Singapore amends job ad rule to streamline recruitment process

This is so that firms can hire quickly during a labour crunch and not lose “good candidates”, Manpower Minister Tan See Leng said in Parliament.

Dr Tan was delivering his ministerial statement on changes to the Employment Pass scheme announced last month in a bid to attract top foreign talent to Singapore.

He said that some firms had lost potential employees because they were unable to offer them jobs quickly enough given the job advertising requirement period.

His statement addressed questions posed by three Members of Parliament (MPs) on the reduction of the advertising duration, such as whether shortening the duration will remove the need for employers to exhaust all avenues to hire professionals, managers and executives who are Singapore residents. 

Dr Tan pointed out that when the FCF job advertising requirement was first introduced in 2014, the duration was set at 14 days after looking at data from job search portal MyCareersFuture.sg, which showed that the vast majority of job applications were submitted within the first two weeks of a job posting.

He said, “Thereafter, responses fall off significantly. So, 14 days was an optimal balance between giving jobseekers time to look for a job and making sure that companies could fill their vacancies in response to pressing business needs.”

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During the pandemic, Singapore had extended the FCF job advertising duration to 28 days because of the “unprecedented slack” in the labour market, according to Today.