SINGAPORE: Concerns over limited opportunities for fresh graduates have resurfaced online after a 33-year-old local claimed that an increasing number of companies in Singapore are focusing mainly on hiring for senior positions, while offering fewer chances to young people entering the workforce.
Posting on the r/SingaporeRaw forum, he called this a “flaw” in the Singapore job market. “I have been seeing more and more issues of companies in SG wanting to hire only senior roles,” he said.
“Even the company I am working in is doing the same. This leads to many fresh graduates being unemployed and forced to work in fields (non-technical roles) they don’t specialise in. After years of working, they will never get hired for roles of their interest because they didn’t clock relevant work experience.”
According to him, if fresh grads are not given opportunities at the start of their careers, they will never be able to build up the skills and experience needed in their chosen industries.
This then feeds into a cycle where companies complain that there is not enough local talent and turn to foreign hires instead. At the same time, the pool of experienced locals continues to shrink as some move up to management, switch careers, or retire.
He suggested that perhaps there should be some kind of policy requiring companies to hire at least a few graduates each year. Otherwise, he believes this flaw in the system will just continue and gradually worsen, making it even tougher for young people to enter the industries they are interested in.
“I’ve been working for 7 years in the field I studied (ComSci) in NTU, so I’m not ranting about my situation but more for our local fresh grads,” he added.
“Fresh grads have high expectations.”
Opinions in the comments were divided. While many agreed with the post author, saying the job market has been particularly harsh on fresh graduates trying to enter the workforce, others pushed back and argued that companies have their own reasons for being cautious.
One wrote, “This is because it’s quite obvious these graduates are looking to jump jobs after a couple of years. Many companies are looking for long-term junior roles, not degree graduates looking to gain experience. They cannot afford to be a training ground, and either their senior staff leave so these graduates can be promoted, or these graduates leave.”
Another commented, “Have you seen how some fresh graduates behave? I won’t say every one of them, but some are absolutely terrible. They scar their employers who might not be that keen to hire similar profiles.”
A third added, “Fresh grads have high expectations, which is a double whammy for them because of SGD + companies outsourcing to other SEA countries + AI takeover.”
Some also pointed out that this is happening in other countries as well, not just in Singapore.
One remarked, “It isn’t a Singaporean thing, unfortunately, this is becoming a global phenomenon.”
Another wrote, “It’s a global phenomenon. Companies will start to hire once they find out all their senior engineers are prone to cardiac arrest. One word of advice to a fresh graduate in tech: Join an SME to gain valuable experience. You will be pigeonholed very hard and fast if your first role is in an MNC.”
In other news, a woman shared online that she feels stuck because her parents refuse to sell the HDB flat she has been paying for over the past 13 years.
Writing on Reddit’s r/asksg, she explained that after she graduated, her parents could not afford the housing loan anymore, so she stepped in and took over the payments.
