A lot of Singaporean have been ranting that the foreigners are taking away all the jobs. Most of them are undergraduate that have no ideal goals, who just wants to be an average Joe. I am a university undergraduate living in Singapore too. I too, am unhappy about foreigners snatching our job. But if you can think like a boss, you will understand why foreigners are hired instead of local.
So you just started your company, small and volatile. Any mistake made could mean the downfall of your company. Certainly you do not want that to happen. Definitely you will need someone more hardworking, reliable, educated and cheap. So does a typical Singaporean have any of these traits? On the surface, it seems like a yes. Actually, no, it is not always the case. Not to be sexist but, this is even true when it comes to Singaporean male. Why? Singaporean males still need to go for re-service in National Service. Mind you, I am a PES B NSmen. I also have the fear of being recalled back during my holidays.
Singapore government once said that foreigners are hardworking than Singaporeans. They got that right. I mean, the best thing us Singaporeans can do is complain about everything. Just four words to describe: No action, talk only. We complained about how to get married and have kids when our salary isn’t rising. We complained about the cost of CoE keep rising. We complained about the inefficiency of our public transport. Then we complained about the foreigners snatching our job. For the males, we complained about the needs to go back for re-service. All these complaints were made but any actions done by us? We do not even work hard to make our own life better.
The foreigners are different. They got nothing to complain about. They do not need to go for National Service. They do not need to care about getting cars. They are happy about their salaries. They are so new here that they do not know how empty our trains was back then in the 90s. All they need to do is, focus, work and receive. They are willing to do anything you ask them to do or they are pretty much screwed.
Not to mention that Singaporean males need to pass IPPT every year. If one fails, he needs to go for remedial training. Their precious weekends will be burn and they will have no energy to work during the weekdays. How could one be expected to work hard when they don’t rest enough?
Being hardworking would mean the foreigners are more reliable. I already mentioned the fact that they do not need to worry about going back for re-service. The only thing they worry about is their motherland. Singapore entrepreneurs need to worry about their male employees getting recalled by the military. The government only pays losses for the people whom are recalled. Not the company he is working in.
So, let’s say I own a small company with only a few local talents. We are working on a major business project. All of them are so important that if I lose one of them, it will drastically affect my project. Just happens that one of my employees receives a letter of recalling and he needs to go serve the army for 21 days for oversea exercise. The employee has his pays covered by the government but who is going to cover that empty slot for 21 or more days? Now are the local employees reliable? They are not because of the system.
Why don’t these entrepreneurs hire local females then? They don’t need to serve National Service. Female employees, whether they are local or foreigners, they are as ‘reliable’. But a company cannot just run on one gender. There must always be a mix to balance things out unless you are running a beauty salon or something.
If one is reliable, that means he/she is educated to some level. By education, I just mean that employee should have at least educated in his/her job scope. The best thing is that employee always has the heart to learn. Foreigners who came to Singapore in order to work are normally prepared. I am excluding those who came to work but they do not know how to speak in proper English. At least they know what they are specialized in. Their university, though not ranked as the best, at least teach them certain skills. That is the ability to learn from mistake.
Singapore universities may have a decent rank. However, students can just slack through the whole 4 years. The only times you see them studying is the time when the finals are coming. All those last minute hard works tend to score them at least a ‘B+’. The bell curve system in Singapore universities is there to fail students just for the sake of failing.
Singaporeans who are holding a Polytechnic diploma are the worst of all. They possess little skill to be reliable enough. I gone through Polytechnic only to learn that things I learn in Polytechnic are barely enough to be use in my college. Let alone going outside to work.
All bosses will take the salary of each employee in mind. The cheaper they are the more likely employees will be hired. So does this also apply for large companies with a lot of employees? Yes, it does even though it seems hard to keep track. In fact, the more employees the boss hires, the more the boss concerns about their salary. The only jobs that have some sort of fixed salaries are civil servants.
Locals are not cheap to hire. They want a high standard of living. They are always pestered by a system to get married as early as possible. The worst of all, inflation rate in Singapore rise randomly. The best way to solve all these problems is to get a job with a high pay. Small companies can’t offer high wages. Large companies are too large to hire more unless that person has a special talent in him/her. This means the locals will probably have a lower chance to get a job with decent pay unless they work as a civil servant.
Foreigners are different. They can deal with having a lower standard of living. Due to our high-value currency, most foreigners can get ‘rich’ in 5 years. Then, they return to their country and probably start their own ‘business’ there or get married, kind of. Most foreigners would not stay here and become a citizen. It is obvious that they can take lower wages to perform those tasks above as compared to local. If I am a new entrepreneur it would be obvious that I would hire someone cheaper to cut some cost.
An employee’s efficiency is sum up by his/her hard work, reliability, education and cost. A newly formed company needs its pioneers to be efficient in order to be successful. If you are the boss who would you hire? It is up to you to decide as these scales are constantly changing.
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