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Glassdoor launches Singapore jobs site with 70,000 postings

Source: Glassdoor Economic Research (glassdoor.com/research/). Based on unique online job postings on Glassdoor as of November 10, 2018.
Source: Glassdoor Economic Research (glassdoor.com/research/). Based on unique online job postings on Glassdoor as of November 10, 2018.

Glassdoor launched its Singapore site with 70,000 job postings and related mobile apps on Wednesday (16 January) as the company begins its expansion in Southeast Asia.

In an interview with Yahoo News Singapore, Christian Sutherland-Wong, Glassdoor chief operating officer, said Singapore is one of the recruiting site’s top 10 markets, with people in the Republic visiting Glassdoor’s main site about 900,000 times monthly.

“There are 80,000 reviews and insights for 11,000 companies and this has happened organically with no promotion,” Sutherland-Wong said. “This suggests to us that the appetite for this kind of data in Singapore is strong.

In conjunction with the launch of the site, Glassdoor also released a research report showing that the number of tech job postings in Singapore outnumber that of the finance industry.

This is consistent with what is seen in the US labour market where there are three times as many tech industry job postings as in the financial industry, Andrew Chamberlain, chief economist at Glassdoor said in the report.

While Singapore is considered a financial hub, it has also grown into a tech hub in recent years.

There are 5,806 open tech jobs postings today in Singapore, more than the 4,715 open finance jobs, according to Glassdoor data. Senior-level tech roles can draw an estimated pay of as high as $19,600 per month.

In coming years, Singapore is expected to become one of the world’s top destinations for tech hiring given the country’s highly educated workforce, proximity to large Asian markets, and a pro-tech-investment policy stance, Chamberlain said.

Source: Glassdoor Economic Research. Based on unique online job postings on Glassdoor as of November 10, 2018.
Source: Glassdoor Economic Research. Based on unique online job postings on Glassdoor as of November 10, 2018.

But finance jobs still command higher pay than tech jobs in general. For open finance jobs on Glassdoor, the estimated median base pay is $8,338 per month, compared with $7,253 for open tech jobs.

Among the top 10 tech employers hiring in Singapore are Amazon, Micron, Visa, Grab and Apple. The top finance employers with the most open jobs in Singapore on Glassdoor are Citigroup, OCBC, DBS, JPMorgan Chase and UOB.

The outlook for hiring is bright in Singapore, with open job postings rising by 40 per cent to 52,090 on Glassdoor as of November from a year earlier.

Demand for knowledge workers

Christian Sutherland-Wong, chief operating officer of Glassdoor. Photo: Glassdoor
Christian Sutherland-Wong, chief operating officer of Glassdoor. Photo: Glassdoor

Sutherland-Wong said the high proportion of knowledge workers is key to its market launch in Singapore.

“The tight labour market plays to our advantage as well. Having a low unemployment rate and a lot of positions mean employees have a lot of choice and companies are spending a lot of money to recruit the right candidates.”

Headquartered in Mill Valley, California, Glassdoor was founded by tech entrepreneurs Robert Hohman, Rich Barton and Tim Besse in 2007, before the official launch in 2008. Barton also started travel website Expedia Inc., and co-founded the real estate marketplace Zillow Group. The company was acquired by Japan’s Recruit Holdings in May 2018 for US$1.2 billion.

What sets the company apart from other job recruitment websites is that it features companies’ profiles and allow users to rate and review employers and top managers. It includes information from current and former employees on salaries and work experience, as well as information from the companies themselves.

While Glassdoor is completely free for job seekers, it is not free for employers although they can create a Glassdoor account for free to manage the company profile there. Employers pay to advertise their jobs and promote their brands on Glassdoor through either subscription or on a cost per click basis.

Glassdoor is in 18 markets and has 62 million unique monthly visitors globally with 11 million job listings and 45 million reviews. Traffic from outside the US makes up more than 40 per cent and is growing faster than that in the US, Sutherland-Wong said.

Glassdoor also officially launched its Hong Kong website and mobile apps today. The company is “actively considering” entering the China market, Sutherland-Wong said.

Singapore survey

Source: Glassdoor
Source: Glassdoor

As part of its launch into Singapore, Glassdoor commissioned an online survey among more than 900 employees and job seekers in the market.

About 92 per cent of respondents say job realities tend to differ from expectations set during the interview process. Eighty-six per cent of employees say they wished they had a better understanding of what fair pay is for their position and skillsets both at their company and in their local job market.

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