Transcription
Welcome to the Straits Times Head Start event in partnership with Workforce Singapore. My name is Dan Co. I'm from Money FM89.3 and I'll be your MC for today. So many of you might be wondering what is Head Start all about. Now, it's the Straits Times' way of helping you level up in your life, whether it's your career or just the way you live day-to-day. So, basically, it's about making your whole adulting journey a little bit easier.
Okay, for today's Head Start panel discussion, we've partnered with Workforce Singapore, like I've rightly mentioned earlier today, in support of Career Health to explore how AI is reshaping the way we work, what that means for all of us, and of course, how exactly do we stay ahead of the curve. So, without further ado, let's invite and welcome our panelists on stage. We've got Brendan Lee, the Assistant Chief Executive of Transformation Support Group at Workforce Singapore, Luis Garrett, the Partner and Career Business Leader at Mercer Singapore. And of course, our very own Straits Times Senior Business Correspondent, Chris Buu, who is moderating this panel. Please put your hands together and welcome them on stage.
Thanks for coming and spending your Saturday afternoon with us. Um, we're very happy to have you and today I've got two very good experts here who are here to answer all your difficult questions about AI. So, this is part of the Head Start series and what we're trying to do is to help you young people, specifically maybe 18 to 35, but if you're older or younger, it's fine too, and get some good tips, practical insights on how you, what you need to know about how AI is impacting the jobs, um, is going to impact your careers, and then, you know, what you need to know, what kind of advice can you get to navigate your careers from now. And we're talking not about just getting the next job or getting a job that will be relevant for the next five to 10 years, but it is also how to thrive for the next five to 10 years, and not just thrive for the next five to 10 years, but how to navigate the new AI world in the next 30 years of your working life. It's sad, but it's true.
Okay, so, um, I'm going to introduce very quickly again. I have got Brendan next to me and Brendan is the acting chief, assistant chief, sorry, Assistant Chief Executive Officer from the Workforce Executive, from the Workforce Singapore. Now, Workforce Singapore is a national agency that's mandated to get Singaporeans good quality jobs. So, how AI impacts jobs is something that keeps Brendan awake for a lot of nights. And that gentleman over there that looks like Chris Martin, you can get a selfie with him later if you like. And well, that's Luis Garrett. Well, I've known Louis for quite a long time. He's also a psychologist by training. So, yeah, we might have a key scam later on, so be careful. Um, so, um, Louis is a the senior partner, senior career business partner, partner, and Louis, also, his his titles always trip me out. Senior career partner, he's a partner and senior business, um, leader at Mercer Singapore. So, for the last eight decades, Mercer has been telling or teaching organizations about hiring trends and also helping talent build careers. So, he will bring to us today that perspective from the private sector. So please, you know, if when say your questions and make them difficult, make them hard, and then get something out of these two gentlemen as much as you can later on. So, I'm going to moderate this session, panel for 30 minutes, and after that, we'll throw the floor questions for the floor for 20 minutes. Okay.
So, I'm going to start with Brendan. So, Brendan, about, we have a lot of young people here looking for answers and we know that AI is impacting jobs. I cover technology and enterprises and bosses are telling me that they are hiring fewer people. They're laying off people in some companies and they are not giving jobs downstream to vendors like creative agencies or research agencies. So, it is impacting jobs. Now, from your vantage point, from Workforce Singapore, what are you seeing? Can you help to cut and slice, um, the the environment for our young people? You know, what should they understand what's going on now? Are we at the tipping point? Are we at the start of something that's going to really hurt their careers in the next few years?
I think it's a complex issue and I think the final answers are not here yet. Um, maybe two starting ideas. You see what you believe, right? That's confirmation bias. And the second thing is that you drive towards what you see, which is target fixation. So, if you believe that there's going to be a crash, then you'll see the signs of it. And if you look at the crash long enough, you will become the crash. So, when you look at all these headlines, I would say that even as a person who looks at this stuff day in, day out as part of my job, it is difficult. So, I just want to acknowledge that, you know, it's a, it's a tough kind of situation to uncover. Um, at the global level, I think we are facing, uh, kind of global uncertainty because of tariffs, because of conflicts, and in the economic sense as well. If you look at, um, the trend over the last couple of years, we're actually coming down from an overhiring spree immediately post-COVID, right? And then when you add on the billions of dollars that have gone into AI investments and people wanting to make it work, um, even though it's a very early kind of technology, the GenAI part, um, that kind of creates that maybe global picture of what is happening, you know, in the economies, in the labor markets of different countries, and including Singapore.
