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Don and I recently returned from Singapore and let me tell you, 60 hours in an airplane (roundtrip, including stops in Minneapolis and Tokyo) is definitely worthwhile but exhausting. I was there to facilitate a Masterclass at the ATC and I ended up taking away far more than what I was there to leave behind. I'll tell you all about that but first let me tell you about the fun stuff.
Culture
S'poreans have their own language, it's called Singlish:
.Some of them are proud of it, while others consider it a pidgin English scourge that should be extricated from the community. It doesn't matter what language you speak though, in Singapore they have mastered the art of cross cultural communication. I mean, really, even though this sign on the right here:
is written in five languages, one doesn't even have to be able to read in order to get the picture!
Don must have lived in Singapore in another life because it didn't take him long at all to go native:
Frankly, I also felt very much at home. People talk about the cultural “melting pot” but in Singapore its gone way beyond that and its much more like a stew than a melting pot. Yes, all the flavors are well blended together, but there are pockets of ingredients everywhere. In Singapore there’s a “Little India” a “Muslim Quarter” and of course a Chinatown, but when you walk around the shops and hotels it all comes together. The Chinese I met spoke predominantly Hokkien Chinese, but I also met Indonesians, Malaysians, Koreans, Indians, Cambodians, Vietnamese, Pakistanis, Australians, Swiss, Kiwis, South Africans, Germans, Brits… the list goes on and on. We mostly shopped in Chinatown and hung out up and down the river which runs through the middle of the city.
Pedestrian bridges and automobile overpasses in many creative forms cross the river at various points, giving access to both sides of this social nerve center.
From Boat Quay
to Clarke Quay (1st) and Robertson Quay (2nd):
many restaurants and food stalls make their home at the river banks. The food stalls offer a staggering variety of menus from regions across all Asia, and many places around the world. In fact the menus were so specific that you could sit down to eat just Indian North Shore food at one place and Central Thai at another. Items like Dragon Fruit, and Chili Crab were popular in many of the menus.
There are also several Hawker stands open 24/7 throughout the city. At these locations you can browse the stalls, order your food and give them a table number, then they bring it to your table. The Hawker stands are kind of like “fast food courts” here in the US but they aren’t inside of malls. It’s a good place to wait out the rain because when it rains, it comes down hard in Singapore. We were there during one of the two “wet seasons” and when I say wet, well, the normally packed outdoor food stalls clear out.
Walking around the Chinatown market was inspiring. The variety and creativity is staggering, but what was most impressive is how things came together. I’ve seen my share of funny t-shirts but the combination of cultures here certainly took things a bit further. For example, this t-shirt:
gave this post its name . And of course that slogan leads to the inevitable conclusion that something did indeed go terribly wrong in our evolution :)
Artists man their own stalls in some of the Chinatown shops so what you get it not mass produced junk but real artisanal products like the hand painted vase I got for Stefi. Here is the artist adding three hummingbirds to a glass vase painted from the inside at my request:
Recruiting & HR
I only had a chance to meet with people from about 40 companies. But I have to say by far one of the coolest people I met was the CEO of PageUp People, Karen Cariss. I've seldom met such a down-to-eath, warm and authentic CEO, and never in the Talent Management space. This is a self-funded company that is going places so keep an eye out for them. I hear rumors they are entering the US Market! If you have a chance to meet her please introduce yourself at ERE and tell her you read about her on my blog.
Singapore has a very strong economy so I only met a very small representation of companies, but I did get a good cross section of different industries. This is only my second trip to Singapore, and I plan to do much more business there, but I feel like I can already make a few basic observations about recruiting in this part of the world. So here you go…
- Sourcing is still undefined and not quite established as a practice. Job boards like jobsdb.com and jobstreet.com are de’rigeur but a large percentage of the population of Singapore use the Internet to communicate. In fact, locals are very avid computer users. Singaporeans users are in the top five by country of origin on sites like LiveJournal, Xing, Xanga, Twitter, Imeem, Multiply, YouTube and Friendster. Even LinkedIn and Cyworld have quite large populations of Singaporeans.
- Recruitment is very much a function of HR. In fact for many of the people I met recruiting was one of several areas for which they were responsible, and most of them did not have staff dedicated to recruitment alone. Retention seemed every bit as much a concern as recruitment, and I would even argue that some companies saw “keeping their employees happy” as more important than finding new employees.
- That brings me to: they walk the walk but don’t talk much about it. I didn’t hear things like “our people are our number one asset” but it was very clear that people were happy with their jobs, and even then there was still a great concern about keeping them happy as I stated above. Maybe its because they have 100% employment there, but I just got the sense that companies take care of their people in a way we just don’t see much anymore over here in the “west.”
- There is a very open mind and appetite for knowledge. People were very receptive to ideas, asked lots of questions, and did not have some of the “that won’t work here” attitudes I’ve seen in other countries. Even though then traditional Asian cultural norm is not to question the speaker or interrupt in class, during my workshop and others I observed there was a great deal of conversation and inquisitiveness.
- There is an enormous need for cost containment, disproportionate to what I have seen in other countries. I think this is due to the fact that many organizations opened up business in Singapore because it was cost effective and they are expecting things to stay that way even though citizens there are experiencing wealth, price increases, a growing economy. The tax structure and benefits were attractive to companies but all five tigers (Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and Thailand) are experiencing this so “headquarters” expectations on cost containment are unrealistic.
- Singaporeans want Singaporeans back! I’ve seen this in China, India, Australia and New Zealand, so it was no surprise to see it in Singapore too. Years ago when great jobs were harder to find locally many university graduates went abroad to further their careers. Now that those expats have experience in the US and Europe local Singaporean companies desperately want them back because they are immensely valuable “back home” where they could manage and lead a new generation of workers who don’t want to go overseas to gain experience. The need for this is so pronounced that there’s already an online community dedicated to just this: overseassingaporeans.com