I'm in between jobs so thought of doing something fun (and hopefully helpful for the job seekers community).

A little bit about myself:

I have 10 years experience in Recruitment (7 years in a top recruitment firm in Malaysia and 3 years as an internal recruiter in a Tech company). In my career, I've been promoted 5 times and went from a Junior Recruitment Consultant to where I am now as a Recruiting Manager. I absolutely miss my agency days where I was raking $$$ from making placements across Malaysia. Took a (indirect) cut to do internal recruitment in hope to be more involved in recruiting ops and strategy and have never looked back since.

I've spoken to approximately 7000 candidates, placed more than 600 of them in jobs, met with at least 1000 hiring managers throughout my career in Malaysia and Singapore. Having seen the variance between offers, experiences and screening through countless of CVs, I hope I'll be able to answer any questions you may have

I've recruited for a wide range of roles including Finance, Sales & Marketing, Technology (currently) and Strategy related positions. I spend every week talking to candidates, understanding the needs and wants of different hiring managers and companies, prepping candidates to ace interviews and negotiating the best possible offers for them so ask away!



This post has been edited by mimikw: Feb 23 2022, 10:02 PM

PM

This post has been edited by Perspective2021: Feb 21 2022, 09:26 AM

It should be interesting to hear your observations of the current employment trend in Msia/SG.

Here are some of my question to kick off and further pique reader's interest hopefully:

1. Do you see any cultural difference between Msia and SG in terms of employer's preference for candidates (e.g., specific focus on ability to express themselves vs technical capability)

2. Assuming you are represent SG candidates, what are the main differences you see between Msia vs SG candidates.

3. Is there any quick indicators (based on conversations/interview sessions) that you think a prospective employer / employee is 'good'?

Thanks in advance.

This post has been edited by Justin Wong: Feb 18 2022, 09:33 AM

1) Why do some companies proceed to interview, and then OFFER, a candidate who makes it clear from the very beginning he'd accept nothing less than e.g. RM6k, a job at RM5.5k?

2) Is it true that for the larger, more established financial firms (insurance and banks and asset management), increments of 30% are considered "max"? I've heard this from a number of companies in the past.

just curious, is there any difference on interview behaviour between those 90's and those after 00's that u met?

Thank you for giving back to the community.
What are the qualities you think for someone to be Head of Department/C-Level?
Any particular skillset which need be be learned?
I'm in technology field.

1. Seems like it's quite common practice for HR to ask for previous payslip in Malaysia. Does it apply to SG as well?
2. Are there instances, where the candidate's expected salary is lower than the budget allocated for that particular position and if so do you give them their expected salary or more given the budget?
3. What's the most hike in salary that you have offered to someone?
4. Have you hired ex auditors making transition into industry/commercial roles? What is the usual transition careers?

HIIII

1. Do you see any cultural difference between Msia and SG in terms of employer's preference for candidates (e.g., specific focus on ability to express themselves vs technical capability)

No major difference but I must say it's def more competitive in Singapore than it is in Malaysia. Singapore has better tolerance for expats (the MOM dependency rate is 1 expat to 3 Singaporeans/PR vs 1 to 10 locals in Malaysia) so the market is a lot more competitive as you have talent from everywhere around the world. Candidates really need to stand out to nail an offer whereas in Malaysia the common theme would be the lack of soft skills - candidates not able to express themselves eloquently despite being qualified on paper. I had many candidates that falls under this department; they can do the job but they're terrible in expressing but it's not smt prep can't help. Employers in Malaysia, generally, are still willing to take the bet on people vs in Singapore, employers are expecting both soft skills and technical capabilities and if you only have 1 over the other, I'm afraid you might lose the rat race.

2. Assuming you are represent SG candidates, what are the main differences you see between Msia vs SG candidates.

Candidates in Singapore (not necessarily Singaporeans, there's a good bunch of Malaysians here too) are generally more confident, proactive and aggressive. They drive and lead the interview instead of answering your question 1 by 1 (which is the case for most candidates in Malaysia). I think this stems from the Malaysian education system where we (at least when I was a student back in 2000s) were not encouraged to challenge your teacher/speak up.
Secondly, candidates in Singapore are also more demanding or self aware of their worth so it's harder to influence them compared to influencing a candidate in Malaysia. To that point, I personally feel that candidates in Malaysia are much easier to "manage" and/or please.