If you then bring it closer to Singapore, actually, we're still quite resilient as an economy. Uh, the last quarter's numbers were better than the first quarter's numbers last year. And, uh, MTI just recently revised our forecast from zero to, I think, two to 1.5 to 2.5. In a certain frame, uh, the economy still looks resilient, even though that there are clouds ahead because a lot of these things are not resolved. Tariffs are not resolved, conflicts are not resolved. If you look at whether there are jobs, from a certain point of view, I could say yes, there are jobs. If you look at, um, WSG's MyCareersFuture, which is our job portal, I think if you check today, there may be about, maybe over 60,000 jobs listed. About 8,000 jobs are listed as being for entry-level. Public service has got 2,400 jobs listed as being immediately available. So, from a, a certain numerical sense, there are still jobs, uh, for entry-level and for younger people. But I do concede that these are just numbers and how people feel may also be very different. And the way I might imagine, you know, the explanation for a lot of the potential anxieties, other than the situation being very hard to figure out, is probably the lived experience of how, you know, the young find their way into the jobs. Even if they do have a job, it is probably more difficult. It's more challenging. It doesn't help that everybody has AI tools to be able to send out hundreds of applications, and then on the other side, all the HR people are scratching their heads of how do I make a difference between every CV that looks perfect, right? And when you start looking at the challenges that you have faced today and you project into the future, like you said, right, we're going to have much longer careers. If that is going to be the case moving forward, but I don't think it is, but if that is going to be the case moving forward, then I can understand why people are feeling very anxious about the situation. Um, but I think to sum it up, it is still not very clear yet. Um, but there are many different things that you should look at, uh, before you kind of condemn yourself or condemn your future to something which is still something within your agency to change and to affect.
I appreciate that answer. This comes with a lot of empathy because I'm young, or even if, you know, I'm a middle-aged woman, you're looking for a job, I can't find it. It is not helpful if the government is telling me there are jobs. You know, look at the numbers, there are jobs. I want that empathy that it is difficult, it is despairing.
Louise, what are you seeing from the private sector?
Yes, uh, thanks, Chris. So, what I would say is that we definitely see companies adapting to a new economic environment. And I just want to be very clear that one of the things that happens with uncertainty, because at the moment we have not seen economic downturn. What we have seen is the uncertain impact of a variety of big trade policy moves in particular, but also frankly the redeployment of capital. So, we're basically spending out of things that we used to spend money on, all into data centers and this sort of stuff. And so money moves around into different areas and that softens growth in other places. And so by soften, I mean it slows. So, what happens in that environment is that if you're a business leader in a big company, you say, well, I cannot commit to spending as fast as I used to because I cannot see where I will get growth. I can't be confident in my strategy, and so I will slow. I will slow down. I will do less. And of course, because one person's spending or one company's spending is somebody else's income, you get a knock-on situation where all of a sudden, you know, if this cycle continues, you end up in an economic contraction because everybody's waiting for something to get better, which is not great.
