WSG free courses for job seekers. Yay or nay?

Recently, I saw an advertisement for job seekers and I signed up for it since I am looking out and I wanted to get ready for my next role.

Our government actually engaged vendors to train and help Singaporean and Permanent Residents PMET job seekers to land a job during this period.

As part of the programme, I was allocated to a career coach randomly and let me share my experience.

After the first call was set up, it was changed to accommodate the coach’s schedule. Fine by me since the sooner I get advice the better right?

It was agreed after the first virtual meeting that we will have a weekly call.

Come next week and I dialled into the call and no coach. By that time I decided that my time is precious as well, I already wasted 20 minutes of my limited youth. Then the coach said we already met so no call. Great. You didn’t cancel the calendar invite so I thought we will be having a call as agreed.

“We will not have a call next week because we are speaking now,” said the coach. Fair enough.

Come the week after, no phone calls, no one in virtual meeting room and no coach. I managed to get hold of the coach 20 minutes past our agreed time.

Despite the lack of punctuality, I understand things happen at the last minute and I can understand that.

What triggered me was the mismatch in job recommendations. Not one, not two but five! It felt more like a recruiter trying to shove a job down my neck to get commission.

I say this because job seekers are referred to as “clients”. This suggests monetary gains and they are not doing purely out of passion to help affected people.

Through my conversation with the career coach, I indicated I am fine to take a slight pay cut and stepping down to a more junior role as long as I get better work life balanced. I am fine with freelance and permanent part time too. Most importantly, I still want training related roles.

The jobs recommended were either not what I was looking for or are at 50% pay cut. Second trigger point was a comment that I am blindly applying for jobs when I believed I have been quite strategic. This comment came after five seconds of opening up the job application tracker file with 45 lines which the coach has not taken a look prior our call.

I get that times are bad and good jobs are scarce but I don’t think I am that desperate to take a 50% pay cut at the moment. I used to run mentorship and coaching programs and I find the behaviour and lack of professionalism unacceptable.

As a coach, you should not be making such recommendations if you understand that taking such a huge pay cut does not do any advantages to a person’s career. Maybe only if this person is looking for a job for more than a year, indicated they are desperate or they are changing their career path.

You see, I took a 40% pay cut when I returned to corporate in 2018 and spent the last few years playing catch up my highest pay back in 2016. It is currently 2021 and my last drawn salary is still off.

I understand times are tough and it is an employer’s market and many places are suppressing wages. Through this, I arrived at the conclusion these are the only jobs in the coach’s database or this coach is clueless.

Then, to ensure I am not making a hot headed decision, I spent the next 12 hours wondering if I am a difficult or demanding person, or if I am unreasonable or if I am overreacting.

Then I wrote an email to the company requesting the exchange to be kept confidential and requested to change a career coach.

Like any other relationships, it is important to know your rights, when to say NO, what it is not working and also when to walk away. No point dragging it on for the well being of both parties.

Also, I figured if the government is paying for it, it is from generations of taxpayers like my grandparents’ and parents’ money to combat this covid period. I am not a quitter and I will try to make the best out of the situation.

After all, I am a client.