Looking for a safe environment to grow your business skills and network? The MBA is your way to a secure career.
Join fellow business professionals for this virtual MBA event open to residents and expats living in Singapore and Kuala Lumpur. Business schools from around the world look forward to meeting you online on 16 March.
Discover the best in business education. Here’s what you get at the event:
Individual video meetings with MBA programme directors from INSEAD, ESCP, ESSEC Asia-Pacific, Strathclyde MBA – UAE, HEC Paris, HULT and many more
Chance to win 1000 euro in financial aid for your MBA
A free 30-min MBA consultation by Unimy.com
A free online GMAT course by GMAT Prep provider Manhattan Review
How to build your future with an MBA
The MBA degree provides what you need to be the best in business and leadership. AACSB data shows 95% of MBAs land a full-time job within 3 months of graduation, and 74% get hired while still in school. The median salary of MBA grads is 75% higher than those with a Bachelor’s, according to GMAC.
Access MBA is free of charge, but online meeting slots are limited. Register early to save your spot.
We have been asked to share news of this MBA event and, because it is relevant to career development, we are doing so. The difference in this year’s event is that it is entirely online.
Discover a world of MBA opportunities online with Access MBA
Are you looking for the best way to grow your career as a business leader?
This online event gives you the opportunity to explore MBA programs from wherever you are located around the world.
Get ready to meet leading international business schools online and have all your questions about your MBA journey answered on the go.
What to expect from this online event?
Receive a personalized profile evaluation by our expert MBA consultants
Meet with the admissions directors of prestigious business schools in real time
Access scholarships from over EUR 3 million in MBA funding opportunities
What makes the MBA degree valuable?
The MBA study format is designed for business leaders who are ready to develop their international managerial career or wish to move to a different industry. Employers value the business fundamentals, problem solving mindset, and adaptiveness that MBA participants acquire by the time they graduate.
Take the first step by discussing your preferences for business schools and programs directly with admissions directors.
The Access MBA online events are free of charge, but meeting slots are limited.
A previous post on ‘’Ethical Outplacement or Retrenchment’’ on this site introduced and discussed Outplacement Support services in more general terms. This post focused on the benefits of such programmes to both retrenched employees and to employers. Since then I have been asked many times to elaborate on what’s involved in outplacement support, and particularly about the Career Choice and Planning programme.
Sandbox Advisors offers two complementary outplacement programmes: The Transition and Job Search programme which is the basic component of any outplacement service, and the Career Choice and Planning programme which provides greater support to the employee and facilitates reputation or brand maintenance for the employer.
Career Choice and Planning Programme
A frequent reason for retrenchment is that a particular function (e.g. finance or IT support) is being outsourced to a third-party provider in a lower-cost country such as Malaysia, India, or The Philippines. Usually this follows an industry pattern, so as one company outsources a function overseas, so do others. The knock-on effect of this is that jobs in that function are in decreasing supply and increasing demand, so employees in these positions are going to find it harder and harder to find a similar job. The career choice and planning part of outplacement support helps retrenched employees look wider and beyond their previous role to find jobs or careers that they will find satisfying and fulfilling. It turns the traumatic experience of retrenchment into one of opportunity – indeed, many people look back on the experience as liberating, life changing, and the motivation they needed to move from a mundane job to a fulfilling career.
The career choice and planning module helps individuals plan their next move properly. Individuals are guided through a systematic process to get a detailed picture of their characteristics and preferences that should be taken into account for their next career move. These include:
• Strongest life / career aspirations
• Personality type and traits
• Strong interests
Skills and strengths
• Knowledge / motivation
• Work values
• Work environment preferences
• Goals and constraints.
Psychometric inventories are used to help people identify careers and jobs that are firstly suited to their personality type, and secondly, to their core or strongest interests. Other assessments and exercises identify their skills and strengths (strengths being those skills that people are both good at and enjoy doing) and their work values. Participants then have four separate perspectives on finding a career direction that will be personally fulfilling and satisfying, and ones that they are likely to perform well in.
Obviously, this is far different than the individual looking for a similar role to the one they have just been terminated from, and possibly a role that is no longer being offered by employers.
Seize the
opportunity to meet some of the world’s top business schools in Singapore. Meet
admissions professionals in person and find the programme that is best suited
to take your career to the next level.
Why is
an MBA worth it?
The MBA is
a game-changing qualification. It will not only help you master core business
principles with both breadth and depth, but also nurture the soft skills that
are in high demand by employers today. The MBA is designed to equip you with
the tools necessary for business leaders in a competitive, global business
world.
