For the last four years, Mr Adam Ahmad Samdin has helped hundreds of students figure out which university to apply to, what classes to take, what internships to chase and how to build relevant skills in their early careers. 

After volunteering hundreds of hours at the student community society SGExams, the self-help group Mendaki, mentoring groups like The Academic Label, and the Singapore Management University Social Science Society, Mr Adam's top takeaway is that these young people are becoming more stressed about jobs and careers. 

His interactions with them have revealed that they are not just worried about securing good jobs anymore – many are genuinely fearful about their prospects. With remote work increasingly becoming a norm, youth worry they no longer have a competitive edge, having to compete with counterparts in the region who may be willing to work for less pay and are hungrier for success. 

These concerns echo the findings of NYC's Youth Sentiment Polls that revealed jobs and the economy as one of the top three issues for youths in 2021, 2022 and 2023.

Navigating fears and anxieties

Carrying all the students’ questions and concerns with him, the 25-year-old, now an assistant economist at advisory firm Oxford Economics, signed up for the #JobHacks Youth Panel. The panel is part of a broader National Youth Council initiative that provides youths aged 15 to 35 with an avenue not just to express their views on issues, but also to actively contribute to national policies to solve them.

The 30 members of the #JobHacks panel have been meeting once or twice a month since November last year to discuss critical employment challenges faced by young people. Their task is to detail a policy recommendation that will be presented this month at the Youth Policy Forum. Their goal is for their recommendation to be taken up by the Government.

For Mr Adam, it was a chance to translate the worries he had heard from the students into actionable solutions. “As part of the #JobHacks panel, I get to contribute to policy recommendations that make sure students and youths feel more prepared for the future of work,” he says. 

This aligns perfectly with the purpose of the #JobHacks panel, which is part of the Forward SG initiative. The exercise aims to harness new perspectives in navigating a messier and riskier world. Three other panels – #LifeHacks, #GreenHacks and #TechHacks – look at financial literacy, environmental sustainability and digital well-being, respectively. 

The four panels comprised close to 120 panel members who were chosen through an open call that ensured a good representation of views across different backgrounds, experiences, ethnicities, expertise and skills.

Shaping the future of work

The focus of the #JobHacks panel from the start was to identify and plug gaps within the labour market as members addressed youth concerns about opportunities for career development and lifelong learning. 

With such a broad remit and only ten months to come up with policy recommendations, the discussions and research that the panellists had to first cover were supported by representatives from agencies such as Workforce Singapore and the Ministry of Manpower that helped the 30 youths to better understand policy parameters and priority areas.

As the panel delved into their research and discussions, they began to shift their focus from identifying problems to crafting actionable strategies. This was when they settled on their approach to get youths in Singapore to become more willing and able to seize employment and economic opportunities beyond our borders, to bolster their competitiveness and career progression in Singapore.

Overseas work experience can provide valuable skills and networks that better position youths for more senior roles in the future, including corporate leadership positions. It also helps to boost Singapore’s overall workforce competitiveness, and is beneficial to both youths with leadership ambitions and businesses with regional expansion plans. 

“South-east Asia naturally came up in terms of how we can create more opportunities since the region has large consumer markets and a lot of potential for young people,” says Mr Adam. He has himself benefited from educational stints in Thailand and Japan as part of the Asean-Japan Youth Forum: Take Actions for Social Change, and in Vietnam under the SMU-X module Macroeconomics in Asia.

The group was also mindful that taking advantage of such overseas work opportunities would require a deeper knowledge and understanding of the different countries around us, as well as potentially different skill sets.

To ensure their recommendations were grounded in real-world data, the panellists developed a problem statement that they then validated through a public survey in May 2024. This allowed the team to collect quantitative and qualitative data.

Additionally, the #JobHacks panel is now conducting focus group discussions with various employers to gain industry perspectives. This approach helps the panellists with varying levels of work experience to develop solutions that resonate with both young job seekers and employers.

Redefining success for all

One key point the participants discovered, as a result of the diversity of the panel, was that the 15 to 35 demographic is made up of several segments, each with its unique concerns. 

19-year-old Ms Nur Aliyah Binte Jefri points out that contributing her views as a student gave the #JobHacks panel “a fair balance of opinions”.

“You require opinions from those who are already in the workforce as well as those preparing to enter it. As students, we ask ourselves if we're prepared, if we've done enough to qualify, and whether we need to go overseas for internships to become as knowledgeable as those who come from abroad?” says the Singapore Polytechnic Maritime Business student. 

The older youths on the panel with more years and work experience, have come to understand how their mindsets about jobs and the workforce differ from Gen Zs and Gen Alphas.

“Just a decade ago, people ten years apart might have shared similar life experiences. Now, we're seeing vast differences even among those just a few years apart,” says Ms Lim Kai Ning. The 29-year-old is an human resources professional who co-founded recruitment start-up The Courage Chapter after six years at Unilever.

“Our mindsets, the technologies we use and our definitions of success are evolving rapidly. It's not just about age anymore; it's about adapting to a constantly shifting landscape of opportunities and challenges,” Ms Lim adds.

The panellists quickly understood they could not come up with a one-size-fits-all policy recommendation considering the different needs and interests of youths across the 15 to 35 age bracket. 

This realisation offered a valuable lesson in policy-making: effective policies must balance the needs and interests of various stakeholders.

Throughout their policy-making journey, the panel discovered that addressing job market challenges sparked deeper conversations about personal aspirations and societal progress. 

Participants also found themselves re-evaluating their definitions of success, meaningful work and future goals.

This outcome suggests that youth involvement in policy-making can lead to more holistic and value-driven national strategies.

“At the end of the day, beyond the policies, what we hope to represent is the empowerment of youths to create our opportunities,” says Mr Adam. “I think that dreams should be about identifying what success really means to us and then chasing that as much as we can.”

Want to share your views on the policy recommendations by the youth panellists? You can do so here.