Corporate Survivor with Mei Phing : Career Growth In The Corporate World - Ep166: Working in Malaysia vs Singapore. The pros and cons.

Episode Date: February 17, 2023

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Welcome to the Corporate Survivor Podcast, where we talk about how to grow your career confidence, build your skills and value, increase your salary, and the many lessons we learn in the corporate world. For more career support, click on over to www.mayping.com. This is Mayping, your corporate leader turned career coach. I hope you enjoy, like and subscribe. Are you currently deciding between working in Singapore or Malaysia? Now, this is a question I get asked in my community all the time. And in this episode, I'm going to share with you the pros and cons of working in either Singapore or Malaysia

that can hopefully help you make that decision for your career. So let's dive in. And just a bit about myself. My name is Mei Ping. So I studied in Malaysia. I graduated in Malaysia. I started my first job in Malaysia and then I moved on to work in Singapore at global multinational companies where I climbed the career ladder,

grew my career and grew my income as well. Nowadays, as a career coach, I work with a lot of Malaysians and Singaporeans and people all around the world to grow their careers. In this particular episode, I'll also be sharing a bit about my own working experiences in Singapore and these are observations that I've made throughout my career and also comments and feedback and sharing the tens of thousands of people in my online community about working in these two countries. So let's start by talking about working in Malaysia. So I'll cover the pros and then we'll kind of get into the cons. So the biggest pro about working in Malaysia is that there are tons of opportunities available

because Malaysia is a very big country and if you want to work in SMEs, MNCs, GLCs, startups, NGOs, there are many opportunities available. And of course, depending on where you want to work as well, you can choose to work in a city, you can choose to work in your hometown, you can choose into the developing states and so forth. So opportunities are abundant in that way. And there are multiple options that fits your own flexibility as well. So it's not like you only can work in a certain type of company and in like a certain location. It's not the case. So it's quite flexible, I say, depending on your life requirements and your career goals at the point. So I think that to me is the biggest pro of working in Malaysia. Now, the second thing is kind of related to the bigger problem that Malaysia as a country faces,

and that is brain drain. So the lack of talent. The lack of talent is a country issue, but what does that mean for you if you are a good talent, a great talent working in Malaysia? That means that there are multiple opportunities available for you because you are the talent that companies and employers actually want to hire because you have the right skills, background, experiences, proven results and achievements and all of these things are highly sought after because you know companies will never stop hunting for talent and good talent just to be very specific so in terms of for you to grow your career to get promoted to climb up the career ladder it's something that is totally possible and it will be available for you and I know this is true because I have friends

and I have clients who are in their late 20s and early 30s being the head of department, being CEOs and so forth. And the reason is because they are really, really good at what they do. And being in Malaysia, as I said to the earlier pro, there are many different types of companies, you know, many opportunities available that allows them to climb the career ladder and to grow their income. So that's a good thing if you have the right skills, experiences, you build your professional value to get headhunted, to have all these top level, top management opportunities to open up for you, even though you are very young. In Malaysia, you know, kind of back to the point about the brain drain and the lack of talent is actually leading us to the third pro. And it's

all about the ability to get a very big salary increment when you change jobs. Now, we talk a lot about negotiating salary and something that I teach to my students in my program as well. Now, the thing that I've seen in Malaysia's working scene is that if you make the career change, now, we're not going to get into what kind of jobs are right for you and so forth, but if you were to make a career change, I have seen people who are able to get 50 to 60% salary increments.

And some of these have also happened to my clients as well. Now, 50 to 60% increment is really not normal. If you go to anywhere else in the world, a lot of people probably think that you're crazy. But in Malaysia, actually, it's really possible. Because due to the lack of talent, a lot of companies, they don't really have a choice. So therefore, if you're really good at what you do, and you can really demonstrate

that you can help the company, you can help the department, then companies are actually willing to pay the money. So therefore, the 50 to 60% increment kind of comes about. Now, just to make a very clear caveat, it does not necessarily mean that every job that you get to, you need to start asking for 50 to 60%. That's not realistic. But what I am saying is that it's a possibility if you work in Malaysia. Now, moving on to the next segment where I really want to talk about the cons, because with many pros, there are cons as well. And I think the biggest con of working in Malaysia is the lack of regional and global opportunities. Because Malaysia is not exactly known as the financial hub, and therefore, a lot of the headquarters or regional offices

are usually based in Singapore or Hong Kong, right, if you're talking about the Asian context. So therefore, in Malaysia, what you'll find is that there are a lot of what I call operational work, like business service centres, business operating unit, there are a lot of factories and that's good. But what that means is that there may be limited opportunities for you to move up to the management level. So when I mean management level, it would be people who are driving strategy, people who are really looking to like market expansion, really like the top management

decisions. So if you're really looking at like regional directors or like C3 CEOs for MNCs, maybe those opportunities usually are not sitting in Malaysia. The reason is because these are positions for the regional office that are usually based overseas. So I think that's really the biggest con of working in Malaysia because if you're really, really ambitious and the jobs at the top, like the top level careers may not be as easily accessible to you unless you move overseas. But other than that, I think working in Malaysia gives you a lot of flexibility and you can achieve a five-figure monthly salary and six-figure annual income probably a lot faster