Start your
journey to finding the right MBA programme by discussing your preferences and ambitions
in person with admissions directors!
Event
highlights
Explore
some of the top business schools globally – ESSEC Asia-Pacific, HULT, IE
Business School, Singapore Management University, Suffolk University and more.
Talk
about your aspirations with MBA Admissions Directors
School
panel discussions and workshops
A
chance to win a free visit to a business school of your choice
Access MBA
One-to-One is free of charge, but meeting slots are limited and early
registration is recommended.
Sign
up today on https://www.accessmba.com/link/Egf
The lunar new year is a good time to take stock of your career and develop some plans for it. This is particularly important if you feel in any way that your job is not a good “fit” for you, or that you have little or no passion for it, or you no longer experience any challenges in it. Even if everything seems to be ok with your current job, your career will still benefit from an occasional stock-take.
Most people unfortunately do not have a career plan – instead they ‘drift’ from job opportunity to job opportunity, and while this can work out alright a lot of the time, they miss out on obtaining the jobs and positions that would give them more satisfaction and fulfilment. To ensure happiness and fulfilment in your career, you need to take control of its direction.
If you don’t already know the type of work, responsibilities and environment that will be most satisfying for you, you should talk to a career coach who will assist you in identifying these [see articles on this site in relation to finding career direction] – this issue is beyond the scope of this article.
If you think that you are in the right career for you, and even the right job, taking stock of where you are and developing a plan for where you want your career to head in the next five or so years will be invigorating. Here is what you can do.
Revisit your job description and determine if you are currently carrying out all the tasks and responsibilities detailed in it. If not, should you be? If doing more, then you have a case for a salary increase or a promotion. From the person specification, have you got all of the main and desirable requirements to do the job excellently? If not, the deficiencies are the basis of your career development plan and you should talk to your boss about how you can obtain the skills and/or experience needed.
Before seeking promotion, you should ensure that you are currently carrying out your job in an excellent manner.
Then you should look to the future. Where do you want to be in your career in five years’ time? Is that position just one step above your current one? If not, you need to identify a position (or positions) that would be a stepping-stone to it. Identify the requirements in terms of qualifications, skills and experience needed to be eligible for your desired position(s). Again, the gap between your current qualifications, skills and experience, and those required for your next position, form the basis of your development plan. At your next performance appraisal, the gaps you identify for both your current and next position jobs are what you tell your manager you need to develop over the next couple of years.
This exercise will give your career direction and a development plan. Have a great new year!
As this MBA Fair is relevant to many of our readers, we agreed to announce it on our website. The following is from the organisers of the event:
“Join the Access MBA Tour and connect One-to-One with world’s best business schools. Find your MBA match with the help of our international team of business education experts.
Hold personal meetings with Admissions Directors from prestigious MBA programmes, get advice from our MBA consultants and GMAT instructors, and learn about 2 million euros in scholarship opportunities.
Some of the participating schools: INSEAD, IE Business School, ESSEC Business School, Strathclyde MBA – UAE, Singapore Management University, Duke University – The Fuqua School of Business and many others!”
Date: Tuesday, 17th September, 2019
Time: From 5:00pm to 10:00pm (upon invitation)
Place: Sands Expo and Convention Centre, Marina Bay Sands
Address: 10 Bayfront Avenue, Metro Station: Bayfront
As this MBA Fair is relevant to many of our readers, we agreed to announce it on our website. The following is from the organisers of the event:
“Join the Access MBA Tour and connect One-to-One with world’s best business schools. Find your MBA match with the help of our international team of business education experts.
Hold personal meetings with Admissions Directors from prestigious MBA programmes, get advice from our MBA consultants and GMAT instructors, and learn about 2 million euros in scholarship opportunities.
Some of the participating schools: INSEAD, IE Business School, ESSEC Business School, Strathclyde MBA – UAE, Singapore Management University, Duke University - The Fuqua School of Business and many others!”
Date: Wednesday, April 10, 2019
Time: From 5:00pm to 10:00pm (upon invitation)
Place: Sands Expo and Convention Center, Marina Bay Sands
Address: 10 Bayfront Avenue, Metro Station: Bayfront
The Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in Singapore has released details of increases to the administrative fees associated with the full range of employment / work related passes. The fee increases come into effect from the 1st April, 2019.
The old and new fees are:
Employment Pass:
Current fees: Application: S$70; Issuance / renewal: S$150.
