main findings of this survey.

• Technical resumes were not the most populated resumes online.
• Yahoo has the biggest index of resumes over Google and Live
• Live outperformed Google and Yahoo on certain types of industry resumes

(Top 3 results from all the surveys)
Most overlooked filetypes for resumes (in general):

• Among the overlooked formats I surveyed, PHP returned the most results.
• Among the overlooked formats I surveyed, ASP returned the 2nd most results.
• Among the overlooked formats I surveyed, XML returned the 3rd most results.

Most popular formats for technical resumes:

• HTML was the most popular format for resumes online.
• HTM was the second most popular format for resumes online
• DOC was the third most popular format for resumes online

Most popular formats for resumes (in general):

• HTML was the most popular format for resumes online.
• HTM was the second most popular format for resumes online
• PDF was the third most popular format for resumes online

Most popular ways to spell “resume”:

• “Resume” was the most popular way to spell resume.
• “Resumé” is the second most popular spelling of resume on the web.
• “Résumé” is the third most popular spelling of resume on the web

Most popular ways to spell “CV”:

• CV is most commonly referenced term cited for CV
• Vitae is the 2nd most referenced term cited for CV
• “Curriculuum Vitae” is the 3rd most referenced term cited for CV

Quantity of resumes found on search engines:

• Of all the resumes I sourced, Yahoo had the biggest collection in its index (43%)
• Of all the resumes I sourced, Google had the 2nd biggest collection in its index (40%)
• Of all the resumes I sourced, Live had the 3rd biggest collection in its index (17%)

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The Hudson report, Q1 2007, Singapore – Employment and HR Trends.

“Employment expectations are rising and companies express a high level of optimism about future performance. But the other side of the coin is severe competition for staff. Companies recognise they must be prepared to look at the ackages they offer which would now include significant increases in salaries and bonuses in order to attract appropriately talented individuals.” Mark Sparrow, Country Manager, Hudson, Singapore.

The Hudson Report (January-March 2007) is a quarterly survey on the hiring expectations across the industry in Asia (Japan, Hong Kong, Shanghai and Singapore). These surveys are conducted by Hudson consultants amongst the executives from multi-national firms. Some of the key findings within the IT and Telecommunications industry in Singapore is given below:

• Permanent employment expectations: 56% of respondents are expecting to hire more staff in Q1 but an imminent surge is expected as usual in Q2, after detailed planning for the year during the 1st quarter.
• Permanent employment expectations by job roles: Demand for IT professionals is high at 17%, second to Sales jobs which is at 23%. Banking IT specialists are much sought after as more banks are setting up new operations or upgrading existing operations.
• Pay increases to attract managerial staff: 57% say they will pay more than 10%, compared to 35% in Q1 2006. Banks however are expected to pay by far the highest increase, with 78% saying the salaries will rise by ore than 10%.
• Year-end bonus payments: 51% of respondents plan to pay bonuses of more than 10%. Steep rise from 32% in Q1 2006. Banking sector again is making by far the highest bonus payments, with 76% planning to pay more than 10%.
• Staff turnover: 37% of IT&T companies are experiencing turnover of more than 10%.
• Reasons for staff turnover: Poaching is the most significant cause for staff turnover with 30% of the respondents attributing the turnover due to poaching. 10% of the respondents in IT&T, which is significantly higher than any other sector agree that ‘Low staff morale’ is also a very significant reason for staff turnover.

The year 2007 from staffing perspective is expected to be as buoyant as the Singapore economy outlook. Banking and IT are two sectors which will see a significant increase in resource augmentation and this is no surprise considering the number of banking institutions that are already/in-process/on the verge of setting up new/refurbishments/upgrade of operations and data centers.

As competition for quality resources heats up amongst the banks here, a major resource crunch is expected and banks and their recruiting partners will have to progressively look at ways to source and import talent from outside Singapore.

This means that further improvement in salary payouts will have to be implemented in order to attract, recruit and retain quality talents from location such as India and Hong Kong.

Of late, we are seeing a reversal in recruiting trend as far as India is concern – companies in India are looking to recruit from outside India. One of India’s largest Software Development company is in the process of luring back Non-resident-Indian IT pros for middle and senior roles for their projects in India and so are most of the MNC banks in India who are facing stiff challenges in recruiting senior level consultants. We are also seeing specialist recruitment firm such as Job options which is founded and managed by Mr. Achyut Menon. In his own words - “I am pretty convinced that 'global migration' of professionals will be a reality soon, and so it is better to dig ones wells..before one is thirsty!!”. He is of course referring to returning Indian professionals.

This obviously means that companies in India are prepared to match the consultant earnings abroad - dollars to dollars. This will also mean that they are willing to pay the talents within in India which will match their potential earning abroad in order to retain them. This trend is especially prevalent in the banking sector; with so many banks moving their back office support offshore to India this seems to be the obvious.

It therefore, does become necessary for IT&T and banking companies in Singapore to pro-actively look into their existing salary standards and make necessary changes and sacrifices to remain competitive in the fight for quality talents in this part of the world.

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