Help for Graduates to Find Employment amidst Tightening Labour Market

3 Mr Yip Hon Weng asked the Minister for Manpower (a) how are our tripartite partners working with local universities to ensure graduates find relevant or full-time employment amidst a tightening labour market; and (b) how can the Ministry improve the job matching rate for graduates.

The Minister for Manpower (Dr Tan See Leng): Mr Speaker, Sir, the tripartite partners, comprising the Government, National Trades Union Congress (NTUC) and Singapore National Employers Federation (SNEF), have put in place a number of initiatives to support graduate employment.

The Government works closely with the autonomous universities (AUs) to ensure that the supply of graduates takes into account industry demand and that graduates are equipped with industry-relevant skills. AUs conduct regular reviews of course curricula, incorporating feedback from economic agencies and industry. AUs have also worked with employers to provide meaningful internships for students as important components for many of their courses. The internships allow students to connect what they learn in the classroom with the workplace and allow companies to access a pipeline of talent better aligned to industry needs.

There is also the National Centre of Excellence for Workplace Learning (NACE) which helps employers build workplace learning capabilities and raise the quality of internships that they provide to students.

The AUs also provide career-related information to students and graduates through career talks, fairs and online resources. Students and graduates can consult career coaches for more personalised career and upgrading advice.

In addition to the services provided by AUs, graduates can approach Workforce Singapore (WSG) and NTUC's e2i for career advisory and one-on-one coaching at their centres. Graduates can also access WSG's MyCareersFuture (MCF) portal to search and apply for jobs. They can make use of features such as CareersFinder on MCF to help them better plan for their careers. These support graduates to take charge of their career health by making more informed career decisions and longer-term plans.

NTUC and SNEF's efforts complement what the Government is doing. NTUC's Youth Taskforce identified that some of the top resources to help youths work towards their desired future jobs were quality internships and career mentorships. Therefore, NTUC and SNEF piloted the Career Starter Lab in 2023, to facilitate career trials, structured workplace attachments and mentorships for youths. NTUC also set up mentorSHIP to increase access to career mentoring for youths. These initiatives help youths gain more clarity about job fit, pick up relevant skills and find jobs that match their competencies and aspirations.

Overall, a tight labour market should benefit graduates in their job search, meaning less difficulties in seeking out full-time employment with a good job fit. While the recent results from the Joint Autonomous Universities Graduate Employment Survey show a slight decrease in employment rates for graduates, it still remains higher than the pre-COVID levels in 2019. Furthermore, graduates also saw an increase in starting salaries compared to the year before.

Mr Speaker: Mr Yip.

Mr Yip Hon Weng (Yio Chu Kang): Thank you, Mr Speaker. I thank the Minister for his response. Is the Ministry considering exploring innovative partnerships with non-traditional stakeholders like tech companies or startup incubators to create new job opportunities for graduates?

Second, how is the Ministry leveraging technology and data analytics to improve job matching for graduates and connect them with relevant opportunities across different sectors?

Dr Tan See Leng: I thank the Member for his supplementary questions. To his first question about exploring innovative partnerships with tech companies and also startup incubators, the answer is yes. However, we need to be mindful of the stage of working with these startup incubators, as well as tech companies. Graduates that come out immediately from AUs may want to look for a longer-term job and certain type of career profile.

What we have done is, through the Agency for Science, Technology and Research's Technology for Enterprise Capability Upgrading (T-UP) programme, we are working with many of the deep tech startups, the startup incubators, and we second data scientists to help them in moving up the value chain in terms of some of the specialised skill sets that they may require. For the broader groups of young graduates from our AUs, depending on the area of training and area of specialisation, we are prepared to consider partnerships, as long as there is also a clear career path for these young graduates.

It is not as straightforward as applying this model universally across all the different sectors of the graduating cohorts, but we certainly explore and further curate some of these programmes, leveraging on the insights and the learning from the T-UP programme that we started a couple of years ago.

On the second point, in terms of the leveraging on technology. Indeed, for careers health and also CareersFinder, which were hallmark initiatives that I had announced at last year's Committee of Supply, we do use a fair bit of data analytics, first to suss out the CVs, the training of our graduates and then, for them to continue to upgrade their own career health by taking an active interest in making sure that their training, the skills adjacencies are up to mark, and also to nudge them and encourage them to upgrade their training, along the entire pathway of their career, so that it allows for better job matching. This provides a better career trajectory and a more productive runway for them.

On the use of data analytics and artificial intelligence, we are already leveraging on these technologies. Hopefully, that is the reassurance that I can give to the Member.