TWO women had applied for a sales manager position. One had a diploma in hotel management while the other had risen through the ranks.
Orchard Hotel's general manager Melvin Lim picked the woman with no paper qualifications.
'Our business is about dealing with people, and she was less aloof and more friendly. She also showed a willingness to learn, so it would be possible for us to nurture her,' he told The Straits Times.
Increasingly, employers like Orchard Hotel are putting a higher premium on skills and attitudes that fit the job rather than academic qualifications. They can be an attitude of self-improvement, or an ability to handle complex tasks.
The growing emphasis on such capabilities is a trend the Government should highlight to people, said an industry-led panel overseeing efforts to train adults for jobs.
The 13-member Lifelong Learning Endowment Fund Advisory Council made the call at a media conference yesterday, urging the Government to send a 'strong and consistent message'.
Other recommendations it made in its annual review of the Workforce Development Agency's (WDA) work are: get regular feedback from employers on the types of skills they need, plus invest more in building better adult training centres and introduce competition among them.
In line with the recommendations, the WDA launched a public education campaign yesterday, with advertisements lined up for this month to encourage workers to pick up a skill.
The council, formed in 2001, oversees the budgetary matters and funding policies of the WDA's manpower development funds.
It includes representatives from the labour movement, self-help groups and various industries.
The chairman, Mr Bill Chang, hailed the Government's 10-year masterplan, announced in February this year, to boost continuing education and training.
This year, the Government will inject $800 million into the Lifelong Learning Endowment Fund, to fund training programmes. The top-up will bring the fund to $3 billion.
But more needs to be done, said Mr Chang, an executive vice-president at SingTel.
Rapid economic changes tend to make knowledge outdated in a few years. With high value-added jobs coming in and low-cost ones moving out of Singapore, workers have to keep improving their skills to stay relevant, he added.
Such developments, however, seem to be lost on workers, said council member Sam Tan, an MP for Tanjong Pagar GRC and executive director of self-help group Chinese Development Assistance Council (CDAC).
In the past 15 years of training workers, the CDAC found many have the attitude that they need to upgrade their skills only when they are retrenched, he said.
WDA's chief executive Ong Ye Kung noted that manufacturers, too, seek workers with such attributes as discipline and the ability to follow procedures, while employers in services look for those who can relate to people.
Retailer Metro's director of operations and human resources, Mr Edward Tan, recalled hiring graduates who failed as operations managers because they could not take the long hours and lacked a customer-first attitude.
'Customers are more demanding these days. Not everyone enjoys or has the passion to serve,' he said.
By Goh Chin Lian, Straits Times.
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