So, if you're a company and you're trying to be more cautious, what's the first thing you do? You say, well, how about we slow hiring of roles that are more future graduate roles are very often, or more early career roles are very often about building talent pipeline for the future, and we'll get back to that soon. And I think there's definitely something in the numbers that we have seen so far, which is less about AI and more about economic cycles. And I think we should be clear on that. The second thing that big companies do is they say, "Well, this generative AI thing looks like it can do some stuff that somebody, it's quite clever, you know, research. Oh, I need a research report on this country because I'm going to invest in that country and I want to open a factory there." And I used to pay a group of people to use the internet of things to do that. And those people didn't need to be the most experienced people in the team. Generative AI can do that. So, they see those opportunities and they say, well, if we have fewer people at that level, then more and more people will be forced into using that technology, and that will increase efficiency for us. So, the thinking is, in some cases, that we will take out certain roles, or we will not rehire, or we will not add as many junior roles, you know, early career roles, because that will force other people in a company to try and use this technology, right? So, you can see that thinking. So, we have seen some of that. Has that made any difference to organization performance and productivity? The answer right now is there is very little evidence it's done anything at all. So, I was talking to my friend recently, he said in the 80s, there was this famous quote, I don't know who it was from, but basically, you know, when computers were emerging and you could see computers everywhere except in the productivity numbers, like it just wasn't improving. And I think we see something similar with generative AI, except in certain areas where I'm sure the people who said you're using AI all the time, you know, in that top category, 76 to 100% of the work I do is uses AI. My guess is that person works in software development, right? Where you can just constantly be using it to improve, like to draft some code and write, etc. So, that's where the low-hanging fruit is, and there we definitely are seeing a significant slowdown. The last thing I want to add, Chris, if it's okay, is the impact of this technology on organizations is, I completely agree with what Brendan said, as yet completely unknown. But what will be very interesting is to see how it reconfigures work and therefore flows through to economic impact. If what we find is that the, but using AI means that we need a smaller group of more highly skilled people in some industries, right? Usually, what will happen is that therefore those people are by definition more productive. They're usually higher paid. They're producing more. Those companies do well, they generate profits. Okay. So, yes, there is some contraction in some industries because you need fewer people. You can, you're taking work from others, but basically, because of the increase in productivity, more money comes into the system, which allows us to start new industries or new experiments. And actually, the history of things, this kind of technological innovation produces more jobs than fewer. And so we're looking to see whether or not that will happen. But right now, we're too early in this process.
So, my next question, I mean, what you said that is cyclical rather than structural, and I think that's very good news for young people because whatever if it is going to be like due to demand and the tariffs and jobs, which means that jobs will come back. But if I were in my 20s, can I wait? And then, you know, Brendan, that there are jobs, but how do I get this job? So, like they say, everybody on LinkedIn who has ever worked in McDonald's is listing AI as a skill right now. Every resume looks the same. So, I'm a young job seeker seeking my career. I need that big break to get to be the expert that Louis talked about. How do I do it?
Well, I think, I can't remember which movie it's from, but the saying is that when everybody is special, nobody is special. And I think it's quite true in this age of AI where I think on the one hand, you have to keep up with what everybody's doing just to kind of stay at the same level, right? So, with the AI tools these days, I would say that, um, a lot of it can be self-learned. A lot of the free stuff is very good. Spend time, spend effort, go figure out what works in the AI space and use it, um, for for for helping you to get ahead in a career. But on the other hand, I think you have to take a contrarian strategy or a differentiating strategy. And this may mean that you have to do, um, very, uh, human things because AI is not human at the moment. It could mean, um, doing the jobs that nobody wants to do because that is what will build you an experience base that is differentiated from a lot of the other people who are chasing AI this and AI that. Um, I'm not suggesting everybody go be a plumber, but in our economy, there are so many different families of jobs. Everybody squeezing into the top 20% jobs means that there's 80% that is uncontested in some ways. Doing that could give you that differentiating factor. Um, going and networking with people like all of you are here today, meeting people. I mean, before you leave this room, make sure you introduce yourself to somebody in front, to the side, and behind of you so that you can build those relationships that will become increasingly important even as everything goes, goes AI, right? And even for WSG, we have various things that help bring that human element to it. We have volunteer career advisors, industry mentors who you can make appointments to find out what's the real situation in the industry to get ahead. So, you can find a low-hanging fruit from these people, right, even if you have no friends in certain sectors that you're interested in. Um, but I guess to me, the more important, um, challenge is actually not with AI, but it may be with what AI is causing, um, to how we think about jobs and careers.
Maybe I'll just do a quick poll. How many of you like traveling? Okay. So, in the past, everything used to be package tours, right? You pay a certain amount of money, somebody brings you, there's a guy with a flag and you follow him all around. The restaurants may not be very good, but you got no choice because it's part of the package. I think careers and jobs used to be like that. Now, whether you choose the package or your mother forces you, you will go along for the ride and everything is handled for you. But what AI is doing, at least to me, one kind of, uh, characteristic that is causing a lot of deconstruction. Jobs are breaking down. When we talk about, you know, how AI affects jobs, a lot of people, what they do is that they take the job, they break it down into the 10 things I have to do, and this is okay, this is affected, how much that has affected how much. So, a lot of things are breaking down. And if you want to piece together a longer-term career, a more strategic one, which aligns with your own goals and aspirations, then first, you've got to know what you want to do longer term, or maybe at least five years out. Then you need to be able to take all these pieces, maybe take the good stuff, and be able to string it together into a career plan that allows you to achieve those goals. And that is very different. It requires you to have a lot more agency. Uh, it requires you to take a lot more proactive action. And but I think the good news is that these are skills that can also be learned. These are mindsets, and there's a lot of support where we are helping even young people do better career planning, both in school as well as in their early working life. Um, we, for example, have a career planning program called Polaris, which aims to help people think through that process and I guess put something down so they can start working towards it.
