It seems that the best time to look for a job in Singapore is around 1 month after Chinese new year. There are many asserted reasons for this. One very acceptable reason is that this time is the end of Christmas - Chinese New Year holiday era and people wait for their year end bonus, enjoy these holiday periods and then find new jobs here or abroad which creates a lot of vacancies.
So job hunting season is slowly starting by end February, if you want to find a job in Singapore you will need to attack from every angle. An obvious option is online search in Singapore job sites. You have many options here but I have experienced that I am only called with respect to my Monster SG CV (I am Singapore PR but this was also the situation when I was an EP holder). The rest of the web sites did not create any meeting for me. So monster.com.sg is the best job site in Singapore for me :) Still I have CV in JobStreet and although I think it is worthless for me I sometimes buy The Staits Times on Saturday and apply to some jobs advertised there.
When I first came to Singapore, a friend told me that only 8% of jobs are found online in this country. Adding this to the inherent difficulty of finding a job online as a senior employee, I need to find creative ways to increase my chances. One of them is advised by another friend, who has recently found a job in Singapore. What he did was after he has applied to a more senior position then his qualifications, he has called the advertising HR consultant immediately and asked him if he would have a chance for the position. When HR Consultant replies as "no, this is a position for a more senior fellow" he asks the consultant about any available position for his qualifications. This made him connected to some HR consultant and one of these guys eventually found him a job.
You can also pay to increase your chance. JobStreet for example has PriorityApplication. Normally job seekers with higher qualifications are ranked at the top of the employer’s list. But each employer receives more than 100 applications for each position they advertise on JobStreet.com, so getting noticed is difficult and being at the top is crucial to a successful application. JobStreet.com has this PriorityApplication to move all of your job applications automatically to the top of the list and highlight them. Of course with a price. For 38 Singapore Dollars your job applications for executive, entry level & non-executive jobs are highlighted and for 50 Singapore Dollars all your applications are highlighted.
See also High paying jobs in Singapore : Top 100 and Singapore IT salaries articles.
So job hunting season is slowly starting by end February, if you want to find a job in Singapore you will need to attack from every angle. An obvious option is online search in Singapore job sites. You have many options here but I have experienced that I am only called with respect to my Monster SG CV (I am Singapore PR but this was also the situation when I was an EP holder). The rest of the web sites did not create any meeting for me. So monster.com.sg is the best job site in Singapore for me :) Still I have CV in JobStreet and although I think it is worthless for me I sometimes buy The Staits Times on Saturday and apply to some jobs advertised there.
When I first came to Singapore, a friend told me that only 8% of jobs are found online in this country. Adding this to the inherent difficulty of finding a job online as a senior employee, I need to find creative ways to increase my chances. One of them is advised by another friend, who has recently found a job in Singapore. What he did was after he has applied to a more senior position then his qualifications, he has called the advertising HR consultant immediately and asked him if he would have a chance for the position. When HR Consultant replies as "no, this is a position for a more senior fellow" he asks the consultant about any available position for his qualifications. This made him connected to some HR consultant and one of these guys eventually found him a job.
Keeping this method in mind, I still use (or will use) the following portals for online job search:
Monster SG: This Singapore branch of the global partal is a very good place to start. Although you can apply many of the jobs without an account (most advertised an email address to send resume) I highly recommend you to open up an account and regularly login. It seems like your login frequency effects your ranking on employee search list for job advertisers and after every login you can get mails from HR consultants for job offerings.
Job Street: The old beast of job search. I like their specialized searches like "Jobs in Public Services", "$100K++ Jobs", "Jobs for Fresh Grads/Students" and "Jobs looking for more Applicants". But the same old jobs are pushed up again and again until evey folloeing they which makes it difficult to locate new job advertisements. I did not have any job offers from this site, all came from Monster.sg but I must admit as a Singapore PR it has been only 1 month looking for a job. It seems like majority of the jobs in this site require only "Singaporeans and Singapore PR need to apply".
LinkedIn Groups - Yes, linkedin groups like Contact Singapore, Singapore ITC Jobs, Singapore Global, etc. provides plenty of job advertisements to apply. You can also see the profile of the poster and build connection with him/her.
SingaporeExpats - They usually advertise jobs from other sites but this is a good place to look at from time to time.
Jobs at Singapore - This site is backed by Contact Singapore, an alliance between Singapore Economic Development Board and Ministry of Manpower whose purpose is to attract foreign talent to Singapore. So I guess they are more open to foreigners than jobsDB or JobStreet whose advertisements tend to request "Singaporeans and Singapore PRs".
Jobs Central: This site looks promising. I will give it a try.
You can also pay to increase your chance. JobStreet for example has PriorityApplication. Normally job seekers with higher qualifications are ranked at the top of the employer’s list. But each employer receives more than 100 applications for each position they advertise on JobStreet.com, so getting noticed is difficult and being at the top is crucial to a successful application. JobStreet.com has this PriorityApplication to move all of your job applications automatically to the top of the list and highlight them. Of course with a price. For 38 Singapore Dollars your job applications for executive, entry level & non-executive jobs are highlighted and for 50 Singapore Dollars all your applications are highlighted.
See also High paying jobs in Singapore : Top 100 and Singapore IT salaries articles.
Thank you so much for your list. Really great help also you can include enggsol.com to the top list for online search job in Singapore.
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