Plan a Career Path Where You Can Out-do Foreign Talent

For young people out there now preparing for their year-end exams (and even more important, where to bum around in Europe during the long holidays): 

Now is a good time to stop and think of jobs and a long-term career strategy. 

No, we’re not talking about retail, building construction, bus driving, nursing and service-related jobs which are now firmly under foreign labour domination. 

We’re not even talking about those so-called high-tech work that demands rigorous experience and skill set, such as Java programming, network design and server administration. If you ask around most major IT companies in Singapore, they will tell you that these jobs are mostly outsourced to places like India and China, where foreigners can replace you at 10 percent of the salary you expect. 

1. Your first career plan-of-action is to identify jobs where locals are preferred. Such jobs usually combine some technical expertise (known in HR jargon as “domain knowledge”) and lots of leadership and people-relationship skill. 

An example is IT Project Management, such as upgrading all the computers in Singapore schools or building a Web portal for a shopping mall. For that matter, any project management career is highly desirable, from starting a neighbourhood hair salon to building a stadium for the World Cup. 

Other areas where it would be much preferable to hire Singaporeans include: 

• Managing IT security, Web and social media and computer-based creative tasks
• Working in the creative and media industries – publishing, Web content design writing and production, mass media communication, and of course good old fashion journalism
• Training and teaching, counselling, human resource development and social work. 

2. Next, identify your own skills and inclinations, which would include those outside of your current school studies. Think of all the things you would dearly love to do even if you have no idea how to do them. 

By the way, never ever say you can’t do certain things (e.g. writing, flower-arrangement or brain surgery) just because you’re not familiar with it. In the 1950s and 1960s socialist countries like the Soviet Union, Cuba and China used women to do traditional hard-hat male jobs such as operating bulldozers, building bridges and mining. 

If your middle-age aunt can potentially handle a bulldozer, you too can handle any job, right? 

3. Do research on those skill sets that you don’t have, but like to, and find out where you can acquire them. Set out a timeline on how and when you intend to accomplish it. 

Note that your timeline is not cast in concrete. It is an evolving plan, and it will have to be amended continually after you’ve graduated and started on your first job. 

There are many more tasks and challenges ahead in your career strategy planning. The one key message you must remember is to avoid setting out on a career path where the available jobs are cheaply given out to foreign workers.