Oral Answer to PQ on CareersFinder and Career Health

NOTICE PAPER NO. 1865 OF 2023 FOR THE SITTING ON OR AFTER 24 APRIL 2023
QUESTION NO. 4486 FOR ORAL ANSWER

MP: Mr Edward Chia

To ask the Minister for Manpower (a) what is the relationship between “career health” efforts, Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs) and Jobs Transformation Maps (JTMs); (b) how can CareersFinder be differentiated and improved upon from existing initiatives such as MyCareersFuture and MySkillsFuture; (c) how does CareersFinder fulfill the needs of our workers; and (d) whether CareersFinder will tap on partnerships with private entities to improve a job seeker's experience.

Answer:

Career health has three broad aspects. First, being aware of opportunities in the labour market and how to seize them. Second, taking proactive and purposeful actions towards one’s career goals and keeping up one’s employment resilience. Third, being able to bounce back from setbacks. Better career health is key to helping our workers move up the career ladder, stay employable, or switch to a new job that better matches their skills and interests. The Industry Transformation Maps (ITMs), Jobs Transformation Maps (JTMs), and CareersFinder are some examples of how we will help Singaporeans improve their career health.

2 The ITMs and the JTMs support the first aspect of career health in improving awareness of opportunities in the labour market and how to seize them. They would be used to guide employers and workers to prepare themselves for the future economy, such as showing them what are the necessary skills for future job roles and how to acquire these skills.

3 CareersFinder will build upon the ITMs and JTMs by empowering all individuals to take charge of their career health through personalised jobs and skills insights and enabling users to better plan for their upskilling and career needs. The beta version of CareersFinder, will be launched as a new add-on feature on MyCareersFuture (MCF) in Q3 2023 and will also be made accessible via the MySkillsFuture (MySF) portal later on. As a personalised jobs and skills recommender, CareersFinder aims to provide a more seamless user experience for individuals looking to upskill or make a career switch to progress in their careers. Using data on job transitions and skills similarity in the labour market, CareersFinder helps individuals identify new job opportunities available on MCF
that align with their profiles, and recommends suitable training programmes offered on MySF to help users achieve their career goals.

4 Hence, CareersFinder will complement rather than compete with existing jobs and skills portals, such as MCF and MySF, by improving the experience of users searching for jobs and training courses. This is a response to feedback from users that they sometimes explore job opportunities and skills upgrading at the same time. CareersFinder will become more powerful with more data. We will continue to enhance it over time, to make it more responsive to individuals’ needs.

5 We are looking to partner with private entities who are keen to use the recommendation algorithm to support job matching. They can also add value by building their own products and services based on CareersFinder to better serve their clients.