Commentary: Hire an arts graduate to formulate business strategy. Why not?
SINGAPORE: Singapore volition shortly have an arts university, the start of its kind in the country. In announcing this on Mar 3, Minister for Education, Lawrence Wong acknowledged that in the next stage of Singapore's development, a diversity of talent is needed, not merely in STEM, but as well in the arts, design and media.
In today's business organization surroundings, those with talent and expertise in these fields can contribute to, not but the arts community and artistic industries, only a wide range of business organization functions.
Since COVID-19, the demand for talent in areas such as digital marketing and information storytelling has increased exponentially. With businesses moving online every bit a result of pandemic mitigation measures, user experience and interface designers are needed to ensure the all-time possible consumer feel.
Writers and artists also play an important office in making meaning of complex information and communicating it in a palatable fashion beyond digital channels.
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WATCH: Singapore's first academy of the arts aims to equip students with skills for the new economy | Video
THE ART OF Business organisation
Art allows people to view the globe from unlike vantage points, and call back creatively and empathetically. These abilities tin make all the difference when formulating business strategies and creating products and services for diverse consumers.
Over the years, companies such as Coca-Cola and GAP have reportedly turned to artist-consultants to help solve their innovation and branding challenges.
There are many other examples of successful business organisation leaders with an arts background.
For instance, erstwhile Walt Disney Visitor CEO Michael Eisner has a degree in theatre, while the founder of The states$20 billion burrito concatenation Chipotle, Steve Ells, has a degree in art history.
In a society with entrenched beliefs nearly educational activity, perhaps there is a need to belabour the point that a degree in a detail field should not restrict a person's employment prospects.
As far back as 2008, a U.s. Conference Board survey revealed that 85 per cent of employers who were in search of creative employees had "difficulty finding qualified applicants". The same survey found that 57 per cent of respondents saw arts degrees as a reflection of inventiveness.
It seems employers appreciate candidates with an arts background. Yet, at that place aren't many reports of artists being welcomed into offices.
This could be due to several factors including obvious concerns that an arts degree may not demonstrate fundamental technical or functional competencies necessary for certain jobs.
While this is a valid concern, knowing how to recalibrate companies' structures to get the most out of creative talent could open upwards many opportunities. The possessor of a start-up recently told me that he has considered hiring performance artists for his squad as their arts training enables them to improvise, manage time efficiently and be great collaborators.
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CANDIDATE SELECTION PROCESSES MUST EVOLVE More than QUICKLY THAN E'er BEFORE
Unfortunately, such open-mindedness is uncommon.
For many years, a large number of local employers only shortlisted candidates who attended well-established universities such equally the National Academy of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU).
Today, based on our experience, employers are increasingly taking a more granular approach, putting the universities that task seekers attended aside in order to more than seriously consider results from psychometric tests and how candidates handle situational and behavioural task interview questions.
Only the uncertain and rapidly transforming business environment demands that employers augment their minds faster than ever before.
In guild to avoid losing out on keen talent, anything that serves to perpetuate entrenched biases needs to exist addressed as a start.
Do SURVEYS AND RANKINGS Affair?
For one thing, the merits of graduate employment surveys should exist reassessed.
Such surveys have the potential of depressing the prospects and salaries of graduates from newer universities and sure courses.
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The contempo annual Joint Democratic Universities Graduate Employment Survey which polled eleven,800 fresh graduates from full-fourth dimension programmes at NUS, NTU, Singapore Direction University (SMU) and the Singapore University of Social Sciences (SUSS) showed that 69.viii per cent of fresh graduates institute permanent full-fourth dimension jobs last year. Their median gross monthly salary was S$iii,700.
A follow-upwardly survey of 827 graduates of courses that typically require post-graduate practical training from NUS, NTU and SMU showed that 93.5 per cent had plant full-time employment by Nov 1 after completing their training. Their median gross monthly salary was S$four,625 – higher than that of the get-go group.
The graduates polled in the follow-up survey were from the architecture class of 2017, and the biomedical sciences, Chinese medicine, law, medicine and chemist's courses, who finished their first twelvemonth of training upon graduation in 2019.
