Support measures for graduating cohort

05 Jun 2020

To assist our graduating cohort given the softening market conditions brought on by COVID-19, SMU has increased our efforts in securing permanent or contract employment, as well as in providing them with learning and development opportunities.

Employment

SMU’s Dato’ Kho Hui Meng Career Centre (DKHMCC) offers a range of comprehensive services, programmes, and resources for SMU students to chart their career directions, and also empowers them with the necessary skills to realise their potential and goals.

Each student is assigned a career coach upon matriculation to support him/her in career planning through his/her four-year journey at SMU. Career coaches conduct one-on-one sessions with students for career advising, consulting, résumé and cover letter critique, mock interviews and administration of various personality inventories. Students also go through SMU’s compulsory Finishing Touch programme, where we prepare them for their internships, job applications and job interviews, to equip them for the corporate world.

During this period, DKHMCC has put in place several measures to help our graduating cohort. It has:

  • Sourced and posted full-time jobs for graduates on SMU’s in-house internship / job portal, OnTRACII. It is actively reaching out to employers to facilitate permanent and contract employment recruitment, as well as to our alumni on offering traineeship and employment opportunities;
  • Increased the number of online Employability Clinics where priority is given to those seeking full-time jobs;
  • Started a matching service where students who have yet to secure full-time employment are matched with employers who are still looking for graduates to fill vacant positions.

SMU also organises physical career fairs 3 - 4 times a year. These typically attract more than 130 employers and 600 - 700 students over 2 - 3 hours on campus. Given the COVID-19 measures, SMU held its inaugural Virtual Career Fair (VCF) on 27 March where 85 companies were featured, over 1,000 students attended online and approximately 3,200 internships and full time jobs were posted. SMU held its second VCF on 22 May, this time for the graduating class of 2020. More virtual fairs will be organised, even after the COVID-19 measures have been relaxed.

In addition, DKHMCC will continue to support our graduates even after they graduate from SMU with continued access to the jobs portal and personalised assistance by individual career coaches should they require further guidance.

Learning and Development

Our Office of Alumni Relations has launched a microsite on 30 April to support the learning and development needs of our alumni and the graduating class of 2020. The microsite contains online resources, webinars, virtual workshops, podcasts, as well as articles and references published by SMU’s Schools and Centres.

The SMU Academy, the university’s professional training arm, is offering four complimentary Continuing Education and Training (CET) modules to our graduating class of 2020. The Academy currently has close to 500 CET modules available, of varying topics and duration. The majority of these are pegged at basic level with no pre-requisites, so the graduates would have a wide variety to choose from to prepare them for the job market.

In addition, our alumni and the graduating class of 2020 will be able to attend the ‘Skilled for the Future’ series of micro-workshops co-organised by the SMU Academy and Office of Alumni Relations. The workshops, which will start in June, last up to 1.5 hours each, and are based on some of the most popular topics taught by the Academy's instructors. Conducted virtually, the workshops are designed to be interactive, engaging and skills-focused to prepare SMU graduates for a disrupted future.

SMU alumni will enjoy a 20% discount for Postgraduate Professional Programmes starting between July 2020 and January 2021. Admissions to the programmes will be based on the student’s GPA scores while at SMU, thus waiving the need for our graduates to take additional tests prior to admission. The Admissions team adheres to a stringent selection process to continuously ensure the quality of postgraduate participants admitted into the University’s programmes. The graduating class of 2020 will be able to enjoy these benefits as they would have become our alumni by July.

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