Foreign job-matching agencies get 1-year extension from Govt after ‘satisfactory’ placement record
Madam Isabel Neo, a Maximus Asia client and programme executive at the Salvation Army Peace Haven Bedok Day Centre, and her career coach, Mr Joel Wee, lead consultant at Maximus Asia.
SINGAPORE — Ingeus and Maximus Asia, foreign job-matching firms roped in to help unemployed professionals with their job hunt, have been granted a year-long extension after performing satisfactorily in a two-year pilot initiative.
Government agency Workforce Singapore (WSG) told TODAY that it had extended the pilot, which began in 2017, by another year until June 2020 as it works on models for longer-term arrangements.
WSG said that the firms had demonstrated an ability to “deliver satisfactory placement outcomes”. Their job-placement record, WSG added, was “very comparable” with its own and that of the Employment and Employability Institute (e2i), which comes under the labour movement.
More than six in 10 jobseekers who are professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) found jobs within six months of tapping WSG and e2i’s career-matching services, WSG said.
The government agency did not provide more detailed figures that TODAY requested, such as the number of jobseekers that the two firms placed and the average time that they took to do so.
In 2017, then Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say announced the unprecedented move to engage the two foreign firms.
This came after WSG worked with four local employment agencies on job placements with lacklustre results: Their placement rate for PMETs was less than 50 per cent.
Chosen from a pool of five shortlisted foreign firms, Ingeus, with headquarters in Australia, began operations in April 2017, and the United States-based Maximus opened its doors here two months later.
Most of their staff members are Singaporeans. Twenty-one of Ingeus’ 22 staff members and 19 of Maximus’ 20 employees are locals.
Mr Lim had said that the agencies — with established records working with governments of countries such as Australia and the US — were chosen “because of their business focus on active… rather than passive jobseekers, where the jobs are looking for the workers”.
Active jobseekers look for work proactively, often needing career coaching customised to their needs.
TODAY had reported that the agencies would operate on an outcome-based payment model, where they are paid for every jobseeker placed into employment. Asked for the amount disbursed to the firms so far, WSG said it could not disclose the sum owing to contractual arrangements.
The two firms complement WSG and e2i’s career-matching services, and help unemployed PMETs who have been laid off or seeking work actively for at least three months. Jobseekers who approach WSG and e2i are assigned randomly to Ingeus or Maximus.
WSG added: “Their appointment also allows WSG to tap their experience in employment facilitation, as well as exchange best practices in service delivery.
“This in turn helps us improve and innovate our career-matching services to better serve an evolving workforce with changing worker profiles.”
STRUCTURED PROCESS, INSIGHTFUL WORKSHOPS
Two clients who clinched jobs after being referred to Ingeus and Maximus ascribed their successes to the firms’ well-structured job-matching process, insightful workshops on everything from interview tips to strategies for professional-networking site LinkedIn, and career coaches who stood by them.
Project manager Chew Tai Heng, 61, was laid off in July last year after his employer, Tangoe, a software firm, closed its Singapore office to manage its projects from the US.
WSG referred him to Ingeus, which has an office at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Paya Lebar, in April this year.
Mr Chew Tai Heng (left), Ingeus client and project manager at software firm Janison, and Ms Jan Cheang, coaching and development specialist at job-matching agency Ingeus. Photo: Nuria Ling/TODAY
He underwent workshops focused on the job search; personal branding on LinkedIn; networking and the elevator pitch (a brief, persuasive proposal to prospective employers); and interviews.
He benefited from the tips imparted by Ingeus. He was told, for instance, to time his job applications at 10am on Mondays, instead of sending them on Fridays.
Mr Chew, who has a master’s degree in computer science, had fired off more than 100 applications since being laid off, but the job he would later land came from a firm in Ingeus’ network of nearly 800 employers.
Software company Janison was hiring a project manager. Mr Chew clinched the job in September within a week of meeting the firm.
He pinned his success down to the emotional support from his career coach, Ingeus coaching and development specialist Jan Cheang, and professional tips from the workshops he attended.
“Now that I am back in (a job), I feel very fulfilled that I can use my skill set, refine it, and help the company and (our) client,” Mr Chew said.
Career coaches at Ingeus and Maximus devise “action plans” for their clients, and help them define their job goals, for example.
In August last year, Madam Isabel Neo, 46, was made redundant from her job as a project manager at Merrill Corporation, a technology provider for global mergers-and-acquisitions professionals.
She panicked as she had to provide for her two daughters who are still in school. Her older daughter, 22, reads commerce at the University of Western Australia in Perth, and the other, 19, is enrolled in a biotechnology diploma at Temasek Polytechnic.
But she did not have to fret for long. Her Maximus career coach, Mr Joel Wee, whom she first saw last September, a month after she was laid off, helped her nail down the fields of administration and human resources, customer service, and social service as her job goals.
Mdm Neo, who has a diploma in computer studies, had worked in areas such as sales and customer service before.
In less than two months, she landed a job as a programme executive at the Salvation Army Peace Haven Bedok Day Centre, where she runs programmes for elderly people in the community and manages volunteers, for instance.
Her employer is one of nearly 600 in Maximus’ network.
For securing the job in a short time, she credited Mr Wee, who prepared plenty of questions and tested her knowledge on the organisation via a mock interview the day before she met the Salvation Army.
Not all jobseekers have been as fortunate as Mr Chew and Mdm Neo, though.
Ingeus’ Ms Cheang and Mr Wee of Maximus said some of their clients have clinched jobs as quickly as within a week.
But others have languished without work for more than a year owing to various factors, such as putting off the job search because of sick parents, mismatched job expectations, and employers’ misperceptions about older workers.
