Originally Posted by Unregistered

My experience is whether you are a junior manager or a middle one, as long as I can find someone to fill in that role at half the salary you are commanding, you are as good as dead to me. Some recruiters has strong ties with the companies, they may also advise companies to lay off expensive pple and fill them in with cheaper ones. There is no guarantee that things get better for people with 'strong professional network' because times are ever changing. Many young people have good networks, yes business relationships are important but it is not all. Unless you are a brilliant talent with super niche skills (oil drill engineers, software developers (local) or solutions architect), i think you will be easily replacable.

I have spoken to marketing, HR and finance people who got retrenched and they were merely earning slightly over 12 to 15k per month. Some AVP or senior AVP are in the same shoes, u think the companies care if you have 'networks', everybody has 'networks', and many people prefer hiring someone who's actively building close relationship than sporadic ones. My colleague from India told me that whatever roles you can think of in India, there will always be someone better and cheaper. The same is happening here in Singapore. Finance industry in particular don't give a **** if you are local a not, unlike other sectors.