Louise, the question following what Brendan has just said, and I'm thinking if I'm in my 20s and I'm thinking about my career. So, from the private sector, when you're hiring somebody, would you advise me to kind of be very flexible about what kind of jobs I'm going to have in the next 10 years? Can I be a kind of plumber today and then an accountant tomorrow? Or is that foolish? Because I would never be an expert in anything. By the way, I think plumber is not very AI-able. So, pretty good career path right now in some cases. Have you hired a plumber? Expensive. Not many of those left. I mean, I mean, seriously, with your question, um, look, I think people need to be very open-minded about the kinds of skills and capabilities you can build across a portfolio of different economic activities, you know, jobs and things you can do. But I mean, I would boil it down to a simple question, which is that, you know, in life, or, you know, at work, what enables someone to be able to find work and get ahead? You know, what are the building blocks of that? And I think there are three things that, you know, really stand out. And I think these three things, whether you're a plumber or an accountant or, you know, whatever experience you choose to gather, they are consistent and they're important. And the other thing about being open-minded with different careers, by the way, is that that agility, I think, is very valuable. So, what are those three things?
So, the first is to be, quite frankly, able, you know, uh, to be able to, uh, be competent, to do something well. And the best way to do that that I know is to be very focused on being able to learn effectively because things change all around you. You know, what was expertise five years ago is no longer expertise today, and so you need to be constantly hungry for that learning and insight. And people who are very flexible and agile from a learning perspective tend to do well. However, that area, I think, is also the area where we see, you know, competence and expertise AI playing an increasingly more significant role. The second area that I think is undervalued, but once you spend a little bit of time with people in big organizations, you realize is probably one of the most important things, is to be likable. People have to like you, and they need to like you quickly. And if you, and I mean, I don't care what anyone says, promotions in big organizations are popularity contests, right? They all are meant to be meritocratic, whatever, but many people are very smart, and so that's not differentiating for you. We'll talk a bit about this. And so someone has to say, this person, I like them. And I, and trust me, that's something you can learn, and it's something that I think people do not spend enough time on, you know, how do I, how do I get people to very quickly feel that this is a person who's warm and I can connect with. The last one, again, obvious, is willing. And what I mean by that is you need to have drive. And how does that show up? It doesn't just mean that you're willing to do many hours or whatever. It means you're willing to do something hard and difficult, perhaps something that someone else will not do. And what's interesting about this is that, you know, so if you are smart, likable, and willing to do difficult stuff, those people tend to do pretty well. They always have jobs. Go figure. The funny thing about this is these two usually play off with each other, right? How many smart, likable, lazy people do you know, right? Or someone who's not that bright, but really nice and works really hard. And you can think of the other because usually if you have two, the motivation to bring on the last one isn't there. Or, you know, you can think of it, how many very ambitious, hardworking, extremely smart, very unlikable people do you know? I'm sure you might know some of those too. So, I don't need to go on too much about this. But the point is, is that those basic building blocks are characteristics that I think make somebody very, um, attractive in the labor market. And I think we need to be thinking, particularly people who are joining the labor force, should come out of school or in early career thinking, what's most important is that I'm smarter than other people. And I just don't think that is true. I think there are many other aspects to career success.
