As a continuation of efforts to help working professionals, the Labour Movement is partnering with Korn Ferry, the preeminent global people and organisational advisory firm, to expand its service offerings to help working professionals move forward in their careers.

At NTUC’s U PME Exchange the firm’s newly developed online career-enabling service ‘Korn Ferry Advance’, was jointly launched by both organisations.

Being a partner to 96 percent of Fortune’s Most Admired Companies, Korn Ferry advises organisations and leaders on their talent management challenges. Now, for the first time in the firm’s 74-year history, it is offering its expertise and services to individual professionals who want to make an impact and enjoy a lifetime of career success.

Korn Ferry Advance is designed to help working professionals contemplate, design, evaluate and execute strategic job transitions by tapping into Korn Ferry’s state-of-the-art leadership assessments, job profiling tools, compensation benchmarking databases and much more.

This specialised service will be made available exclusively to NTUC members for the first six months after the launch and it will also be used by NTUC’s U PME Centre as a career profiling tool.

Specifically, NTUC members will have access to the following services:

• Self-Awareness: Individuals will gain predictive insights into their career advancement potential. It will help them discover what makes them successful and where they need to improve with Korn Ferry’s world-leading assessment tools.
• Resume Architect: Individuals will learn how to present their skills and experience with maximum impact. They will receive professional feedback on their current resume and will work with Korn Ferry’s A.I based digital expert to create a resume that sets them apart.
• Career Coach: Career coaches from NTUC’s U PME Centre will support individuals by providing career advisory. Based on the assessment reports, the career coaches will also provide insights and offer expert advice to individuals to help them achieve their career goals.

Eventually, the service will be launched in the United States with the goal of future rollouts across the globe.

In the age of rapid digitalisation and automation, beyond acquiring technical skills, soft skills such as the development of learning agility, resilience, and high emotional intelligence is increasingly important. Such traits will make working professionals stand in good stead even as technology is positioned to reshape the future of work.

See: NTUC Launches PIVOT Programme for Professionals to Help Transition in Careers

“Complementing the national SkillsFuture movement and in line with the recommended strategies set out in the recently launched Committee on the Future Economy (CFE) report, we believe that Korn Ferry Advance will not only help Professionals, Managers and Executives (PMEs) discover career paths in which they are more likely to succeed based on their cognitive, emotional, and social profile, but also offer a strategic approach to career management and championing agility and life-long learning as the keys to career success,” said Andrew How, Managing Director of Korn Ferry Hay Group Singapore.

During the launch, Korn Ferry and NTUC also signed a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to mark the partnership between both organisations to provide employment-related tools and support to help working professionals. The MoU was signed by Vivek Kumar, Assistant Director-General of NTUC and Director of U PME, and Andrew How, Managing Director, Singapore Korn Ferry Hay Group.

“As Singapore transforms, the Labour Movement is constantly reinventing itself to seek out new ways to support our working people in their transition to future skills and jobs. The process of assessment of one’s skills and talent search process by recruiters has changed significantly over the years. We are glad to partner Korn Ferry to expand the ability of the Labour Movement to help all working people in navigating this fast-evolving space. Through this partnership, we wish to enable them to move forward in their careers and add value to their process of securing employment. This new offering also complements the deeper peer-to-peer support provided to the displaced PMEs under our PIVOT program,” said Vivek Kumar, Assistant Director-General of NTUC and Director of U PME.

U PME Exchange

Seeing a greater need to reach out to working professionals, especially those facing employment-related transitions, NTUC introduced the U PME Exchange as a culmination of NTUC’s U PME Week, a week-long line-up of programmes and activities to help PMEs stay relevant and future-ready in their careers.

Just as how start-ups thrive on disruptions and have been shaking up many stagnant industries, the working professionals must learn from these start-ups and adopt a similar mindset to learn to ride the waves of disruption.

In line with the theme “Start-up your career”, U PME Exchange provides participants access to industry thought leaders and founders of successful start-ups. Through specially curate keynote and panel sessions, participants will be able to gain perspectives, knowledge and insights from industry experts to stay relevant, reinvent themselves and be better poised to succeed in the future.

The event saw the involvement of Korn Ferry and NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) and the introduction of the U Future Leaders and the PIVOT programmes for working professionals to sign up.

Also read: Labour MP Patrick Tay Sheds Light on PME Concerns in Singapore