social science/arts degree prospects

Originally Posted by vanvanv4n

Hey, thanks for the reply! Sorry, may I know what's 2:1? Yeah I think I'm really consumed by the banking/finance/money mentality but I'll think this through, maybe really just go for where my interest lies (arts/socsci).

No worries, 2:1 means second upper honors.

There are many companies out there that are open to any good university degree as long as your grades are there. At the end of the day, good companies esp those Tier 1 MNCs management programs care more about your network and all rounded performance during AC then your type of degree unless it is a very technical hire.

My experience tells me there are many Singaporeans out there who made the mistake of joining financial industry with the misconception of big pay even though they have no interest. They then got stuck in a job/industry that they have zero interest and worse still realize that banking pay isn't half as fantastic as they made it out to be.

In fact my observation is that most people in the civil service and stat boards are actually better paid on average over long term those working in banking support and operations jobs. The high paying banking jobs are really those directly involved with capital markets, UHNWI or specialized data/programming skills , these make up <5% of banking positions out there.

[vanvanv4n]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

No worries, 2:1 means second upper honors.

There are many companies out there that are open to any good university degree as long as your grades are there. At the end of the day, good companies esp those Tier 1 MNCs management programs care more about your network and all rounded performance during AC then your type of degree unless it is a very technical hire.

My experience tells me there are many Singaporeans out there who made the mistake of joining financial industry with the misconception of big pay even though they have no interest. They then got stuck in a job/industry that they have zero interest and worse still realize that banking pay isn't half as fantastic as they made it out to be.

In fact my observation is that most people in the civil service and stat boards are actually better paid on average over long term those working in banking support and operations jobs. The high paying banking jobs are really those directly involved with capital markets, UHNWI or specialized data/programming skills , these make up <5% of banking positions out there.

I see, ahh this is great and comforting to hear! Thanks so much Do you have any advice for useful skills/modules I could pick up/take to make myself more employable? Am thinking of picking up basic coding in my own free time and in university, biz-related mods?

Originally Posted by vanvanv4n

I see, ahh this is great and comforting to hear! Thanks so much Do you have any advice for useful skills/modules I could pick up/take to make myself more employable? Am thinking of picking up basic coding in my own free time and in university, biz-related mods?

Yea, I think taking up some business related modules in non-core is helpful to an extent. If you are studying in NUS FASS, the system allows you to take a considerable proportion of modules outside your faculty. You could structure ~1/3 of them in business related stuff.

As for coding, you can take up in your free time, but I doubt it's going to be a game changer during interviews. Advanced coding skills are in high demand, but those require CompSc or similar depth. Fiddling around VBA or some form of rudimentary C variant language IMO is not of much use in most non-programming jobs.

If you aspire to join ministries/stat boards, focus on your GPA and CCA related stuff. They are really into this sort of thing from my experience (doesn't make much sense IMO, but that's the game).

If you want to join those top MNCs like Microsoft, Unilever, Shell, Google, P&G etc. then getting a few internships or even temping in similar good MNCs is very important for both networking and CV branding. The experience will also help you understand the culture of these organizations and the things they look out for. I know many grads without this exp fail during their first round interviews because they simply over rely on selling their technical competencies and academic scores which is not what these employers are looking for.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

That should not be a problem if you join the public sector as a 2:1 or FCH humanities grad. Starting pay in certain public sector organizations are already >4k and bonus, increases are all pretty much fixed with job security to add.

As for private sector, pay progression is more about corporate politics and ladder climbing then it is about type of degree. Do not fall into the typical narrow minded Singaporean mentality of banking/finance all the time, spend more time to understand what are your interests. Banking has a more flamboyant and ostentatious environment, but it doesn't mean they are really that high paying save for the minority niche jobs.

As a recruiter I am always amused when some averagely paid banking VP comes to me during interview in an arrogant manner demanding that I assure them that my client can afford his "banking pay". In certain occasions I had to tell them gently they are significantly below my client's budget and they need to convince my client they are up to the job.

This is mildly insulting to people in the private sector. How about pay progression being tied to actual competence, technical skillset, and delivering good work product and results? As a recruiter you should know better than to make such sweeping generalisations.

I don't know about banking but I work in a particular professional services sector where if you're not competent, you can and will get dropped very easily, and people are more likely to get let go over failure to keep up with the high standards required rather than because of downsizing/headcount cutting.

Financial institutions are big enough that they can afford to hire and fire tons of people easily. In the process, they hire lots of incompetents who actually sit around twiddling their thumbs but like to drop their namecards with inflated "AVP" titles.

To the original poster, there are really a lot of ways you can make an Arts degree work, specifically your chosen field. Civil service and government in a policy / research role can be quite intellectually stimulating.

