SINGAPORE — One in two Singaporeans who used Jobs Bank, an online job portal for Singaporeans and Permanent Residents, applied for professional, manager and executive (PME) jobs.

The initial launch of the portal took place in May this year, and 90 per cent of the applicants were Singaporeans.

Many food and beverage (F&B) establishments have been using the portal, but some of them said they are still facing difficulties in hiring workers.

RecruitPlus employment agency said that to draw more locals to take up jobs in the F&B sector, there must be more community job fairs within the neighbourhood to reach out to residents.

Han’s Cafe has been using the job portal since the start of this month to hire more local workers, but it has only received two applications after two weeks.

“All the applications are mainly for admin executive positions,” said Ms Judy Lee, human resources and administrative manager at Han’s (F&B).

“We don’t see a lot of rank and file applicants, partly because they are not familiar with using computers or they are not aware that WDA has such a website that they can go in and apply for this kind of positions for rank and file, mainly for operations staff.”

Going forward, the Singapore Workforce Development Agency said it will be creating more awareness of the portal at job fairs. CHANNEL NEWSASIA