Good candidate; strong resume, and yet can’t get a job for months; Singaporean asks why local job market is so bad

SINGAPORE: Despite having a strong resume and being a good candidate, one jobseeker has been looking for a full-time position for several months now. While a Reddit user has gone for interviews “here and there… unfortunately things just aren’t panning out.”

“Sporadically over the past months I’ve seen posts on here with people mentioning similar challenges, even facing depression because they continue to try hard but the situation doesn’t seem to be getting better. So I know I’m not alone. And it genuinely is exhausting,” the post author wrote on r/askSingapore on Sunday (May 22).

She added, “I’m curious: just why is the job market so bad right now? The Reddit user wrote that while there has been a lot of restructuring among tech companies, ‘this problem seems to extend beyond that field.'”

Commenters on the post underlined that part of the problem is the tech layoffs that have occurred since the beginning of the year.

One wrote that when a former colleague posted a job posting for an admin job that pays between S$3500 and S$4000 a month, applicants who had been laid off from Google, Meta, Amazon, and other tech companies came knocking.

Another wrote that when they posted a job opening, there had been so many applicants that they needed to cut most of them by order of submission, adding, “Never seen so many in recent years.

Not to mention, a lot of people want to move out of their current companies because of all the reduced benefits that rolled out last year. Some people were willing to take pay cuts for an offer.”

A commenter listed several factors that make it hard for jobseekers, aside from VC (venture capital) money “drying up.”

These include automation and unnecessary jobs getting cut, higher interest rates and other financial pressures, and the “domino effect of unemployed people flooding into other industries.”

One Reddit user reluctantly pointed out that foreign workers are generally willing to take jobs for lower pay, citing the example of a woman from Johor Bahru who accepted a job for S$2,500 a month that a Singaporean would not accept for at least S$6,000.

According to a survey from recruitment firm ManpowerGroup, the hiring outlook weakened for the second consecutive quarter in March.

Nevertheless, “bright spots” remained in certain industries, including finance, real estate, and health care. /TISG

Read also: 24yo SG uni student with no savings says he feels “like giving up studying coz it’s so much stress and job market gives me depression”