SINGAPORE: A Reddit user asked if National Service (NS) helps people get “civilian employment.”
u/Sunbird11 added a follow-up question to his July 6 (Thursday) r/askSingapore post if guys include what they did during NS in their CVs when applying for a job. He added a link to a Straits Times story from the same day titled “Strong support for NS continues, but fewer people find it useful in civilian employment: IPS study.”
However, for several netizens, the answer was yes.
“Helped me a lot,” one wrote simply, adding, “I applied for a construction site job as one of the labourers. I had quite a lot of experience in my 2 years filling jerry cans, carrying stuff around and shovelling dirt and when my interviewer heard this, I was immediately hired. I was also amazed that they paid more for the hour than when I did my NS, super grateful for the opportunity.”
“My whole career was based on an exaggerated claim on technical capabilities I picked up from NS. I was a signals spec so I exaggerated my knowledge in communications tech and also was arrowed to make cringey posters for SAF Safety Day or something so I begged the poly guys to teach me Photoshop, which I also added to my CV.”
“Yes, i see a lot of my fellow soldiers becoming civil servants, ministers, directors at GLCs and in Temasek right out from military.”
“Mine was somewhat helpful,” another person, who’s in the medical field, wrote. “I was a medic in NS and obtained a certificate for phlebotomy (blood drawing) through my medical center, which allowed me to land a part-time role for a laboratory where I collected blood samples as part of COVID testing.”
“I was in cybersec for government contract, police and military background is a big big bonus especially for those angmoh companies. Obviously I blew my own trumpet and tell them I was an instructor, though in reality I was a keyboard warrior in an aircon room 95% of the time preparing course documents,” chimed in another.
“When I was in the US for work, almost everyone at the shooting range thought I was Special Forces with the sharpness of my strip/assembly/IA drills. My superiors at the US office were particularly impressed, and people respected you for serving in the military,” wrote another.
One Redditor, however, had the opposite experience.
/TISG