My advise: work a few years after graduation (any sector) then go do an MBA and network like crazy. Your options thereafter will increase manifold. Don't join banking - the world has enough bankers already.

Originally Posted by vanvanv4n

I see, ahh this is great and comforting to hear! Thanks so much Do you have any advice for useful skills/modules I could pick up/take to make myself more employable? Am thinking of picking up basic coding in my own free time and in university, biz-related mods?

i'm the original person who first replied to you in this thread. all the 'enhance your critical thinking, problem-solving, analytical, etc etc skills' pieces of advice may have some merit, but thats not enough. hard skills are what differentiates people these days. what makes you think a non FASS grad doesnt have the critical thinking or creative writing skills that an FASS grad is supposed to possess? i think i've taken enough courses from other faculties to know that this is simply not true, and it will be an upward struggle for the rest of your career and life if you buy into the hype that doing an arts/socsci degree is the only way towards this ideal of being an out-of-the-box thinker. that is a given if you wanna do well in the working world. with these soft skills and people skills in the bag (you need to develop them asap through projects/interviews/CIP/CCAs/whatever), focus on building either breadth or depth or technical skills. it's always useful to be at least aware of what's going on in the different sectors. if you're not a techy, even an intro to comp sci might be very useful because it gives you an appreciation of what they do. so you can talk intelligently about it in interviews. no one's expecting you to become a Facebook engineer after one module. if you want a cushy job in the public sector with steady pay and career progression, it's actually quite a simple roadmap. do well in school (second upper at least, first class ideal ofc), do internships and whatever activities that demonstrate your interest in the public sector. it's actually not hard if you start early. anyway, FASS grads are generally not the most driven bunch. much of the employment struggles arts grads face, i believe, stem from a lack of awareness of the market, overconfidence in their soft skills, and all these are due to insufficient exposure to the working world. which is why your number 1 priority should be doing internships to get a sense of the working world.

anyway if i were a freshie again, i'd learn a bit of everything 'useful' on top of stuff i like, e.g. intro to programming, comsci, stats, finance, bizlaw, other y1 biz core mods, econs, polsci, etc. if you do wanna do finance (i dont mean operations/support, and there are plenty of roles going around if you have the necessary skills) you need to learn all your technical finance skills early e.g. financial modeling. "no road to greatness was ever easy" hope you remember that regardless of what you're aiming for in the future!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

This is mildly insulting to people in the private sector. How about pay progression being tied to actual competence, technical skillset, and delivering good work product and results? As a recruiter you should know better than to make such sweeping generalisations.

I don't know about banking but I work in a particular professional services sector where if you're not competent, you can and will get dropped very easily, and people are more likely to get let go over failure to keep up with the high standards required rather than because of downsizing/headcount cutting.

Financial institutions are big enough that they can afford to hire and fire tons of people easily. In the process, they hire lots of incompetents who actually sit around twiddling their thumbs but like to drop their namecards with inflated "AVP" titles.

To the original poster, there are really a lot of ways you can make an Arts degree work, specifically your chosen field. Civil service and government in a policy / research role can be quite intellectually stimulating.

My advise: work a few years after graduation (any sector) then go do an MBA and network like crazy. Your options thereafter will increase manifold. Don't join banking - the world has enough bankers already.

First of all, I'm not quite sure why you are feeling insulted. Competence and skillsets do help, but from my observation that is not the primary driving factor that is going to determine between someone who makes it to Director and another who is stuck as a Manager.

If you disagree, I am fine with that. There are always exceptions. A certain amount of generalization is always required when discussing such broad topics, unless one is going to get bogged down in semantics and start hedging every single statement like a lawyer.

For instance, the same can be said about your "insulting" and "sweeping" statement about FIs hiring a lot of incompetents to twiddle around because they are rich. I happen to agree in principle on this statement, but that does not mean I cannot find plenty of counter examples to prove you wrong.

[vanvanv4n]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

i'm the original person who first replied to you in this thread. all the 'enhance your critical thinking, problem-solving, analytical, etc etc skills' pieces of advice may have some merit, but thats not enough. hard skills are what differentiates people these days. what makes you think a non FASS grad doesnt have the critical thinking or creative writing skills that an FASS grad is supposed to possess? i think i've taken enough courses from other faculties to know that this is simply not true, and it will be an upward struggle for the rest of your career and life if you buy into the hype that doing an arts/socsci degree is the only way towards this ideal of being an out-of-the-box thinker. that is a given if you wanna do well in the working world. with these soft skills and people skills in the bag (you need to develop them asap through projects/interviews/CIP/CCAs/whatever), focus on building either breadth or depth or technical skills. it's always useful to be at least aware of what's going on in the different sectors. if you're not a techy, even an intro to comp sci might be very useful because it gives you an appreciation of what they do. so you can talk intelligently about it in interviews. no one's expecting you to become a Facebook engineer after one module. if you want a cushy job in the public sector with steady pay and career progression, it's actually quite a simple roadmap. do well in school (second upper at least, first class ideal ofc), do internships and whatever activities that demonstrate your interest in the public sector. it's actually not hard if you start early. anyway, FASS grads are generally not the most driven bunch. much of the employment struggles arts grads face, i believe, stem from a lack of awareness of the market, overconfidence in their soft skills, and all these are due to insufficient exposure to the working world. which is why your number 1 priority should be doing internships to get a sense of the working world.