Many companies are faced with the prospect of laying off or retrenching staff due to restructuring, relocating parts of its operations, automation, cost saving initiatives, etc. Not only is this a shock for those affected – those who will lose their jobs, but it is also a rather uncomfortable time for those involved in the administration of the retrenchment, such as HR staff and those managing the affected department. They have to go through the uncomfortable experience of informing the affected staff in both a group meeting and in one-on-one meetings to explain what is to happen, why, when and how. Continue reading “Outplacement Support Helps Individuals and the Company”
As many of our readers are interested in the topic of an MBA (Master of Business Administration degree), we have agreed to advertise this up-coming MBA event in Singapore. This event is free-of-charge.
For those who are considering doing an MBA degree or have an interest in the topic, there are some ‘freebies’ you might be interested in such as a one-on-one chat with business school admissions directors, GMAT instructors (probably worth going for this alone!), and scholarship information (another worthwhile attraction!).
The event will at least give you much information on a range of MBA and Executive MBA courses that the organisers are ‘marketing’ and a chance to talk with someone from those universities who will be able to answer questions relevant to their institution. Another valuable feature of this MBA event is that there will be panel discussions featuring school representatives and alumni – the alumni will be able to give you the real picture of the pro’s and con’s and the up’s and down’s of each of the programmes being marketed.
The information ‘flyer’ we were sent is as follows:
Join the Access MBA Tour and connect One-to-One with world’s best business schools. Find your MBA match with the help of our international team of business education experts.
Hold personal meetings with Admissions Directors from prestigious MBA programmes, get advice from our MBA consultants and GMAT instructors, hear from school representatives and alumni during Panel Discussions, and learn about 2 million euros in scholarship opportunities.
Some of the participating schools: INSEAD, IE Business School, ESSEC Business School, HKUST and many others
Date: April 11, 2018
Time: From 5:00 pm to 10:00 pm (upon invitation)
Venue: Orchard Hotel Singapore; Address: 442 Orchard Road
The New Year is a time many people make resolutions and set goals for various parts of their life, but few people set or revisit goals for their career. Rather than having specific and clear goals, many people almost drift though their career – they have an idea that they want to be promoted or attain a higher salary, but they don’t actually have a clear goal of where they want to be in ten years’ time or what is the next step or milestone on getting there.
People who plan their career achieve more and are more successful. They tend to be the people that others are envious of and wonder what they are doing to get promoted faster than their peers. People who plan their career are usually more content, satisfied and fulfilled in their work. People who plan their career are more likely to get where they want to go because they have a ‘career roadmap’.
So, as it is the New Year, now is a good time for you to plan your career, and below describes how you can go about doing it.
The starting point for career planning is a question: Where do you want to be career-wise in seven to ten years’ time?
Seven to ten years is considered long-term in career planning, but it is also useful to consider what job you want to retire from at the end of your career – depending on your age, this may be considerably longer-term than your seven to ten year career goal. However, an ‘end-of-career’ goal can provide overall direction to your career and how you think about it. Your ‘end-of-career’ goal may change over time as you gain experience and/or develop new interests, so it is not completely fixed or ‘set in stone’ – but it is an important beacon providing guidance to your career direction.
To develop your career plan, it is useful to identify both your ‘end-of-career’ goal and your seven to ten year career goal. Indeed, your seven to ten year career goal will be a major milestone on the way to your ‘end-of-career’ goal. Even if you are unsure or unclear about your ‘end-of-career’ goal, you can still develop a valuable and constructive long-term plan by focusing on a seven to ten year period. The process of determining both is the same, just that one is a longer duration than the other and will have more milestones. Here, for simplicity, we will focus on developing a seven to ten year career plan.
Having answered the question of where you want to be in your career in seven to ten years’ time, write that down at the top of a sheet of paper – this is your end point. Also write down at the bottom of the page where you are now – the job you are currently in – this is your starting point. This is the framework for your career ‘roadmap’.
Now you need to consider what milestones are in between your starting and end points. Let’s begin at your end point: What type of job do you need to be in to be considered eligible to get the long-term job that you want? What experience and skills are required for this job? This is the final milestone on the way to your career goal.
And for that job – the final milestone job – what job would you need to be in to be considered eligible to get promoted to this job? This is your second-last milestone. And so on until you are back at your current job and have identified milestones all the way to your end job.
