Demand for HR and admin professionals sees upturn in Malaysia

HR and administrative (admin) job roles in Malaysia have entered positive territory for the first time since March 2018, with numbers up 2% year-on-year in December.

In the short- term, this job-role category also saw an improved growth rate, exhibiting 4% growth month-on-month and 2% growth on a three-month basis. The positive sentiment was echoed in the Philippines as online hiring demand for HR and admin professionals in the country continues to soar, to the tune of 22% year-on-year.

Demand for HR and admin interns in Malaysia and Philippines continued to be the highest of all occupations surveyed, at 13% and 5%, respectively. These findings are from the latest Monster Employment Index (MEI), a monthly gauge of online hiring activity across Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines tracked by Monster.com. The MEI comprises data of overall hiring activity in each country, as well as specific data in the HR and admin sector.

The job role however is one of the lowest-growth occupations in Singapore. It registered an overall decline of 2% year-on-year.

“As the year ended, the online demand for HR and admin professionals in Malaysia swung upward to clock in a positive year-on-year growth after nine months of decline. It was also one of the three job roles that exhibited positive growth among the nine monitored by the index,” said Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO of Monster.com – APAC & Middle East.

“Careers are no longer simply defined by jobs and skills but through learning agility and experiences. The ongoing transformation of work, the need for people and organisations to constantly upgrade capabilities and evolve, and shifts in employee preferences demand new approaches to performance management, job design and career development.

"As rapidly advancing technologies and team-centred business models drive organisations to redesign themselves, leaders must keep up to create new career models and build a culture of learning.”

The MEI is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Singapore, Malaysia and the Philippines. The index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

Source: Monster. Demand for HR and admin jobs.

IT, BFSI and advertising lead Singapore’s online hiring uptrend

● Online recruitment in Singapore saw a positive uptrend in November 2018, with 5% year-on-year (YoY)  growth since November 2017.

● IT/telecom recorded the most positive growth among industries, with a 22% YoY spike. 

● In terms of occupations, software/hardware/telecom professionals were most in demand, with 8% year-on-year growth 

● Healthcare professionals witnessed the most significant demand drop of 10% between November 2017 and November 2018.

Online hiring in Singapore experienced a rise last month, recording a 5% year-on-year growth between November 2017 and 2018, according to the Monster Employment Index (MEI). This is a significant rise of four points from October's 1% rate, reflecting a positive uptrend. 

Leading with 22% year-on-year growth was the IT, telecom, BPO/ITES industry, which saw the steepest growth since March 2018. Other industries that are in the growth phase were BFSI and advertising, up 16% and 15% year-on-year respectively. 

While BFSI has always been propelling Singapore’s employment landscape, advertising witnessed double-digit growth for the first time in eight months. On the flip side, industries that saw a decline in online hiring from November 2017 were hospitality (4% year-on-year drop), shipping/marine (3% drop), consumer goods (2% drop) and healthcare (1%). 

In terms of job roles monitored by the Monster Employment Index, software/ hardware/ telecom professionals were most in-demand with 8% year-on-year growth for the month of November. Other professions that grew in demand were marketing & communications, customer service and finance & accounts, with 6%, 5% and 5% year-on-year growth, respectively. 

Healthcare professionals witnessed a significant drop of 10% from November 2017 to 2018, better than October’s 14% decline, but still with a long way to go. Demand for hospitality and real estate professionals also recorded a decline of 4% and 2%, respectively. 

“Technology is evolving at an exponential pace, and while some may say that automation is taking away human jobs, it is actually creating a whole range of new roles which didn’t exist before. Companies are investing in artificial intelligence and machine learning to automate processes, and the workforce needs to be trained to work alongside these technologies to achieve maximum productivity,” said Abhijeet Mukherjee, CEO of Monster.com – APAC and Middle East. 

“The IT industry recorded an impressive 22% year-on-year growth, propelling Singapore’s online hiring growth this month. In order to maintain this momentum, employers and educators need to work towards developing 21st-century technological competencies in the current and upcoming workforce.” 

The Monster Employment Index is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity, based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career websites and online job listings across Singapore. The index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

Source: Monster. Monster Employment Index figures for job categories with the most (left) and least (right) demand for new hires, Singapore, November 2018.

Source: Monster. Monster Employment Index figures for industries with the most (left) and least (right) demand for new hires, Singapore, November 2018.

Online hiring still slow in Singapore

Source: Monster infographic. Click on the image to view a larger version.

Despite a slight increase from March 2015, Singapore’s online recruitment is still in decline overall in April 2015, according to the latest Monster Employment Index (MEI) Singapore. The MEI, a gauge of online job posting activity, recorded an 8% decline this April, when compared with the same month in 2014.
However, this is an increase from March 2015, when a record 13% year-on-year decrease was recorded. “For the fourth month since January 2015, the Monster Employment Index Singapore saw annual declines again. However, the rate of decline slowed down between March and April 2015,” said Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster.com (India, Middle East Southeast Asia and Hong Kong). 

Source: Monster.

“As well as an ongoing need for skilled education professionals, Singapore is seeing growing concern over issues related to cyber security, keeping the demand high for mid-level IT professionals in the technology sector. In addition to this, the healthcare sector is also seeing an increase in hiring activity, thanks to a demand for professionals engaged in research laboratory and medical related technical sales.” 

Both tables source: Monster.

Among all 14 industry sectors in the Index, the lowest growth was recorded in the consumer goods/fast moving consumer goods (FMCG), food & packaged food, home appliance, garments/textiles/leather, gems & jewellery industry and the government/public sector undertakings (PSU)/defence  industry, at -16% and -11% respectively.

Once again, the education and IT, telecom/ISP and business process outsourcing (BPO)/IT enabled services (ITES) industries performed the best, at 14% and 4% respectively.

Across the 12 occupational groups monitored by MEI, software, hardware, and telecom roles are experiencing the highest growth for April 2015, at 14% year-on-year. This is the only occupation group in positive figures, with the second highest growth role being real estate at -4% year-on-year.

Purchase/logistics/supply roles saw the lowest growth at -11%, followed by engineering/production and marketing & communications, both at -10%.

The Monster Employment Index Singapore is a monthly gauge of online job posting activity, based on a real-time review of millions of employer job opportunities culled from a large representative selection of career web sites and online job listings across Singapore. The Index does not reflect the trend of any one advertiser or source, but is an aggregate measure of the change in job listings across the industry.

TalentBin by Monster trawls social networks to locate talent for recruitment

Source: Monster website.

Monster has launched TalentBin by Monster regionwide to aid companies to find, attract, and access professionals with the right skills. The software acts as a 'talent search engine' to provide recruiters with access to previously 'invisible' candidate profiles through harnessing the professionally relevant information people share across social platforms.

TalentBin by Monster not only automates and streamlines the talent discovery process via site monitoring, interpretation and matching, but also simplifies the hiring process to allow recruiters do more in less time. “Skilled technology talent is hard to find and we have found that many potential candidates are not active job seekers and are less likely to have, and regularly update, a resume or a professional online profile. However, the talent recruiters are trying to find are online in many ways, leaving bits of information demonstrating the professional skills that make them desirable candidates,” explained Sanjay Modi, Managing Director, Monster (India, Middle East, Southeast Asia and Hong Kong). 

“TalentBin by Monster is a solution to the evolution of online and social recruitment. It has an intuitive and specialised communication template that can assemble candidate profiles from publicly available sources, limited to professionally relevant information. This will ensure the ‘unfindable’ can be found." 

TalentBin by Monster is now available in Singapore, Malaysia, Hong Kong, Philippines and the Gulf region.