Possibly discriminatory hiring practices by Civil Service HR?

By Pei P

I am writing to voice my displeasure over what I feel is possibly a very discriminatory practice by the HR departments of the civil service as far as the hiring of fresh graduates is concerned. I notice that they are mostly open to only considering university graduates hailing from the National University of Singapore (NUS) and Nanyang Technological University (NTU).


I know that NUS and NTU are the crown jewels of the Singapore education system. But, for those students who did not make it to the top two local universities, we still try our utmost best to earn that degree through sheer hard work. It does not mean that if our degree comes from a private university, or a foreign university, or even other local universities , we are less capable. Maybe it took us a longer and different route to reach the degree path, but we for sure studied just as hard.


So why does the HR departments of the civil service always assume that students not from NUS or NTU are less worthy of employment? We must go the extra mile to convince the selectors that we are as smart, if not smarter than them. I must emphasize though this is a strong gut feeling stirring with me as a consequence of my job-hunting experiences. What do you all think?


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