I do agree with you because I'm old enough and I have a lot of young friends and sometimes I open doors for them, you know, to get an interview or through the door, and then they'll fall flat on one of those three qualities that you just said. And, you know, the three qualities being smart, being likable, and being having that drive to try to do things. Um, these are soft skills. So, AI is just one of the package, and a lot of young job seekers kind of mistake it and think that it's all about, you know, getting the internships and participating in hackathons. But, you know, and then when I take them to open the door for them to get an interview, they go in and ask the interviewer, you know, can I work from home? You know, is it, you know, do I get, um, like free lunch or whatever? But actually, the interviewer wants to know, what can you do for me first? What are you going to do for my company, right? So, I want to ask Brendan this question because you talk about getting them to do the hard things. Can you elaborate?
Well, I mean, I totally agree with what Chris Martin has said. Um, um, you like it too, right? Um, I mean, I think, you know, in terms of the learnability and skills, this is where AI can give you an advantage. I mean, if there's one thing which I do is that I use it to save time on learning things, and there are quite a few studies that say that, you know, AI actually helps people get into the jobs that they otherwise could not get into because it helps you to level up. So, that is one thing you can do. But in terms of the hard things, at least for me, other than, than, than, um, what has been kind of said already, is that you need to, I think, protect your own agency and your own kind of ability to do critical thinking. Because I think in, in a space where everything is being recommended by AI, everybody's asking answers from AI, you need to be able to discern what is the kind of best decision, best recommendations for the situation that you're in, and you need to be able to constantly review that judgment and to keep going on. And so, so for me, right, I mean, I can't tell you what you should do, but at least what I'm doing, the hard things I'm doing, first, read more and read more widely and read longer things. Read The Straits Times, okay? Um, because if you can't ingest this information and you can only take snippets from your ChatGPT, I think it's going to be very difficult to have that kind of raw material to be able to make those decisions on. Second is write more. That's why I have a notebook and a pen and not a phone. Right? Um, because there are many studies that also say that as you write, it is actually thinking, right? And interesting fun fact, go search on YouTube, Sam Altman, right? The guy who's either going to be our savior or destroyer. He writes before he uses ChatGPT because he does not want to be kind of pre-installed with the ChatGPT answer. He wants to know what is his own thoughts, put it down, and then he uses a tool to help refine his thinking. But kind of writing is hard. Then I think to Chris's point about about, um, you know, the drive part, right? I mean, another view could be that, okay, so you want to have all these good conditions, but, you know, the employer is not going to give it to you. Actually, these days, just start something. Entrepreneurship, micro-businesses, I don't know, home cafes, or what have you. Or if you get a job that you don't meet 100%, just start. Because once you start, you're able to build experience, you're able to start making decisions, you're able to start making wrong ones that help you get better judgment, and then hopefully make better decisions in the future. If you just wait, you're not going to start building those areas of expertise. And when AI kind of automates all the other stuff that is less important, less expertise, and they require people that have got this experience, judgment, the field, whatever you want to call it, then at least you will have given yourself a head start to build up that level of competencies, that reservoir of experience to be able to form with AI augmenting what you do rather than replacing you.
We've been talking at a pretty high level up to now. So, I want to take this question to Louise and just bring you down to that level of the job seeker. So, could you share with us maybe an observation, anecdote that you have seen among young job seekers and tell us from this impression or incident, you know, of story, what any lessons that would be useful for them?