3. Is there any quick indicators (based on conversations/interview sessions) that you think a prospective employer / employee is 'good'?
- Recruiters usually are not able to test on technical skills (always during the hiring manager interviews) but experienced recruiters are trained to access communication skills, career trajectory (we love candidates who have been promoted couple of time with their company) and behavior. Behavior based interviews helps - you'll probably hear an interviewer asking you smt along this line "Can you share with me a time when you face any conflict within your team" "What was your biggest accomplishment with Company Y?" They want to hear the RESULTS, not the problem. HOW you achieve it and WHAT's the outcome. Most important of all, the best indicator is passion. I always pass candidates who are passionate about the job their doing - you can always tell from their interest level, body language and the pure enthusiasm/energy when they speak to you. It is contagious!
Likewise, with employer (I assume you mean hiring managers), the best HMs are those who provide feedback consistently so we know if we're aligned on all fronts. Also we appreciate HM that KNOWS what they want as I've come across so many who changes their mind all the time or someone who wants a unicorn. There's no unicorns so they need to prioritise what matters to them and what are some attributes they're happy to train on the job.

1. It is common in Singapore too, in fact some big companies in Singapore hires background check providers to have a deep dive on your history etc. If you want to avoid providing payslips, it's usually the start up companies that do not have proper established processes - some HRs might skip this step, largely based on trust.

2. I can safely tell you 90% of the time, your offer is based on your current salary + a minor increment and NOT the budget. There's only a handful instances in my career where a candidate is on 5K and the budget is 9-12K so the client offer 9K. Almost never happens because all companies have a dedicated compensation and benefit team and the recommended increment is always 10-20% (Malaysia is 15%). They will not do outliers like 40% unless this is a highly niche & critical role (a rubber R&D specialist with experience in nitrile glove). As far as I understand, it is illegal to ask for payslips and their current salary in US so many pay based on expected salary and if the candidate is able to demonstrate all the skills required say, for a L5 SWE role, his offer will fall into the L5 band..unfortunately, this is not practiced in both Malaysia and Singapore. To your question, we do not tend to pay expected as well but try to bridge the gap between our offer and your expectation.

3. Double their salary It was a really niche role.

4. Yes! There are a bunch of start ups, especially, that hires Business Transformation/Strategy & Ops roles and they do hunt for ex-auditors (because honestly Management Consultants are too expensive lol). Maybe you should skill up to increase your chances. Many of my candidates do quick courses on SQL and Python to get into Commercial roles.
OR you can go the Sales/BD route - I have seen many Finance Recruiters and Finance product Sales executives (who are ex auditors).

Not sure if I'm able to provide the best advice as I have not fill many C-level roles.
As far as I understand, when it's C level roles, it's largely leadership skills and charisma (not so on hard skills). Clients tend to hire from the same industry as they have less tolerant for a CEO that has to learn everything from scratch again hence C level searches are very curated and personalised.

They need to see the way you carry yourself in interview - the person will usually be eloquent, confident but at the same time, not arrogant; able to articulate things clearly and concisely, with a a top to bottom approach and lastly super important, industry knowledge -the most prized quality.

At C level, you should know why they're hiring : is it to revamp a business? to grow 5X? or to take over?
Walk into the interview with a short and long term business plan in mind how are you going to achieve that objective without being overbearing (firing everyone or changing every processes). They'd also like to hear your experience in managing an entire business, how to bring them from A to Z.

Also, for every role on top usually you need to have some sort of P&L experience.

hope this helps!

In Malaysia, companies tend to try to cap increase of say 20-30% for a candidate when moving companies. I know some even cap it at 15%. Do you see the same in Singapore?

1. Let me turn the tables around a bit since you've looked at this from the other side of the table, any suggestions on strategies to retain talent, especially in hot industries? I'm currently in cloud services. There are ways for an employer/HOD to keep an existing employee interested including renumeration and job growth, but what else can you suggest?


2. What are job seekers especially in tech looking for when jumping ship? What are the reasons a tech employee is giving when leaving company or joining a new company? I'm going to assume that compensation is one thing, but anything else especially when they get a job offer where the pay is similar and they're willing to choose one instead of another? I've made several offers over the past 3 months that have been turned down even when we agreed to their asking salaries.

1) Honestly there's no blanket answer to this one. Could be incompetent HR (one that couldn't be bothered/care less of what a candidate is looking for or simply ignorant) or they're just trying their luck. Many times, candidates expected salary could be X but I find more than 50% of the time, they will eventually accept an offer 10% lower for a variety of reasons (scope, promise of career progression, culture, WLB etc).

