The Ministry of Manpower in Singapore recently launched the 2010 edition of Career Compass, its website for Career Planning & Occupational Information.
The website provides some useful information/tools, to help people learn more about different occupations and improve career decision making and career planning. While the website is officially aimed at students, its content is useful for experienced professionals as well, especially in today’s world of continuous learning and more fluid careers.
Key features of Career Compass:
- Labour Market Overview: It provides a brief overview of the current/expected economic and labour market outlook, with information about which sectors are expected to demand employees and increase headcount
- Occupational Database: Users can search hundreds of occupations and get insights into the typical tasks, nature of work, working conditions, qualifications required, preferred personal characteristics, job outlook, earnings and related careers. This is the best and most significant part of the website
- Career Planning & Assessments: Various tools and resources to help with career planning and to take career assessments (e.g. personality, interest). Some of these seem restricted to students though and most are just links to external providers
- Job search & Career Articles/Guides: There are some useful articles about various aspects of the job search, including resume writing, interview preparation, career planning, salaries, employment guidelines, work pass information and coping with retrenchment
- Other resources: It provides links to other useful resources, such as job sites/boards and education/training programs. These would be more useful to students and people who are not from Singapore
The pilot edition of the Career Compass was first launched in 2008 in the form of CDs. It reached out to over 40,000 readers, many of whom found it useful in helping them gain a better understanding of the opportunities in the job market, and make more informed career planning choices on the courses of study and careers. The second edition in 2009, established a dedicated Internet portal for the Career Compass which greatly enhanced its outreach to students, registering an average of 5,000 hits per day, from people looking for career planning information relevant for Singapore
