More than 20,000 employers placed job postings on the Jobs Bank, of which a small minority were to fulfil the Fair Consideration Framework advertising requirements, said Minister of Manpower Mrs Josephine Teo.

This was revealed by the Minister, in response to Parliamentary questions filed by MP for Tampines GRC Mr Desmond Choo, who asked the Minister for Manpower what is the current successful job matching rate of mycareersfuture.sg, whether there are plans to introduce vernacular versions of the platform to help our older job seekers, and what are the plans to increase the job listings by smaller companies.

NCMP Leon Perera also asked the minister whether an update can be provided on the job match success rate of the Jobs Bank for Singaporeans and what measures are being implemented to enable the measurement of job match success rates of the Jobs Bank and MyCareersFuture.sg for the purpose of assessing the returns on investment.

On Tuesday last week (10 July), Ms Teo stated that Workforce Singapore (WSG) helps match jobseekers with employers through the Adapt and Grow initiative.  MyCareersFuture (MCF) is one measure among several under Adapt and Grow.

“It is an online jobs marketplace that recently replaced the national Jobs Bank to help jobseekers and employers perform smarter and faster job searches,” she said, noting that Jobs Bank has been well utilised, notwithstanding the many other options available to employers and jobseekers.

“These job postings received more than 2 million applications from local jobseekers,” she added.

The minister then said, “As employers may not update the outcome of their job postings, we are not yet able to capture all job matches facilitated by Jobs Bank or MCF.  We are therefore looking at ways to better assess the effectiveness of MCF in job matching, such as inferring placement rates using administrative data.”

She noted that small and medium enterprises (SMEs) accounted for more than 60% of job postings on the Jobs Bank in 2017.

“We expect the proportion to be similar in MCF,” she said.

Ms Teo then said that the MCF platform is more useful to jobseekers by having the widest possible range of job postings.  Employers too will prefer to post job openings on a platform that is accessed by more jobseekers.  Therefore, instead of creating vernacular versions to cater to specific language users, the aim is to ensure ease-of-use of the platform for all users.

“We will continue to serve users who are more comfortable communicating in vernacular languages through WSG’s Careers Connect and NTUC’s Employment and Employability Institute (NTUC’s e2i) centres.  This includes providing guidance on online job search so that they too can eventually benefit from accessing opportunities through such avenues,” she added.

On the WSG and e2i, Ms Teo noted that the proportion of jobseekers registered with WSG’s Careers Connect and NTUC’s e2i centres who are placed into jobs has improved over the last three years. This is in response to questions filed by Mr Choo.

Average 6-month Job Placement Rate for WSG’s Careers Connect and NTUC e2i centres.

She stressed that WSG and NTUC’s e2i continually seek to improve the effectiveness of their services to jobseekers.

According to the minister, WSG career centres were upgraded to Careers Connect in July last year with an expanded suite of customised career matching services. Jobseekers who require more in-depth support can undergo tailored career management and counselling programmes and receive dedicated one-to-one career coaching suited to their needs.

Ms Teo noted that WSG has also launched the MyCareersFuture portal to help jobseekers and employers perform smarter and faster job searches. It prioritises search results according to the relevance of a jobseeker’s skills and shows jobs that are supported by the Adapt & Grow programmes.

She then added that in addition to career matching services, jobseekers can also tap on programmes such as the Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) and Career Support Programme (CSP) to help them overcome mismatches in skills and wage expectations.

Foreigners can also apply at Jobs Bank

A Singaporean employer wrote to TOC in 2016 after he tried to recruit Singaporeans for his company at the JobsBank. He said he was shocked when resumes started to come in one by one from foreigners who are Permanent Residents currently working in Singapore.

He said that he was disappointed with how JobsBank fails to perform its set goal to strengthen the Singaporean core in the workforce by allowing foreigners to send in the job applications and ask why was there no filters put in place to ensure only Singaporeans can submit their job applications.

When TOC wrote to MOM to seek their clarification, no answer was given in response to the questions.

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