Vice Provost’s Message

With the rising number of graduates and fierce competition for jobs, employers are looking for more than just academic achievements. To gain employment and be successful in your chosen occupation, you need to have the effective mix of knowledge, skills and attitudes. This is all about employability.

How do we develop employability skills that employers look for? A good indicator is to focus on potential. Potential is defined as the ability to adapt to changing business coupled with the potential to learn new ones. I have chosen 4 indicators with the acronym A.C.A.D.

Aspiration: A strong desire to achieve. To leave your mark but with a deep commitment to big, collective goals, show deep personal humility and invest in getting better at everything you do.

Curiousity: To be on the lookout for new knowledge, ideas and experience to improve ourselves. This enables us to navigate the evolving world with curiousity and positivity.

Ambition: Hungry, passionate and engaged individuals are more employable. There tend to be  no limits to what they can do.

Determination: Individual’s with potential  set high goals and do what’s necessary to attain them. They also tend to be both tenacious and resilient.

It is the combination of classroom knowledge that you gained coupled with the out- of- classroom experience and positive A.C.A.D traits that can set you apart and  help you attain  fulfilment in your career.

I urge you to make an effort to participate in the whole student experience during your learning journey in SIM Global Education. This includes engaging in your academic studies, co-curricular activities, community services, global learning and work experience. This will prepare you well for employment and employability.

Dr Timothy Chan

Vice Provost
SIM Global Education

Life is so much more than just books, exams and qualifications. This is especially true if you are a student at SIM Global Education.

To us, your education encompasses a broad spectrum of knowledge, skills and activities; both inside and outside of the typical classroom.

Learn more about the many facets of student life in SIM GE.

Through your journey at SIM, we aim to provide a conducive and supportive environment, and create as many opportunities as possible, to foster:

• Core attributes of resourcefulness, resilience and responsibility;
• Deep professional competencies in your chosen disciplines and equip you with the ability to continue learning throughout your lives; and
• Corporate-readiness by being confident leaders in your own right, being good team-players, taking the initiative to solve problems, and being able to communicate effectively across all levels.

As you work towards the Award, we hope that the process will assist you to make the most of your time at SIM GE and eventually to be able to formally demonstrate the skills and attributes you have developed to prospective employers.

What do these attributes mean?

Resourcefulness describes a person who knows how to assess and understand a situation, determine the right kind of information or resources needed and where to find them, learn fast, and quickly deal with the situation. Such a person would be creative in thinking and problem solving, flexible, adaptable, practical and able to manage new or difficult situations confidently – perhaps even ‘street smart’ in the positive sense, of course!

Resilience describes someone who is able to face challenges and set-backs in his/her life and be able to ‘bounce back’ from such situations and successfully overcome them. This calls for strong determination, tenacity, perseverance and a ‘can-do’ spirit to keep going even when things get tough, or when faced with new and unfamiliar situations.

Responsibility calls for ownership and accountability. A responsible person is one who is self-driven, reliable and trustworthy, and will see through any task assigned to him/her until it is properly completed with due consideration for any ethical, moral and legal implications where applicable. He/she will also be one who is in touch with both local and global issues, and remains socially responsible for his/her local community, yet being a global citizen at the same time.

Deep professional competency requires you to have an in-depth knowledge and understanding of your particular field of study, together with a broad range of skills required to succeed in a career in that field. Some people call this a ‘T-shaped’ graduate where you have both the breadth of skills (the top bar of the ‘T’) and depth of specialised knowledge (the vertical bar of the ‘T’) to be an expert in your own field.

Continuous learning is a must in the 21^st century and beyond! With the rapid rise of globalisation of businesses, ubiquitous communication networks making information readily available any time anywhere, ‘uberisation’ of services, and other disruptive technologies that are changing the way we live, work and play, your survival will depend very much on how fast you can learn, unlearn and re-learn to adapt to the changes. Many of the jobs that you know of today, may not be around much longer so you will need to be prepared to constantly acquire new knowledge and skills to stay relevant and employable!

Leadership qualities are always much sought after by employers as they are constantly looking for new talents to groom into their future managers. That is a career goal that you can certainly strive for, but here we want you to also think beyond just rising up the usual organisation chart of a company, and to aim to be leaders in your own right – to excel in everything that you set your heart to do! You can be a leader in your own enterprise, your own sport, or in the arts, or in your craft – wherever you can make an impact on the world!

Team players believe in harnessing the collective strengths, experiences and wisdom of their group members to achieve goals that go way beyond what an individual can accomplish. Being an independent and self-reliant person is important but you will also need to be comfortable to work collaboratively in teams and to lead teams to do well in many situations, including teams that work across national borders with different cultures and mind sets.

Problem solving is a skill that is increasingly being sought after by employers. In line with what has already been said above, organisations will increasingly be faced with more and more complex problems in the 21^st century. Solving such problems will call for a quick analytical mind, clear and systematic thinking, yet flexible enough to be creative and think out-of-the-box when called for, so as to find suitable solutions.

Effective communication has also been identified as one of the key 21^st century skills that are required for success in the workplace. This includes the ability to articulate your thoughts and ideas clearly through written and oral means, videos, etc. to your audience (including cross-culturally), leveraging media-rich communication tools for more impactful presentations. In a sense, this attribute caps off all the other attributes because if you possess all the above but cannot convey your knowledge, thoughts and ideas in an engaging and clear manner, you may have a difficult time convincing your audience of what you have inside you!

The Award is open to all Final year students.

Application Due Date : 30 April and 31 October of every year

Please send your application to Careerconnect@sim.edu.sg.

• SIM EDGE Award Application Form