With more and more students attaining a degree through Singapore’s public universities, private education institutions or overseas universities, it seems a basic degree is no longer sufficient for a job seeker to stand out.

According to statistics published by the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) last month, the graduate unemployment rate in 2016 is 3.1 per cent in Singapore, the highest since 2004. It also took degree holders longer to find employment. Yet, looking at the published Graduate Employment Survey for 2016 graduates (this was conducted in Nov 2016), it seems to show a different picture. Almost nine out of ten students found a job within six months upon graduation - 89.7 per cent secured their employment by November 2016.

However, it is interesting to note that 9.5 per cent of these graduates are offered only temporary and part-time employment jobs. At 80.2 per cent with permanent employment, it is the lowest since this survey was first conducted in 2012. Comparing it with 2015 (83.1 per cent), we can see that more fresh graduates are not getting permanent job offers.

With the economy slowing down, companies are more hesitant to hire. Offering a short term contract is a way for the company to solve the manpower issue and assess the suitability of the job seeker, unless they are very sure of the candidate.

Therefore fresh graduates that want to increase their employability need to focus on areas outside of academic qualifications. One of the ways is to get more internships or other exposure. In fact, earlier this year, National University of Singapore (NUS) announced that students from their Computing courses will go for 18-month internships. The idea is to let students go out to work and apply what they have learnt from their professors and see how it can be applied to solve real-world problems in the industry. Currently, approximately 70 per cent of NUS students undertake some form of internship, which are incorporated in their curriculum or supported by the university. While not all students will go on to work in the company they have interned, the students with more experience are likely to perform better when it comes to actual job interviews.

Analysis by Susan Tan

In order to promote the UK as an attractive study destination to prospective students and parents, the UK graduates should be highly sought after. To achieve that, UK universities should play a part to help their students. The career centres need to help students gain more meaningful work experiences. In fact, students should aim to have multiple internships and where possible in different industries or countries, so they can have more real-life experiences that will help them stand out from their peers when they return to Singapore after graduation. In addition to job attachments, universities should also develop various opportunities/collaborations, such as semester or summer programme exchanges, research attachments, etc to allow students to expand their horizons.

Singapore parents and students are quite confident of the local universities. After all, both NUS and Nanyang Technological University (NTU) have performed very well in the world rankings. Singaporeans also enjoy the heavily subsidised fees. Therefore, to entice them to consider studying in the UK, universities need to promote their strengths. In addition, they should also emphasise the other value-add they can provide.