95.1 Percent of SMU’s 2022 Fresh Graduates Found Jobs Within Six Months of Their Final Exams
SMU President, Professor Timothy Clark said, “Despite slower economic growth in 2022, we are pleased to see significant demand for SMU graduates, with the vast majority gainfully employed with good starting salaries. This is recognition of the appropriate market readiness of our students honed through SMU’s strong and comprehensive academic and co-curricular programs nurture the soft values and soft skills that are highly sought after in the workplace.The mandatory global exposure, community service, and mandatory internships (graduates complete a 2.7 average during their studies) all contribute to the workplace connection applied learning for students.
Founded in 2000, SMU is now home to more than 12,000 students in undergraduate, graduate, and postgraduate professional research programs and includes eight schools: School of Accounting, Lee Kong Chian School of Business, School of Economics, School of Computing and Information Systems, Yeungpong Cave School of Law, School of Social Sciences, School of Integrative Studies and School of Graduate Research Studies. SMU offers a wide range of bachelor’s, master’s, and doctoral degree programs in the interdisciplinary areas associated with its schools, as well as in interdisciplinary combinations of these areas.
SMU also strongly believes in international student mobility and its 100% global exposure policy for undergraduates means that every student will experience some form of global exposure during their time with SMU. This can take the form of a community service project abroad, an internship abroad, a foreign exchange program, or an SMU-X course abroad. These opportunities go beyond mere skills training for the professions and offer a breadth of knowledge, effective communication skills with cultural sensitivity, and demonstrate a willingness to learn that both domestic and foreign employers value in their prospective employees.
“SMU education ensures students develop skills and attributes that are critical and desirable in any workplace today, and these support our graduates’ careers in the future,” added Professor Clark.
Daphne Yap Lee Sing is an alumnus of Lee Kong Chian Business School and Skillsfuture Singapore (SSG) – Workforce Singapore (WSG) recipient. Prior to SMU, she was studying Business Administration at Singapore Polytechnic where she took several ASEAN Regional Internships. She completed a total of five internships while studying at SMU. During the pandemic, she realized that the government sector needed help, and thus took up training positions with the Singapore Tourism Board and the Ministry of Commerce and Industry. There, she worked on local tourism campaigns to help local museums and the food industry and was involved in numerous cross-border trade and aquaculture projects. To further challenge herself, Daphne takes on a volunteer side project to help collect oxygen tanks from Singaporean suppliers to help India alleviate their situation.
Daphne also participated in a summer exchange program at Pembroke Kings College, University of Cambridge and a business study assignment in Seoul where she interacted with the founders of JustCo and Go Pizza. With a passion for women’s empowerment, she started a sold-out fundraising project to help the less fortunate start their own online businesses, as the event was honored by MMD President Halima Yacoub. As Founding Chair of SMU Re-X, she led CCA Student Aiming to Reignite, Reimagine and Revitalize Retail, spearheaded the ASEAN Regional Inter-University Competition on the theme of Retail in a Covid World.
For Daphne, “SMU was the catalyst that encouraged me to break out of my bubbles and conquer my fears. The countless growth opportunities allowed me to accomplish so many things, and even if I could go back in time, I wouldn’t change a thing!”
It’s been almost eight months since Daphne graduated and joined the workforce, as she says, “The soft skills and experiences gained from extra-curricular activities have helped me develop a ‘flexible sponge’ mentality at work as I absorb new skills, stretch my learning capacity, and adapt to workforce trends Unexpected, powerful innovation solutions.”
As the Director of the Enterprise Program Division, Daphne is currently focused on developing and managing enterprise-focused programs. She administers the Ministry of Manpower’s Institute of Human Resource Professionals (IHRP) Scholarship and aims to establish the Job Redesign Center of Excellence (JR-COE) with IHRP.
Daphne hopes to continue her lifelong learning journey with WSG; It strives to revitalize and revolutionize the 21st century workforce in Singapore by empowering organizations and improving employee work value through JR-COE.
Makayel Ismail, a summa cum laude graduate of the College of Accountancy and recipient of the Dean’s Award, has spent most of his time at SMU—mentoring and organizing multiple camps and activities for his peers.
He did an internship at the Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) and acquired many soft and hard skills that helped prepare him for today’s workplace. The opportunity enabled him to showcase his talent to the management team where he made a good impression. Today, he is salaried at MAS with FinTech and Innovation Group.
He adds, “My college life at SMU was full of excitement—none of my four years was the same, each bringing its own set of challenges, pleasant surprises, and meaningful learning. I spent half of it as the leader of my students, the third as a coach and mentor to juniors, and I explored new activities, hobbies, and interest groups in my year The latter, in search of new experiences and beautiful memories.In fact, I am not the same person who entered the university for the first time in 2018.The SMU experience has helped hone my academic and non-academic skills, and has greatly shaped my personality and personal values.Truly, there has never been a time when I have felt stagnant at SMU, where opportunities for development and growth have always existed.”
Although he has a degree in accounting and an internship in sustainability, his current role is in FinTech. “I wanted to share that no student at any school should let their grades or courses determine their future career,” he says. “Never fall prey to the mentality that you’ve gone ‘too deep’ into your career path and it doesn’t require a change. No matter how deep we go in In any given field, if there are other opportunities that better fit our goals and aspirations in life, it is important to remember that it is never too late for us to learn and grow in order to accommodate these opportunities.”
Shafiqa Rahma is a graduate of the Faculty of Computers and Information Systems, majoring in business analytics and software development. Through SMU’s rigorous curriculum, I developed a variety of interests before graduation mainly in machine learning, software development, and project management. To find a career path best suited to her strengths, she took on three training opportunities that spanned from e-commerce to banking and managed to try out roles such as Technical Project Manager and Java Backend Developer.
Apart from taking on leadership roles, she also went on an exchange program with Kyung Hee University in Korea where she studied contrasting modules such as Anthropology and Literature, to develop a holistic way of thinking.
She landed her first full-time job before graduation at Citibank, where she had previously held an internship. She is now working as a full time Java Software Developer under the Bank’s Technology Analyst programme, working on high performance microservices/applications.
She shared how SMU has prepared her for the industry, “SMU has provided career preparation support since year one in the form of hosting networking events, resume drafting interview preparation workshops, and assigning each student to a career coach, from whom students can get personal advice on how to improve their resume.” This The support, along with the variety of technology that SMU covers in its curriculum, allows me to be confident in the skill set I have to offer. SMU has helped me go beyond the scope of specific work and explore areas where I can make an impact for the team and the company.”
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