In a Facebook post that has since gone viral, a local hirer called out Singaporean job-seekers as he felt that “young talents are not hungry for a job”.
The hirer, one Mr Lim, said that he interviewed seven interesting young candidates for a job with a “3k+ salary with 14 days annual leave”.
He profiled the seven candidates and wrote in a Facebook post on Saturday (Aug 29):
“Local Applicant A requested not to touch his on weekends and whenever possible to work from home instead of working on site. When told him he needs to work on occasion weekends and off in lieu may be given, he asked for overtime weekend allowance and told me it is the law.
Local Applicant B said that our office is too far for her as she is staying in the east but willing to consider if we can provide transport allowances.
Local Applicant C shared her last drawn salary was $6k and was expecting this job to match. She is only willing to take a 5-10% paycut during probation and expect to be paid the same after clearing probation.
Local Applicant D requested for a team of junior staff to assist in his work because in his previous company, he had assistants to do some of his work. Told him we can not afford, we are a lean SME. His reply, “o.. thank you for your time, I will skip this interview.”
Local Applicant E asked if the company can give him 21 days annual leave instead of 14 days because his previous company gave him. When told he can take no pay leave if his leave is not enough, he said he will reconsider this offer.
Local Applicant F asked for a higher salary and when told we can only afford 3.6k per month, her response was… she will take the offer but would like the termination notice to be shortened to 1 week instead of 1 month… she was honest enough to say, “I am taking the job to survive for the time being while I wait for better opportunity.”
Local Applicant G asked for a guaranteed AWS + 1 month minimum VB to be written on the contract because his previous company, an MNC did that. Gave me a lecture on staff engagement and attracting talents and work life balance.
He added, “I am pro-singapore workforce but…. they make it harder for us to consider employing them.
So stop blaming companies for considering non locals.
We did try our best”.
After receiving much backlash regarding his post, Mr Lim provided some context to the situation in a follow-up post on Facebook that very day.
He wrote: “Over the last 2 months, our firms are currently actively hiring for different positions (communication, accounts, training and project executives and project Consultants). And we make it clear that we only hire locals / SPR. Some jobs are mid 2k to 4.6k.
Yes, many SMEs don’t pay well and very often this group are also often misunderstood. And many think SME bosses are rich and stingy”.
He added that the seven examples he shared were potential candidates he interviewed.
“Thankfully, out of all the interviewees, we have successfully hired 2 locals (one who is 35 years old and one who is 40 years old) and hoping to hire another 2”, he added.
TISG has reached out to Mr Lim for comment.