You will be able to judge whether demand for a role is broad and lasting or limited to a few employers.
Search MyCareersFuture for a popular role and you may see hundreds of listings. It is tempting to read that as a strong market and stop there. Then you start applying and notice the same three company names keep coming up, half the ads are from recruitment agencies advertising the same role, and almost everything asks for eight years of experience.
A count of ads tells you very little on its own. What you want to know is whether demand is broad, whether it is at your level, and whether it is likely to last. This lesson gives you four checks, with Wei Ling's supply chain data analyst search as the example.
Start by noting who is behind each ad. Fifty ads from forty employers is a broad market: if one company freezes hiring, there are many others. Fifty ads from four employers is a narrow one, even if it looks busy. A single large company running a hiring drive can fill a search page for weeks.
Watch for duplicates. The same role can appear several times when an employer reposts it, when it is listed on more than one site, or when two or three agencies advertise it for the same client. Agency ads often hide the employer's name, but the description is usually close enough to spot the repeat.
When Wei Ling sorted her results, she found that many of the ads came from logistics firms, but a fair share came from retailers, manufacturers and e-commerce companies that run their own supply chains. Because of that spread, her skills were useful across several industries, and a downturn in one would not close the whole field.
A field can be short of experienced people and crowded at the entry level at the same time. Employers struggle to find someone with eight years of experience, so news stories talk about a shortage, while dozens of graduates and switchers compete for every junior opening. If you are aiming for a first role in the field, the shortage of seniors does not help you much.
So mark each ad as entry, mid or senior. Job titles help, but read the requirements too. "Analyst" at one company is a graduate role and at another needs five years. A rough rule: zero to two years of experience asked is entry, three to six is mid, and more than that, or managing a team, is senior.
Wei Ling found that most ads were mid-level, with a smaller group open to people with one or two years of analytics experience. So she would not get a senior role straight away, and she did not need to start at the very bottom either, because her years in operations counted for something with the right employer.
Ads show today. To get a sense of whether demand will last, look at what is happening to the companies and the industry. Read company announcements and the business press for your target sector, and note any news of new regional hubs in Singapore, expansions, mergers, restructuring or job cuts. A company that has just announced a new distribution centre will probably hire for it. One that has just announced layoffs may still advertise some roles, but you should ask about the team's stability in the interview.
Keep it light. Fifteen minutes a week reading news about five or six employers on your list is enough. You are trying to see which way things are moving, and nobody needs a forecast for that.
Singapore publishes a lot about where it expects jobs to grow, and two sources are worth knowing.
The first is the Industry Transformation Maps, the government's plans for developing specific sectors such as logistics, financial services and healthcare. They set out how each sector is expected to change and often mention the kinds of jobs and skills it will need. They are long, so read the summary for your target sector rather than the whole thing.
The second is SkillsFuture Singapore's skills reports, such as its Skills Demand for the Future Economy report, which looks at skills in growing demand across the economy. These link to the Skills Frameworks you met in lesson 1.2, Find your skills in what people ask you for, so you can trace a growing skill to the roles that use it.
Treat both as signals of where public money and attention are going, which tends to support hiring over several years, though nothing in them guarantees a job. A sector the government is backing can still have a weak year, and a role these reports barely mention can still have plenty of openings.
After the four checks, Wei Ling could describe her market in a sentence: steady, mid-level demand from a wide mix of employers across several industries, in a sector the government is investing in, with fewer openings at entry level. That is far more useful than "there are lots of ads".
Your version may look different. You might find a market that is broad but mostly senior, which means you need a stepping-stone role first. Or a market that is concentrated in two employers, which means you need a plan B. Either way, you now know what you are dealing with.
The activity turns these checks into a short list of employers you can carry straight into the market sheet in lesson 2.4.
List the ten employers hiring most often for your target role and mark each as entry, mid or senior level hiring.
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