Hard truths about job search that are not swee to say

On 30th August 2016, I was on the Careers@Gov portal searching for new job postings. Of the 1000 most recent postings that I scanned through, roughly about 800 of them required experience which I did not have, another 100+ of the remaining were for IT, engineering and finance which I could not apply for, and taking away the MINDEF jobs that I can never seem to get clearance for, I had about 4 options left. Of the 4 options, 1 of them was MFA, whom I was still waiting for a reply from then, so that left me with 3. 3 out of 1000 advertised jobs that I could apply for, without me even choosing. A luckier local born fresh grad with a non-IT, engineering or financial degree would have about 10-15 options, but 15/1000 is still not an incredible number. 

So when the statement that Minister Lim Swee Say made about fresh grads being picky in their job search came out this morning, I was first perplexed, then angered, not because what say is not true, but is simply uncontexualised in current realities and therefore nothing but cliche government rhetoric. The economy is bad, but it is not always the economy that is at fault. Some individuals are picky but given enough time in unofficial unemployment (because the government refuses to recognise the significance of 6 months of joblessness) people will start settling for lesser options, and I have been actively searching since December 2015. What public discourse and public memory seems to have selectively forgotten, is that it is this exact government that has called for building of more universities and increasing undergraduate intake in the past decade, and is now refusing to talk about it because the plan has backfired. What public discourse tells you is that the economy is bad, and these problems are your own fault. Amidst the hype about higher education when I was choosing between JC and Poly 10 years ago (8 years for the lucky ladies), there was no way I would not choose to study in a JC and aim for a degree with my 9 points at the GCE 'O' Levels. 

There are two main criticisms of fresh graduates that I would like to address this post. Firstly, the issue of experience. Indeed there are students who have never done a single internship in their entire university life, because they really thought university is about committing yourself to school work and research, and enjoying the social life of university before you move into the workforce as how universities are always being advertised. Those people exist but are few and far between. Perhaps NUS could have worked harder to ease internship searching process for students like how SMU does it, but again with more effort and less naivety that wall can also be surmounted. I don't think it is entirely fair to blame an university freshmen for being naive, but it is most definitely a more valid criticism than 'why you don't have job experience before graduating'. Because some of us don't have the time. The mid-term month-long break is way too short to be involved in any significant job or internship, and for me that is usually spent on respite, reading, revising, writing, preparing for upcoming classes and conducting research for the upcoming semester. Some people may argue otherwise and claim their one month internship means something, and that's okay because some of us are literally grasping at straws when preparing our CVs and explaining to potential employers why we are worthy of the job as compared to the hundreds of others applying for the same position. The summer break is 3 month long. But sometimes it is not 3 months for the boys, because I've had reservist call-ups smacked right in the middle of that break, and organisations telling me that I should not bother applying for their internship because they cannot afford me leaving half way during the program. And I don't blame them. MOE's summer internship training was suppose to start on 30th June in 2014, and my reservist also started on the same day - the rejection is reasonable. And on top of that, there are things that we would also like to do other than work during the summer, some of friends went on volunteery trips, others went for summer school, and I had performances to train for. These are things that are perhaps valued less than internships in potential employers' eyes, but I do not think they can be in any way considered insignificant or thought of as things we do for leisure. 

Next, I want to talk about a criticism that is most frequently mentioned by supporters of Minister Lim's statement, the 'just take any job to tide through this period' argument. There are two main problems with this proposal. Firstly it assumes that any job will take us. I've applied jobs that requires no experience, minimum of O/A Levels and basic command of English, with pays as low as $2000 a month for jobs that require one to work 6 days a week. As of now none of these jobs have replied. Considering the employment climate it is likely that they are simply not hiring, or they are afraid that I'd leave for greener pastures once I have the opportunity, which I most certainly will. The point is having a degree is a disadvantage when looking for part-time, lower-skilled jobs. And again, it assumes that such jobs are readily available. Even ad hoc jobs are hard to get, I've been sending out a stream of applications for tuition and translation jobs in the past month, and have only gotten one through a friend's recommendation. Why is this the case? Because there is a surplus of graduates out there who are looking at the same options causing the temporary jobs market to be as saturated as the permanent/contractual ones. Secondly, and the most important point here, is that to not pick at all is irresponsible, unintelligent and possibly self-destructive. Any temporary position we take up now cannot be meaningless because by the time we are done with our half-year assignments, there will be new graduates flooding the job market again. An unemployed fresh grad is an asset of depreciating value if he does not continue to do anything relevant to his career progression. If I get a job in service now and have no intention whatsoever in pursuing a career in service, then the work I do to 'tide through' is completely useless. The whole point of selecting is not for the sake of blind pursuit of passion, it is a practical way to build one's portfolio in order to compete with the fresh grads that emerge 8 months later. I do not think my future employees at risk consulting firms will like to hear about my dishwashing or telemarketing experience, and if anything using that time to prepare oneself for important interviews is much more important - that's what I spent the last 6 months doing. The reason I am looking for tuition and translation jobs is because those are the things that I want to add to my portfolio and display as my advantages during future job interviews. The reason why I've applied for internships at this moment is also for the same reasons. Only people who have never planned for the future will say something as irresponsible as 'you should not be picky'. We don't choose because we can, we choose because we have to. Those who use their experiences from the distant past to backup the 'tiding through' argument have failed to realise the infeasibility of their solutions in current contexts and realities, and the government is happy to have them support their equally brittle rhetoric. More graduates are entering the job market every half a year because of government policies implemented years ago, and we as the victims of that shortsightedness are trying our best to mitigate that damage by being intelligent, sensible and responsible in our own career building process. 