Now you have a career roadmap that has identified your long-term career goal (the end point) and each type of job you need to get along the way as milestones. You can see a clear direction your career needs to take. When job opportunities present themselves, you now have guidance on whether such jobs will help you get where you want to be – are they in keeping with your career roadmap? Will such a job help you get the next job that is a milestone on your career roadmap or the one after that? If so, you should take it – if not, it is a distraction on your way to your end goal.
A following article will show you how to create a career development plan that will identify the skills, qualifications, knowledge and experience necessary to secure the jobs on your career roadmap.
Values are what are important to us in a particular context. In the context of our career or work for example, values are what is important to us about that and may include such things as ‘challenge’, ‘teamwork’, ‘autonomy’, or ‘recognition’. Values are what we want in a particular context.
Money is a value
Money or salary is usually a work value as well, because we all need money to live and pay the bills. For some people, just having enough to live on, look after their dependents (children and/or parents), pay the bills and have a little holiday is sufficient. For others, they want lots and lots of money. The difference between the two is another value which is about what money can do for them – for the person wanting lots of money, money can buy material goods which shows other people how successful they are. The other value here may be a self-esteem related one such as wanting others to look up to them.
Values mean different things to different people
A person who has work values such as ‘autonomy’ and ‘recognition’ will only be happy in work if their boss allows them to ‘get on with it’ – that they are allowed decide how the work is done or the desired outcome reached without being micromanaged by the boss. They also need to be given recognition for the work they do. However, recognition means different things to different people. For some, recognition may have to be in the form of a financial bonus or a pay increment. For others, they may just want the boss to acknowledge that they did a good job or get a ‘thank you’ for doing it. Again, some people want public recognition – i.e. it is also important to them that others know that the boss has recognised their effort – while for others a private word of thanks is sufficient.
Core values transcend contexts
While many of our values are only valid in a particular context such as our work or in our relationships, we also have ‘core values’ which are valid across all or most contexts. Some examples of such core values are honesty, truthfulness, or integrity. These are values that might be important to a person in their work or career, but would be equally important to them in their relationships, or in their buying decisions (where a company would need to have an ethical reputation for them to buy from).
Job satisfaction comes from our values being met
Most of the time we are not aware of our values – they operate in the back of our minds. If a person has work values of ‘teamwork’, ‘collaboration’, ‘challenge’ and ‘autonomy’, they will be happy in work as long as these values are being met. This would require a work environment where people worked together (on projects for example), but where each individual had their own part to play and, once they know what that is, are allowed to decide the best way to achieve their work goal. The work would also need to be challenging in some way – this might be that there is something new to learn or a new kind of problem to be solved. When these values are being met in work, the individual will feel contentment, job satisfaction, fulfilment, and be happy in work.
When our values are violated
But then a new boss takes over the team! This boss is very ‘hands on’ and likes to micromanage his subordinates. He decides the best way the job is to be done and tells people they just need to follow his instructions and do what they are told – no need to work with others. This would also take the challenge out of the job as the boss was deciding how everything is to be done. The person who has work values of ‘teamwork’, ‘collaboration’, ‘challenge’ and ‘autonomy’ will no longer be happy in work – they won’t have job satisfaction or a sense of fulfilment. They will feel that there is something wrong in their life, especially at work, but they probably won’t be able to articulate what or why. It’s simply that their values have been violated. They probably feel a lack of ‘fit’ with their job or the company, and start looking for a new job or even a new career. When our values are violated, we feel disrespected, and know ‘deep down’ that we need to take action.
Using values in career direction finding
When people are looking to find career direction for themselves – whether starting out in their working life or looking to change career – values play an important part. We have already seen the positive and negative impact our values can have in work, so determining whether our values will be met or not in the careers or jobs we are considering, and to what extent, is important if we are to find a career or job we will be happy and content in. Our work values can be our evaluation criteria.
People sometimes take a job that offers them a good salary or makes them look good in some way – it meets these values which can be important to some younger people. Their other values, such as challenge, meaning, or recognition, may not be met in that job, but because their more important value is being met, they work on, sometimes for years. But eventually the allure of the money and ‘looking good’ to others wears off and they feel that they just can’t go on in that type of job – they need ‘something’ more, they just don’t know what it is exactly – they need their values to be met.
Get to know your values for a more fulfilling life
So values are important in all areas of our life, and as this is a career advisory site, we emphasise their importance in work. Get to know your values – have a competent person elicit them for you – and ensure they are being met in your job. If some values are not being met, talk to your boss about it so a way to include them in your work can be found. Doing so has enormous benefits for you, your boss and the company.
