Where there is a will, there is a way, and age is no barrier to upskill and take on new job roles.
Proving that is 58-year-old M Chandra whose IT skills have come in handy to find a new job.
Retrenched at the height of the global financial crisis in 2008, Mr Chandra took the opportunity to refresh his skills and found a job in Singtel six months after being laid off.
Mr Chandra’s perseverance was cited by Finance Minister Heng Swee Keat during the recent Budget debate in Parliament in March 2017.
Making the Transition
Mr Chandra was from the banking sector working as a Network Engineer.
However, the 2008 recession did not spare him and he was laid off.
“Looking for a job was my top priority and for that I started attending short courses. But at that time in 2008, there wasn’t much choice. There was also no SkillsFuture then,” he explained.
Despite that, he stayed positive and found a job with Singtel as a network engineer in 2009.
As a network engineer he provided pre-sales consultation on technical matters to customers and helped them develop cost effective, resilient and innovative solutions in the area of Information, Communications and Technology (ICT).
Having started work, he also began to realise that the cybersecurity industry had many good opportunities.
“Singtel is doing quite a lot of work in cybersecurity and there was a serious shortage of engineers for the cybersecurity department in the company. So in October 2015, my bosses made an internal broadcast inviting anyone keen to switch to the Cybersecurity Department. I responded and started work in that department in April 2016,” said Mr Chandra.
Upskilling
Mr Chandra picked up the skills needed for that area through the TechSkills Accelerator (TeSA) and other on-the-job training programmes.
Under the TeSA umbrella, NTUC’s e2i (Employment and Employability Institute) collaborates with partners and companies to support placement, training and skills development of local ICT professionals.
“We attended training programmes conducted by our vendors and these programmes exposed us to the challenges posed by cybersecurity,” he added.
Source: NTUC This Week
