With Singapore’s economy booming and hundreds of companies flocking to join in on the technological revolution, it is not surprising that tourism has exponentially increased. In fact, Easy Destination states that in April 2010 alone, Singapore saw a significant spike in tourism—a whopping 20.4% of an increase. With the total number of visitors to the small nation reaching roughly 938,000, Singapore has. for the 5th time in a row, recorded record high number of visitors with the help of its bordering country’s—India, Thailand, and Malaysia. “Tourist arrivals from Thailand increased by 57.5 per cent, while visitors from Malaysia and India grew 50.8 per cent and 30.8 per cent. Singapore’s top five visitor-generating markets in April were Indonesia (with 163,000 visitors), China (92,000), Malaysia (77,000), India (73,000) and Australia (70,000)”, says the website. Read more…

Globalization’s effects can be felt everywhere. Gone are the days where people needed to hop on planes to attend business meetings, and gone are the days where managers needed to be physically present to manage their teams. Today companies can move their doors to foreign and more profitable places where labor is cheaper, taxes are lower, and property has more value.
We at HireLabs have become big fans of Singapore, which is on its way to becoming the epicenter of the technological world. With companies such as IBM and Facebook opening offices there and many more companies joining their ranks, it is evident that Singapore is the place to be. In the 2009 Doing Business Survey, the World Bank ranked Singapore as the easiest place to do business. The World Economic listed Singapore as number one in having the most friendly and open economy and number three in the Global Competitiveness Report 2009-2010 (the full report on Singapore can be viewed here). Read more…

When a company starts planning its relocation to another region, the management usually launches a study on the access to labor markets as we as their skill-level. This type of a study assists management in understanding and managing the risks before entering into any new territory. Such a study should examine the region’s work ethic and morals.

In this day and age, with multiple companies flocking to Singapore, which is rapidly becoming the Mecca of entrepreneurial innovation, the work ethic of the nation as a whole has a big role to play in its success. An understanding of how the Singaporean society functions and what motivates its people can serve as the key to success for any new business looking to set up shop. Read more…

With the technological world advancing at a rapid speed, Singapore has become one of the forerunners in the race towards innovation and advancement. Following in the footsteps of California and India, it has been dubbed by Eyal Gura, founder and CEO of PicApp, as on its way to becoming the third Silicon Valley of the world.
Serving as the host to Echelon, Asia’s leading web technology event, Singapore is currently attracting hundreds of new business ventures that concentrate on computing and technology. The conference allows technology enthusiasts and representatives from big name companies, such as Ebay, Google, Microsoft, Amazon, and Oracle (to name a few), to participate in a number of talks and discussions ranging from social media to cloud computing and enterprise web. This event serves not only as a discussion platform but also exhibits hundreds of companies from across the globe, providing individuals the opportunity to network with potential investors and interested parties.

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Highly influential Boards such as those at GE and Google have always kept talent development in mind when looking at long-term strategy. The Boards of these companies have relevant expertise, but most importantly they have access to several key line managers (the succession pipeline) who provide the raw data needed to construct a long-term strategy. HireLabs study of a recent McKinsey survey has revealed a few very interesting facts about how more and more Boards are actively pushing for greater involvement in talent development.

Of 586 corporate directors of Fortune 1000 companies surveyed, they indicated that they spend only 11% of their time on Talent Management. Furthermore the survey also indicated that more half of those surveyed want a increased involvement in Talent Management. This is not surprising as noted by a HireLabs study on the psychology of a member of the Board, which discovered that an individual who accepts a seat in the Board wants to use their experience to shape the company. “I accepted a seat at the Board so that I can influence the management to become an industry leader” states a Board member at an oil company.” Read more…

The cliché “Hiring the right person for the right job” continues to be loosely used by the HR industry. In order for HR to recruit “mister/miss right”, HR would need to put emphasis of conducting a job analysis, which will help HR in understanding the current and future situations that impact the position. Unfortunately, this seldom happens.

Once HR understands the situations that surround a position, they will be able to reduce the risk of a wrong hire, which subsequently increases the chances of a right hire. At HireLabs, we call this Situation-based Hiring (given that there is no violation of EEOC).

Let us look at an example of situation-based hiring:

A leading airline wants to start a low-fare program, and needs to hire a cabin crew.

The first step would be to conduct a job analysis keeping in mind the situations that the new cabin crew will encounter. Some of these situations include:

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As we researched along the year, our team came up with some important debatable topics on which some expert opinions were a requisite. The discussion was posted on 6 Social Networking sites and the responses we had were amazing.

The topic stated “Which of the two holds more importance in Recruitment? Skills or Behavior?” LinkedIn alone provided us with more than 300 comments on the topic. Facebook and twitter generated some heavy traffic with interests.

As a result of such an enthusiastic participation by Industry experts in the discussion, we decided not to waste away such valuable comments and convert them into a featured video on our global platform. Read more…

The era of the two-job employee (let us call him “Sam”) has emerged as a result of the global recession. Sam is a new breed who developed entrepreneurial survival skills to battle the recession, and learned how find and keep a second job.

You, the employer, do not need to be too alarmed if Sam takes on a second job as a baker, or a mechanic, because this would require Sam to be physically present at that location. However the situation is more complicated if Sam takes on a second job that he can do from any remote location.

Suppose that Sam takes on a consulting project to do bookkeeping, or write code for a website, or maybe even develop a training program, how do you think that Sam’s productivity will be affected at your work place? Read more…

Dear Recruiters and Bloggers,

Thank you for the overwhelming response on our social media discussion, “Which of the two holds more importance for recruiters in pre-employment assessments: Skills Tests or Behavior Tests”.

With more than 250 comments on 10 different social media sites, it has attracted one of the hottest recruitment-related discussions on the internet this month. Read more…

Just like a fine tailored suit, customization is a new feature that is added to the assessment tool that helps assessments fit to your needs.

Our research discovered that companies that were using a generic assessment to test applicants were screening people ineffectively, and they continued recruiting less capable applicants. This was because a generic assessment was being used to test a sales position at a luxury goods store New York, oddly enough, that same generic assessment was used to test a position for a sales person at a software company in Singapore. The flaw here is that when using generic assessment, it is assumed that both Job Descriptions for both the sales position were the same.

To address this major flaw and help companies in screening effectively and recruit the best talent, HireLabs develops customized assessments for that reflect your: Read more…