Yeah, I mean, so I think what's important to understand is that, um, the people who, even early career, uh, show up and who are very effective have a very good understanding of themselves. And you can very quickly tell the people who are still, who kind of searching for themselves. I don't know if that, I know that also sounds very abstract, but what I mean is that, you know, there is a clarity to somebody who really understands, look, this is where my strengths are, these are the kinds of things that I really thrive and I enjoy doing, and, uh, here are the areas where I'm really working on. Someone who spent some time really studying and understanding their own perspectives on the, you know, looking a little bit inwardly, but understanding how they show up in front of others. I think that's a real differentiator in the labor market. And I just, to be clear, I think you can use AI to help with that. So, I think there's a lot we can learn about ourselves by using artificial intelligence. And so, what's happened is in the labor market is that every CV, I don't know if you know this, if maybe some of you are job seekers, every resume, every CV looks the same because everybody is using ChatGPT to put a resume together, etc. They're all fantastic, but they're not differentiating people anymore. So, you need a very specific example of how you can be unique. In fact, maybe just do it the human way, and it will look different. Do you see what I mean? But I mean, you need, and to do that, I think you need to have a very clear, authentic understanding of yourself. And so, I mean, I'm not going to give you specific examples about people, but when you know, we hire people of all ages, but, um, early career people, you can really tell the ones who have a clear idea of why they're there and what is getting them interested and excited. But also, I think the other thing that, um, is helpful to think about is a strategy for being unique. So, Brendan talked a little bit about this, but what is it that is unique in you, in the way that you're showing up? What unique experiences and skills are you bringing to the table? What is going to differentiate you? Uh, I think that's a very important question that people need to ask themselves. Companies are going in a direction where experience is actually becoming less of a decision factor versus skills, ambitions. Because what we're often finding is we're creating lots of new types of work. That work has never existed before. So, we can't find someone who's experienced at it. So, we need somebody who has the energy, the drive, the learning agility to come in, pick up new stuff, build relationships, and that's really what a company is looking for. And that's definitely been my experience. The people who can show up and do that tend to do better. And, um, and I think that at least there are some things that you can get help for. So, in terms of better understanding of yourself, you know, maybe what are your values, your interests, your skills, or your personality, I mean, that is exactly the kind of thing that we at WSG are trying to help all Singaporeans do. And there are programs that you can kind of get support from career coaches that can take you through that process. But I think I would also agree with Louis that, you know, these days you can, um, talk carefully to ChatGPT and things like that to kind of question yourself, do that introspection, and clarify what you want to do.
In terms of specific examples, I mean, I won't, I won't, I won't be able to quote a person, but I think actually, I'm, I'm actually very impressed with, like, the whole generation of youth. I know there's distributions and, you know, I, but overall, I think, at least to me, you know, the youth of today are so much more capable than when I was, you know, in their shoes. I actually was at the, um, Youth Forum organized by our colleagues at NYC this morning, and there were like two halls full of youths pitching, you know, their startup ideas. There was like a whole bunch of youth interested in the heritage of places, including where I stay, um, helping other people, disadvantaged. And to me, the point of it is that, you know, if you have that agency and drive, there's so much opportunity that allows you to kind of gain that experience. And maybe the thing that's holding you back is that, you know, the wait for that one perfect thing. I mean, to be very honest, I think that is the old, old model. And that was when lives were maybe tapping out at 65. Even today, somebody like me will have another 30 years to go. For the rest of you, you're going to have it up to 100, right? So, even if there was that one thing that you're looking for, right? I mean, maybe over a 50-year career, that is going to be a little bit boring, right? So, don't let, you know, perfect get in the way of good, right? Get started. If the situation doesn't change, you're going to have to pivot anyway. So, get comfortable with pivoting. I think get comfortable with uncertainty and building those skills to be able to figure out what next you want to do, and have it be referenced to something a little bit more longer term than, you know, what's the next thing to do. Maybe think of at least the next two or three things.
I just want to, because I think it's very compelling. So, I, there's one thing also you really left me with, and I think I've just, we've run out of time on this section, but reading widely and deeply is underestimated in so many ways because when you really have to read something deeply, you get just, I felt a much deeper understanding of it. And I feel like we're in an age where technology, social media, byte-sized everything is a little bit like fast food for our brains. It's, you know, it's enough probably to get you through the day, but is it not really nutritious? And I'm a real big believer that you cannot have great ideas unless you consume them, and great ideas very rarely come on TikTok. Right? Right. Seriously, you know, to really deeply understand all aspects of it. And I think therefore, this is why I think in the AI age, even to be able to interact with that tool. I love that point about Sam Altman because, you know, the typical, the engineer thinks, well, I don't want, I need to really clearly understand what I know about this, etc., because as soon as I see what it says, it's going to shortcut me. The last thing I learned this week is, um, what my friend Thomas came, his, um, came to a conference I went to this week, and he said, you know, some research has been done where you ask people how much of their day they spend thinking. And he said, well, you know, men go for like 60, 70%. Women are more realistic. They go 40 to 50%. The real answer is probably 10 to 20% because your brain is lazy. Brains are not for thinking, right? It's quite hard work. And so my point is, as soon as that technology is done thinking for you, the motivation to do it is not there. And so, like, that's a massive risk. So, even though we're here to talk about how this technology is changing so many things, I think a big risk is that it trains us not to really think in a way that makes us valuable. And I think that young people really have to take that to heart. So, men always embellish their capabilities. So, all right.
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