as compared to working overseas. So to me, that's like the biggest, biggest pro of choosing to work in Malaysia. Okay, let's move on to the next segment and let's talk about working in Singapore. So I have moved to Singapore back in 2010 and I've worked in Singapore for almost a decade, so I'm very familiar with the Singapore working environment and I also have a lot of clients and students in my course who are Singaporeans as well. Let's start with the biggest pro of working in Singapore and that is the broad exposure and expertise that you will gain by working in regional offices and global offices. Now as we all know, Singapore is a financial hub and what it means is that it does attract a lot of big name brands to have their Asia-Pacific base in Singapore. So

companies such as Visa, Standard Chartered, Google and so forth, they have their strategic management and leadership teams in Singapore and what that means is that if you're working in Singapore likely you'll be doing a lot more high-level work as compared to other countries because you are in a regional and strategic position after all you also want to make sure that you are in the right place to be presented with the right opportunity the right experience and exposure because that can all come into your career story to propel you and position you for more career success in the future. Then the second pro of working in Singapore, and this is something I've personally experienced

as well, is that quality of work is like the number one thing that companies actually care about. And what does it mean for you is that you will really learn how to work efficiently and effectively, particularly in a more structured way, which is not easily as available or rather practiced in other countries as well. So that means that the baseline of work is actually very high because as I said, this is something that actually a lot of companies and employers and managers expect from their staff. So you will really need to have the right mindset and skill set to make sure that you're as productive as possible, you're as clear as your work as possible, and really aiming towards clarity, aiming towards efficiency, and aiming towards delivering output and delivering results as per your performance

goals. Now, this is something actually taken very seriously in Singapore. In Singapore, if you have this a bit of the lazy bum activities and lazy bone activities, it usually does not bode very well with the management and companies there. So, just something that you want to take note of. And personally for me, this is really my biggest takeaway from working in Singapore. So as I said, I started in Singapore as a junior executive and climbed up all the way to senior director and head of governance at Contra and Standard Chartered. And what I learned in Singapore, and particularly in those roles, it was so high fast paced it was so dynamic I worked on a lot of a lot of projects that probably people in their 20s were not really

given opportunities to do so and it really taught me how to work fast but also work right and deliver high quality output so right now a lot of people also ask me hey maybe you look really young like how did you learn all these skills first thing is that you need to be in the right environment that really pushes you to do that. But second thing is also to always focus on upskilling yourself. And this approach is something that I teach to my students in my career program, The Corporate Survivor, these step-by-step on how to actually do that. If many pros, there are also some cons as well. And the con is the fact that it's a very fast-paced environment and you're expected to be good at what you do all the time. So this maybe can create some stress and overwhelm

if you're not used to it, but I don't think it's anything that, you know, by learning the right skills, you cannot overcome. So it's something that can be overcome. But I think the second, something you have to notice is that the Singaporean working culture, Singaporean communication style actually is very direct. So if you're from a country

where people don't really communicate and express themselves directly or in a very articulate way, maybe you might feel that, hey, you know, it's kind of a, it's rude or it's like a bit rough or aggressive, but actually it's really not. It's just the fact that Singaporeans

are pretty direct communicators and you'll find this culture quite common in companies based in Singapore. So they actually say what they mean and they just kind of like don't really go around in a circle. That's why I said communication skills is 100% a must

and productivity skills is a must if you really want to work in Singapore because these are really highly valued skills and not just to help you get promoted, it's actually help you to deliver your day-to-day job so that you struggle less and you have less anxiety at work. Regardless of whichever country you choose to work in, I want you to remember that at the end of the day, the value is coming from you. So as long as you improve

your mindset, your skill set, and you continue to upgrade your value and position yourself as someone who can actually deliver results and deliver outcome, you will always be valuable and companies will continue to hire great talent like you. So never lose track of the fact that the power is really in your hands and it's really up to you to make sure that you are preparing yourself as much as possible no matter where you're going to work in whichever country and whichever company. It's really all down to your desire and your action to make it happen. So I hope this episode has given you some perspective between working in Malaysia or Singapore and if you find insightful, definitely drop a comment if you're watching on YouTube and let me know, are you currently working in Malaysia or Singapore? And what do

you like about working in Malaysia? Or what do you dislike about working in Malaysia and vice versa for Singapore as well? What do you like about working in Singapore? What do you like about working in Malaysia? So drop it in the comments. I'm really interested in this topic because I'd say 80% of my community and my core students are Malaysians and Singaporeans and working in Malaysia and Singapore. So I'd be really interested to hear what you have in mind. And if you like this, you know,

should I work overseas series in Malaysia, Singapore? Let me know in the comments as well. Probably I'll make another video next week to share about what do you need to consider when working overseas. So if that's something that you're interested in, drop me a comment, let me know. And a final announcement, I'll be running a live two-hour LinkedIn profile review workshop on 11th of March 2023, specifically for my course students who are looking to attract opportunities in their current country or overseas.

So this is my LinkedIn profile review workshop on March 11 and it is exclusive for students in my career course, The Corporate Survivor. So if you're someone who's really looking to improve your overall value at the workplace, but you also want to learn how to create new opportunities for yourself for the next phase of your career,

make sure that you check out www.thecorporesurvivor.co and you can find the information in the links in description below. And I hope to see you in the program. Cheers, all the best, and take care.