You will be able to find courses that qualify for SkillsFuture Credit and judge whether a course is worth your time.
Every few months, a reminder appears: your SkillsFuture Credit is waiting to be used. You open the portal, scroll through thousands of courses, and either give up or pick something that sounds interesting, such as a weekend course on design thinking or an introduction to digital marketing. You finish it, get a certificate, and it makes no difference to your career.
SkillsFuture Credit is a useful resource, but only if you spend it on something that moves your plan forward. This lesson covers how the credit works in broad terms, where to check the details, and how to judge whether a course is worth your time.
SkillsFuture Credit is a government credit that Singaporeans can use to pay for eligible skills courses. You can use it on courses listed on the MySkillsFuture portal, run by SkillsFuture Singapore, where you can search for courses, see whether they qualify, and submit a claim.
Not every course qualifies, and the credit cannot be spent on anything you like. Eligible courses are listed on the portal, and the course page shows whether the credit can be used for it. If a training provider tells you a course is claimable, confirm it on the portal yourself before you pay or sign anything.
The amount of credit you have, any top-ups, whether particular credits are restricted to particular kinds of course, and who is eligible have all changed over the years, and they may change again. This course does not quote them, because a figure that is right today may be wrong when you read this.
So check your own balance and the current rules directly. Log in to MySkillsFuture with your Singpass to see what you have and whether any part of it has an expiry date. Read the current rules on the SkillsFuture website, including whether part of your credit can only be used for certain programmes. If something is unclear, contact SkillsFuture Singapore directly instead of relying on a training provider's summary.
Course marketing is designed to sell the course. It shows happy faces, promises "in-demand skills" and lists the topics covered. None of that tells you whether the course will help you get the job you want.
The better test is what graduates of the course are doing now. Some providers publish placement information. Others will tell you if you ask. Ask how many people finished the last few runs of the course, what share are working in the field the course trains for, and what kinds of roles and employers they joined. A provider that cannot or will not answer is telling you something.
You can also check for yourself. Search LinkedIn for the course name or the provider and look at the profiles of people who list it. Are they working in the field the course is meant for? Did they move into it after the course, or were they already there? Wei Ling did this for two data analytics courses. Graduates of one were mostly working as analysts within a year. Graduates of the other had mostly stayed in their old roles. The second course was cheaper and had better reviews, but she chose the first.
Lesson 8.3, Read the fine print before you sign up, adds more checks, such as a conversation with a past participant.
A certificate tells an employer you sat through a course. A finished project shows them what you can do. When two courses cover similar ground, choose the one that ends with a project, portfolio piece or real piece of work you can show in an interview.
This connects to everything earlier in the course. In lesson 1.3, Test a direction before you bet on it, a small project was one of the best tests of a direction. In lesson 6.1, The STAR method for behavioural questions, you saw how a concrete piece of work becomes an interview story. A course that ends with a project gives you both: evidence that you can do the work, and a story to tell about how you did it.
Arjun compared two instructional design courses. One ended with a written exam. The other ended with each participant designing a short training module for a real organisation, with feedback from a practitioner. He chose the second, because the module could go into his portfolio and onto his CV as a result rather than a qualification.
Before you shortlist courses, look again at your market sheet from lesson 2.4, Build a market sheet for your target role. Which of the top skills do you lack? A good course closes one of those gaps. A course that teaches something interesting that appears in none of the ads you read may be worth doing for its own sake, but it is not part of your career plan.
Wei Ling's sheet showed SQL in eighteen of twenty ads, and it was her biggest gap. She searched MySkillsFuture for SQL courses aimed at analysts, ignored the general introductions to data science, and compared the three that ended with a project.
For the activity, search MySkillsFuture for courses in your target direction, shortlist three, and note the project or portfolio piece each one produces.
Shortlist three courses for your target direction on MySkillsFuture and note the project or portfolio piece each one produces.
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