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This Singapore startup knows what makes millennials tick when it comes to job hunting

TalentTribe Asia

Career fairs and talks are no longer effective, as millennials want a more immersive experience along with mentorship opportunities

Eight months ago, Wilfred Wong attended a five-week talent development programme organised by Singapore-based mentorship software startup Protege. At the event, the 22-year-old chatted with industry professionals from companies like LinkedIn and Deloitte.

Along the way, Wong, who is a second year major in Maritime Studies at Nanyang Technological University, also picked up a mentor at the bootcamp — a human resource manager from Keppel Corporation.

“For job searching, the first step is to [typically] get through the interviews. But I still face the problem of not knowing what the interviewers want. With industry contacts, it’s very useful to get advice to plan your career,” Wong shared.

Also Read: 6 important things to remember about your millennial colleagues

Increasingly, millennials like Wong are searching for mentors before job interviews. They are also looking for practical advice and realistic accounts of workplace cultures.

Leveraging on this trend, Protégé is launching an online community website, called TalentTribe Asia, next month. The portal will help connect millennials and employers, offering perspectives on workplace cultures and a sneak peek into a day of the work lives of employees across job functions.

“Millennials prefer having close contact and face-to-face interaction, such as through mentorship. They like having a visual, insider’s look of the company through office tours and interactive activities,” said cofounder Stephenie Pang, who added that career talks and fairs are passé these days.

A millennial herself, Pang said career fairs do not provide a sufficient understanding of job requirements and company cultures. “These days, young talents don’t like to be told what to do; they want to see how their work fits into the bigger picture,” she added.

Through interviews and videos of workspaces, TalentTribe Asia will offer “a 360-degree view of individual company profiles in a single website,” said Pang. Users can also view short videos with sound bites from employees across different job functions, such as marketing or engineering.

Also Read: A few thoughts on millennial flakiness and freelancing

Also, a live chat section is in the pipeline, where online users can post questions to its moderators.

Protégé founders have been working closely with their advisor, Paul Lim, a lecturer of organisational behaviour & human resources at Singapore Management University.

A research paper, published last year by Lim, found Millennials to be “leaving their jobs faster and in greater numbers than those from other generational cohorts.”

Speaking over a phone interview, Lim said: “Millennials are finding that they can’t really apply what they learnt at school in the workplace. If they find something else that fits, they’ll walk away.”

The startup said it has lined up at least six companies for the launch of TalentTribe Asia and is in talks with several others.

Protégé began as a software service for enterprises to start, manage and measure their mentorship programmes. Currently being bootstrapped by its founders, the startup also secured seed funding of S$50,000 from SPRING Singapore and about $15,000 through competitions.

Protégé’s mentorship software offers a mobile application for mentors and mentees to interact, and a web dashboard for programme managers to analyse the progress of mentorship programmes.

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