National Day Rally 2006 - Look beyond academic qualifications to find and nurture local talents
My article which is accessible on Straits Times Interactive Online.
Watching this year’s National Day Rally regarding our population struck a chord with me. Remarkably, Singapore’s human capital has sprung beyond its initial seeding, towards contributing to the global stock of quality talent pools; with abundant head-hunting and scholarship offers.
Yet while we are looking towards developing NE programs in our education curriculum, as well as keeping an open hearted stance on our immigration policy to hijack and nurture a strong human capital base, we must not lose focus on how we manage our locally bred talents. Agreeably, as PM Lee cautioned, even as we encourage our younger students to travel abroad, we must continually engage and bind them to Singapore, before a major exodus of our local talents overwhelms us.
This brings me to a particular group of local human capital, Singapore scholars and award holders. Reasonably, these scholars are the cream of the crop, the true blooded, kaya toast generation of Singaporeans bred from our education system. But can they perform? It worries me to think that we may be awarding scholarships based largely on these students’ historical academic performance. Surely, we have robust mechanisms to keep in check their all-rounded abilities such as their CCA participations as well as countless rounds of interviews. But then again, are these adequate tests on our future scholars? Furthermore, are we myopically tunnelling our vision to a small group of young adults and neglecting those late bloomers who’ve caught a second wind? People such as Sim Wong Hoo, Mustaq Ahmad and David Gan were just the type of people whom were never cast in the academic limelight from the onstart, but low and behold, they are now our national treasures!
I strongly believe that we can do much more to recognize and nurture talent beyond scouting from our academic circle locally. Disproportionately equating ex-post academic performance to ex-ante forecasted performance undesirably constricts our search for local talent, especially the hidden gems.
Having mentioned that, I think that its’ timely that our civil service’s talent management policies relook at how we seek to approach, attract and retail Singapore’s talent pool. While many scholars may be morally bonded to the civil service at 18 years of age, we must not fallaciously believe that their capabilities are sealed and cast in stone. With increasing exposure to an increasingly holistic tertiary education such as overseas internships, exchange programs, these people may develop their skills and niches which may or may not be suitable for certain organizations. Take for example, a male student was awarded a teaching scholarship; but after his tertiary education, with an overseas internship and exchange program, he developed 3-4 years of strong entrepreneurship and business administration skills, bagging top international business competition prizes along the way.
In this scenario, the litmus test for our civil service in talent management would be to encourage these types of students to be able to switch between civil service scholarships, and nurture them in the appropriate place. On one hand, his contributions might be nurturing our younger generation, but by acknowledging and allowing internal shifts within the civil service, he may be forging greater alliances with the global business community, and perhaps inking multi-million dollar deals for Singapore.
We have good talent to sustain the growth and vitality of our economy, but more importantly, we must critically examine how we manage our talents. Human capital resources and capabilities are ever-fluid. We must harness the winds of these people at the right time, and at the right space if we wish to progress beyond our territorial shores.
Watching this year’s National Day Rally regarding our population struck a chord with me. Remarkably, Singapore’s human capital has sprung beyond its initial seeding, towards contributing to the global stock of quality talent pools; with abundant head-hunting and scholarship offers.
Yet while we are looking towards developing NE programs in our education curriculum, as well as keeping an open hearted stance on our immigration policy to hijack and nurture a strong human capital base, we must not lose focus on how we manage our locally bred talents. Agreeably, as PM Lee cautioned, even as we encourage our younger students to travel abroad, we must continually engage and bind them to Singapore, before a major exodus of our local talents overwhelms us.
This brings me to a particular group of local human capital, Singapore scholars and award holders. Reasonably, these scholars are the cream of the crop, the true blooded, kaya toast generation of Singaporeans bred from our education system. But can they perform? It worries me to think that we may be awarding scholarships based largely on these students’ historical academic performance. Surely, we have robust mechanisms to keep in check their all-rounded abilities such as their CCA participations as well as countless rounds of interviews. But then again, are these adequate tests on our future scholars? Furthermore, are we myopically tunnelling our vision to a small group of young adults and neglecting those late bloomers who’ve caught a second wind? People such as Sim Wong Hoo, Mustaq Ahmad and David Gan were just the type of people whom were never cast in the academic limelight from the onstart, but low and behold, they are now our national treasures!
I strongly believe that we can do much more to recognize and nurture talent beyond scouting from our academic circle locally. Disproportionately equating ex-post academic performance to ex-ante forecasted performance undesirably constricts our search for local talent, especially the hidden gems.
Having mentioned that, I think that its’ timely that our civil service’s talent management policies relook at how we seek to approach, attract and retail Singapore’s talent pool. While many scholars may be morally bonded to the civil service at 18 years of age, we must not fallaciously believe that their capabilities are sealed and cast in stone. With increasing exposure to an increasingly holistic tertiary education such as overseas internships, exchange programs, these people may develop their skills and niches which may or may not be suitable for certain organizations. Take for example, a male student was awarded a teaching scholarship; but after his tertiary education, with an overseas internship and exchange program, he developed 3-4 years of strong entrepreneurship and business administration skills, bagging top international business competition prizes along the way.
In this scenario, the litmus test for our civil service in talent management would be to encourage these types of students to be able to switch between civil service scholarships, and nurture them in the appropriate place. On one hand, his contributions might be nurturing our younger generation, but by acknowledging and allowing internal shifts within the civil service, he may be forging greater alliances with the global business community, and perhaps inking multi-million dollar deals for Singapore.
We have good talent to sustain the growth and vitality of our economy, but more importantly, we must critically examine how we manage our talents. Human capital resources and capabilities are ever-fluid. We must harness the winds of these people at the right time, and at the right space if we wish to progress beyond our territorial shores.
posted by Norman Ng at 12:21 AM
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