anyway if i were a freshie again, i'd learn a bit of everything 'useful' on top of stuff i like, e.g. intro to programming, comsci, stats, finance, bizlaw, other y1 biz core mods, econs, polsci, etc. if you do wanna do finance (i dont mean operations/support, and there are plenty of roles going around if you have the necessary skills) you need to learn all your technical finance skills early e.g. financial modeling. "no road to greatness was ever easy" hope you remember that regardless of what you're aiming for in the future!

Hey, thanks! I understand that i'm disadvantaged when it comes to hard/technical skills so I'll definitely try exposing myself to them (and internships) in university. Thanks so much for the advice I think i'm confident enough know to go with my interests but I also know I cannot waste the extra free time I have(which I believe is a lot more compared to to those from other courses), but use it instead to learn the basics of everything else important. Thanks, once again!

Originally Posted by Unregistered

To the original poster, there are really a lot of ways you can make an Arts degree work, specifically your chosen field. Civil service and government in a policy / research role can be quite intellectually stimulating.

My advise: work a few years after graduation (any sector) then go do an MBA and network like crazy. Your options thereafter will increase manifold. Don't join banking - the world has enough bankers already.

I'll keep this in mind! Thank you

I personally did a switch from FASS to a business major and I think it was the right decision.

I've seen friends with arts degrees struggle to get a job because whatever they learnt in school is really not applicable to the business world. While you definitely have the top few with arts degree who will still do well such as some of the posters here, but that is only because they partake in activities to collect internships or experiences outside of their arts degree.

Do consider doing a more technical degree; passion can always be chased as a non core module.

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Yea, I think taking up some business related modules in non-core is helpful to an extent. If you are studying in NUS FASS, the system allows you to take a considerable proportion of modules outside your faculty. You could structure ~1/3 of them in business related stuff.

As for coding, you can take up in your free time, but I doubt it's going to be a game changer during interviews. Advanced coding skills are in high demand, but those require CompSc or similar depth. Fiddling around VBA or some form of rudimentary C variant language IMO is not of much use in most non-programming jobs.

If you aspire to join ministries/stat boards, focus on your GPA and CCA related stuff. They are really into this sort of thing from my experience (doesn't make much sense IMO, but that's the game).

If you want to join those top MNCs like Microsoft, Unilever, Shell, Google, P&G etc. then getting a few internships or even temping in similar good MNCs is very important for both networking and CV branding. The experience will also help you understand the culture of these organizations and the things they look out for. I know many grads without this exp fail during their first round interviews because they simply over rely on selling their technical competencies and academic scores which is not what these employers are looking for.

Hi, I would like to add on to the last paragraph of the above post. If you are keen to join those top MNCs mentioned, don't just focus on your technical competencies and academic scores. I am in one of the MNCs above, but I joined as an experienced hired. 80% of the interview process did not ask me about my technical competencies. These organisations want to see how you response in a work environment, whether you demonstrate their values. You may be strong in technical competencies or related work experience, but end up not getting a role with them. They are willing to train candidates who are less qualified if they demonstrate the right values.

[vanvanv4n]

Originally Posted by Unregistered

I personally did a switch from FASS to a business major and I think it was the right decision.

I've seen friends with arts degrees struggle to get a job because whatever they learnt in school is really not applicable to the business world. While you definitely have the top few with arts degree who will still do well such as some of the posters here, but that is only because they partake in activities to collect internships or experiences outside of their arts degree.

Do consider doing a more technical degree; passion can always be chased as a non core module.

Thanks for your input! Did you switch in your first year? Also, may I know what you're doing now? Spoke to a soci grad today and she told me about her difficulties finding job as well :/

Originally Posted by Unregistered

Hi, I would like to add on to the last paragraph of the above post. If you are keen to join those top MNCs mentioned, don't just focus on your technical competencies and academic scores. I am in one of the MNCs above, but I joined as an experienced hired. 80% of the interview process did not ask me about my technical competencies. These organisations want to see how you response in a work environment, whether you demonstrate their values. You may be strong in technical competencies or related work experience, but end up not getting a role with them. They are willing to train candidates who are less qualified if they demonstrate the right values.

Thank you for this! I will definitely try to learn as much as I can during internships