Many of you have, at some point, probably heard me griping about how many Singapore companies love including in their job advertisements this mildly offensive line:

While I do understand the logic that in this dire economic climate, of course, that higher authorities may encourage companies to first hire Singaporeans, to ensure that all citizens have a job, before opening the available position to foreigners, I also wonder if some companies state that for invalid reasons, for example, HR does not want to process work visas for foreign staff because it is troublesome and involves a lot of paperwork. Having come from a HR background myself, I can tell you that this reason is fairly common.

Of course, there may be real and valid reasons why companies require only Singaporean employees, or employees with Permanent Residency statuses:

1. There is a manpower quota, which varies for different sectors, and the company (especially small ones) may not have met the minimum required number of Singaporeans in order to be able to hire foreigners, or they may have already fulfilled that maximum quota of foreigners they can employ.
2. Jobs / positions within the organization (usually governmental) have high security levels, that is, concerning defense and internal security of the country, perhaps. Organizations like Mindef, DSTA, PMO, MHA would likely have such restrictions to hiring foreigners.

Barring factors like having a bad economic situation and therefore wanting to retain jobs for citizens first, I think having such “requirements” in job ads (and they are usually in bold font, and some even in red), it creates within many foreign talents in Singapore a feeling of not being wanted here, a feeling of being discriminated against. It does not bode well for the image of the organization.

How does that line up against the government’s plan to import more talents, and to increase the population by doing so?

With Singapore’s small population and limited human capital, how does this harm the organization’s chances of hiring the best talent (i.e. best fit, best abilities, best HR dollar ROI for the organization) to do the job? And how many dollars lost to competitors does that translate into for that particular organization?

How much less revenue is the industry (and country) generating due to such non-ideal recruitment practices, as compared to say, having the right people in the right places for the right prices?

With the admirable work done by the Tripartite Alliance for Fair Employment Practices (constituting representatives from the Ministry of Manpower to represent the government, NTUC to represent employees, and SNEF to represent employers) to ensure that jobseekers and employees are not discriminated against for their race, religion, and gender, I do sometimes wonder if this blatant, undoubtedly very real, discrimination of nationality, is a step back for our society in Singapore?