It is a Sunday and I should be writing cover letters instead. Some of you probably don't know what that process encompasses, and that is the very problem with all your arguments. 

Nathan Hartono, singing competitions and the nature of music businesses in a capitalistic world

Nothing really surprises me anymore these days. Woke up to news of Nathan Hartono winning second place at the Sing! China singing competition broadcasted on Zhejiang television recently, which was known previously at The Voice of China, and also hundreds of comments and likes on posts that denounce the competition for robbing Hartono of his victory simply because he is not from China.

There are a few things that we can go into here, which I'd briefly mention but are less important that the not-yet-discussed matters at hand. Firstly, the nature of 'nationality' discrimination. I do think netizens are not entirely wrong about the Chinese's thin ego that might have influenced them to pick a singer born in China. However, there's more. There is also the subjective nature of whom you think is the best. I don't think any singing competition has ever picked the best as their winner - and it doesn't matter because the best is subjective and winners in this particular competition usually end up worse-off than their runner-ups and other competitors anyway - so if anyone is worried that this may affect his career, it most likely will not. I thought he was good, but probably not my pick for winner either (I also won't have picked Jiang, the official winner, and that's the whole point of bringing subjectivity up).  Thirdly, it is incredibly ironic that Singaporeans are calling out a Chinese television channel for using underhand methods to defend their thin nationalistic ego... to defend a Singaporean singer and their own, equally weak, nationalistic ego. Combining that with the point of subjectivity, do we really prefer Hartono because he is better, or is it that he is 'one of us' like how Jiang is 'one of them'? What will happen if say, Jeryl Lee from Malaysia won the competition instead? What will the rhetoric then be? Cliche, but the idea that everyone has their own biases and it is good to check them from time to time is good.

Now that that is out of the way, it is time to scream at capitalism instead. I did not want to write about this issue previously, but I remembered something really important that the collect public memory of Singaporeans has forgotten. Singapore did the same thing too. In 2005. The Ang Junyang Project Superstar Controversy. As with all accusations of competitions being rigged, this one is also mostly made up of rumours with only a handful of evidence to work with. But consider this. Why else would an undergraduate leave University to join a singing competition that he may or may not get anything out of - after all, this is Singapore we are talking about, people don't just make reckless passionate pursuits like that. Moreover, there was no precedence in the local mandopop industry that promised certain fame if you join such a competition... unless you are already signed and promised a contract and album release, and even better, you are the assured champion of the competition. Ang signed to Universal Music Group shortly after the competition and released his album around the same time winner Kelvin Tan released his. I'd say that Tan's popularity throughout the competition was so strong that it simply could not have been ignored for fear of public backlash, and, well, having a visually-impaired person as a winner is good marketing.

Singing competitions are just big advertisement campaigns, not only for sponsors but especially for the singers themselves. Earlier I said some of the most successful singers from singing competitions are all 'losers' of the competitions, and I honestly think that they are just there for the exposure and hope that they will get picked up by a recording firm. Or, more likely than not, it is the other way around. Recording firms send their new artistes who are preparing to release their first albums to major singing competitions, have them exposed to audience, and hopefully boost record sales through name recognition. There are albums that come out so incredibly fast after a competition ends that it is not possible for arrangements not to have been made beforehand. If one dives into the Chinese forums on such matters, one will realise so many of these supposed everyman who claim to be small business owners, truck drivers and bar singers are actually professionally trained, big name recording firm-backed singers that are there to promote themselves for their upcoming album releases. This is not to denounce the real talent that these artistes possess, but it bothers me when people see singing competitions as purely innocent talent scouting programs that are not rigged in every way possible for the music industry to sell albums. Whenever a person of minority ethnicity joins such competitions in China, there is always so much focus on their ethnic language and 'culture' to serve as unique branding for those individual singers... who then release their albums shortly later with those exact branding on their labels. Singing competitions, like all reality TV shows, create personalities with certain characteristics and background to make these people feel unique, even though their singing styles are equally rigid and boring sometimes, so that people will remember them as 'that soulful singer of Tibetan ethnicity', or that 'pure rural voice from the mountains' or 'the free spirit of the Mongolian plains' - these are brands. Kelly Clarkson is a woman, that's a brand. Kelvin Tan is blind, that is a brand. And with the rise of SJWism things are just getting worse with Solo being gay and Wonder Woman revealed as queer and Iron Man now a black woman... these are all brands. I don't care if people don't care about big businesses exploiting neatly packeted discriminatory categories such as race, gender, sexual-preference etc. to sell their characters (yes, singing competition personas are nothing more than characters), but I wish people can at least notice it.

To round it up, there are people I know on Facebook who are triggered about Hartono being labelled as an overseas Chinese in the competition, and are using that one small detail to extrapolate into grand theories about Sino-Singapore relations that may hold some water but only as much as a shallow pond. Guess what? That's a brand.