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Several inferences could be rightly or wrongly made from this data. The disparity in terms of percentages betwixt the two groups could point to certain courses being more reliable in terms of increasing graduates' employment prospects or that sure sectors are doing meliorate and tin can pay fresh graduates a higher starting salary.
But others might besides surmise that the first survey showed a lower number of graduates gaining total-time employment because information technology included graduates from a relatively new university – SUSS.
While employment prospects and starting salaries may be important metrics for students deciding which course and school to pick, such surveys tend to signal that these are the cardinal metrics that matter. The results also propagate perceptions nigh particular institutions and courses of written report, and even mistaken assumptions that get harder to dispel.
Equally a effect, fifty-fifty if they were equipped with well-structured courses and competent teachers, schools and courses that are less favourably reflected in such surveys might struggle to attract students. Likewise, graduates might struggle to counter employers' biases.
In an era where more employers are beginning to recognise other indicators of domain knowledge and expertise, perhaps nosotros could do abroad with surveys that make distinctions between autonomous universities and individual universities, or arts institutes and academic institutes.
Let's also retrieve that an private's employability and starting salary are often influenced by the land of the economy, business concern requirements and the skills that the specific employer deems valuable at the fourth dimension.
The electric current crisis has brought this into sharper focus.
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At the height of the air travel boom, the salaries of pilots, even Commencement Officers, were the green-eyed of many. Afterward a pandemic-ravaged yr, that is no longer the case. Instead, the profession is plagued by layoffs and pay cuts.
In the last few years, even the merits of global academy rankings have come up under scrutiny, as their utility for students deciding on which establishment to go to has been robustly debated. Information technology is a well-known fact that each ranking system has dissimilar criteria.
Some focus more often than not on institutional research output while others identify a greater importance on perception surveys. Many rankings pay lilliputian attending to real-earth undergraduate experience.
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HOW THEN CAN STUDENTS AND EMPLOYERS Make INFORMED CHOICES?
What then should go into a decision well-nigh which university to go to?
It'southward a combination of factors including inquiry into the construction of the programme, what people say and what you lot know about the quality of teachers, and the private student'due south interests.
Because that a crisis could modify everything in the blink of an eye, what'south more important today is to be ready to pin to chore roles and fields that have very little to practise with the degrees we graduated with.
Too, employers demand to exist more open up to cross-disciplinary and cross-industry hiring. It is heartening to see that talent shortages in certain sectors and the need for fresh perspectives have made this more mutual today.
REAPING THE BENEFITS OF DIVERSE EDUCATIONAL PATHWAYS More than FULLY
The truth may exist that whether or not mechanisms such as graduate employment surveys be, biases confronting sure universities and courses of report will not disappear overnight.
This is why employers who have such biases entrenched in their hiring processes must make a concerted effort to recalibrate their criteria.
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The importance of specific degrees is likely to persist in professions such every bit medicine or police force which crave individuals to have a large corporeality of domain cognition best learnt in a structured environment.
However, with the advent of alternative and breezy learning avenues such as credible online courses and autodidacticism, the fixation on bookish qualifications in other fields should dissipate.
A Ministry of Manpower written report published in 2022 showed that bookish qualifications were not the principal consideration for employers hiring PMETs in 2018.
This applied to 52 per cent of PMET job vacancies and included occupations such as software, spider web and multimedia developers, systems analysts and commercial and marketing sales executives.
In these cases, employers were more interested in candidates with relevant skills, work feel, soft skills and the right attitudes.
For newer educational institutions, courses and methods of study to have a chance of success, more than employers must ready the tone for a meliorate way of assessing an individual'south value.
The introduction of diverse educational pathways will come to nought if employers and society as a whole remain unreceptive to broader definitions of potential and competence.
Jaime Lim is Grouping Business Leader of PeopleSearch, an executive search and outplacement services firm with a presence in vi cities including Singapore.
Source: https://cnalifestyle.channelnewsasia.com/commentary/commentary-hire-arts-graduate-formulate-business-strategy-why-not-294926
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