Singapore's tech skills for 2003
Published: 08 Jan 2003 12:17 GMT
"The job market outlook for Singapore is going to be slow and stagnant for the first six months of 2003," said Suresh Thiru, vice president (operations) for online recruitment firm JobStreet.com.
According to the company's statistics, job seekers' confidence levels sank to an all-time low at the end of the third quarter.
While certain sectors continue to decline, there are pockets of hope. This has prompted the Singapore government to set up job matching schemes and programmes to encourage workers to seek opportunities in different industries.
And Singaporeans are a versatile lot. "If you've ever marvelled at the communication skills of your Singapore taxi driver of late, it's probably because he was originally a small entrepreneur or a recently laid-off middle manager of a large multinational or Singapore company," wrote Asia Market Research (AMR) in a recent study.
According to the Singapore Manpower Research and Statistics Department, rising unemployment in the third quarter dispelled initials signs of improvement in the labour market in the previous quarter.
The department said a total of 4,187 workers were laid off in the third quarter, marginally higher than the 4,091 in the second quarter, bringing the total number of workers retrenched in the first three quarters to 13,135.
"Despite the flagging momentum of economic recovery, re-employment prospects continue to improve," it said in a recent report, adding: "67 percent of locals retrenched in the second quarter found jobs by September, up slightly from 64 percent experienced by the previous cohort in June 2002."
On average, there were 31 job openings for every 100 job seekers in September 2002, down from 37 in June 2002, the department added.
Meanwhile, Jobstreet's Thiru expects businesses to plan for growth for the second half of 2003. "The situation requires some caution...as such, most human resource planning, assessments and reviews for headcount are now being carried out on a quarterly basis rather than an annual basis (as) previously," he added.
Software engineers will continue to be widely sought after in 2003, according to market data by Jobstreet.
"The highest demand will be for software engineers with two to five years development experience," Thiru said.
Project managers with over three years of IT project management, implementation and quality control experience will also stand a good chance in the job market, he added.
The top three skills IT professionals should arm themselves with are Java, MS SQL Server and J2EE. Others include MS Exchange, SAP and C++ programming.
Overall, there's still a lot of demand for skilled IT professionals, Thiru said, but warned: "There's a major shift towards contractual employment at all levels, even at senior management (which is not traditionally so)."
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