2) Yes, as in all bigger companies with established HR processes has to stay within a compensation band based on internal and external (eg: Mercer) data. If you receive an offer, they will bench your current salary against that band and offer a % increment, usually 15% but like you say, it could go up to 30% >based on your negotiation skills (usually the higher band are for those who are under the market/underpaid/ has competing offers/niche skills/ role has been open for too long). This is to ensure consistency and to avoid irregularities (imagine HR 1 offer 60% increase and HR 2 offer 20%) this will mess up internal equity.

Is it true it field has higher starting pay than other fields?

Yup, similar to my previous post, all companies has SOP and its uncommon for them to go beyond a certain band (>30%) UNLESS they're in dire need of the person. Applies to Singapore as well. Contrary to what other think, usually it's the bigger, more established companies are the ones that offer minimum increment (10%-20%).
There are a handful of companies that do not follow this rule (usually companies without HR processes, you can tell when your hiring manager/agency is the one managing the process and offer).

1. Interesting question!! My company is currently battling with attrition problem due to the intense competition in APAC.
Back in my agency days, we always conduct these type of surveys to see how we can help client retain talent and the baffling discovery is most employee leave not for better salary, they leave for better work culture. Like they say, culture eats strategy for breakfast and culture stems from the top. That's why you see top companies like Google & Meta offer free meals, childcare/barista/gym services/ full flex work arrangement/ 6 months maternity leave just to keep employees happy. You can pay your employee at max range but it won't keep them for long if they're not enjoying what they're doing. Aside from remuneration and job growth (promotion), we also find employees wants to feel belonged so monthly townhalls/all hands are good to keep them engaged. Reward and Recognition are both important. Showcase them if they've done a great job. Some employers also invest in up skilling them (sending them for courses, even overseas short term training and bonding them for 1 year in return).

Lastly, this is uncommon in Malaysia but here many tech companies especially offer equity to employees that is vested across 4 years. Microsoft, Google, Meta, Uber offers a 4 years vesting schedule of 25%/25%/25%/25% after completion of each year on top of equity refreshers yearly to keep them so this could be a new strategy company can adopt to retain their top talent. Some companies like Amazon are even more aggressive with a backload vesting 10/20/30/40% after each year (so they'll very unlikely to leave after 2 years). Oh well in all honestly you'd be lucky to keep a good employee for 3 years these days.


2. You're right! A regular job seeker will be interviewing on average 3-5 companies and a good one will get more than 1 offer so the competition is real. As recruiters, I learned from experience we need to manage expectations from the beginning of the process (not only at offer stage); it's important you know what is the candidate looking for? Is it money? growth? What are his/her short/long term goals and how can you or the company be able to support his/her aspiration/growth?.
I will also always ask if they're interviewing elsewhere and for what roles/industry - even if they refuse the share the companies name, I'd like to know what am I up against so I can do some research and be prepared for my closing before the offer stage.
After every interview stage, I will also do a follow up to get feedback from the candidate or if s/he has any concerns - it it IMPORTANT we address any concerns soon. If it's WLB (I may arrange an informal chat with someone in the team to reassure the cdd), if it's scope, I'll need to get the hiring manager involved; point is the candidate should feel at ease after the entire process. Last but not least, the company PITCH is everything > How are you going to pitch about your company? I'd usually start with our vision and mission before going on to growth plans and culture.
It sounds like you're a hiring manager - if you are, I'd highly recommend you work closely with your recruiter should you identify a good candidate. I'd like to think recruiters are more than gate keeper; they have to be a good sales person, empathetic process owner and a skilled negotiator.

It's all supply and demand. During the oil boom, oil and gas engineers are highly sought after so field engineers raked so much from offshore trips and currently there is a shortage of tech talent, so with higher demand, lower supply, it pushes the overall average compensation upwards.

Interesting, out of the 5 tech companies you mentioned above, which do you think has the toughest interview process?

Haha depends on the role. For non Technical roles ,they're all difficult but if I had to choose, I'd say Uber - most L3 and above roles for Uber has a final case study presentation with a panel; followed by Amazon (they have a 6 panel loop interview + written essay before you get invited for the loop). Similar process for Google, Meta, Microsoft, not 'hard' per se but the bar is extremely high - For Tech roles, go check out Blind.