Effectiveness of Professional Conversion Programme in Helping Participants to Switch Careers

Assoc Prof Randolph Tan asked the Minister for Manpower whether the career switches that have been achieved by participants of the Professional Conversion Programme to date have met the aims of the programme.

The Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) help mid-career professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) reskill and switch careers so that they can move into new occupations or sectors with good prospects for progression. Participants will typically be placed with an employer and earn a salary while training to perform their new jobs.

The PCPs have met the aim of helping jobseekers and employers overcome jobs-skills mismatches. Since their launch in 2007, more than 10,000 PMETs have been placed into jobs through PCPs. In recent years, the programme has picked up pace. In 2017, close to 3,800 PMETs were placed through PCPs, up from about 1,300 in 2016. The share of mature and long-term unemployed PMETs placed also rose in 2017, following the increase in training and salary support for these groups of jobseekers. Completion rates for PCPs are above 90%.

In addition to PCPs that facilitate skills conversion into different sectors, we now support individuals looking to switch into different occupations within the same sector. We also offer PCPs to reskill at-risk PMETs for new job roles within the same company and avert possible retrenchments. Last year, we launched Attach-and-Train PCPs to train workers ahead of demand in sectors with long-term growth potential. There are currently over 100 PCPs in about 30 sectors, which are approximately twice the number of PCPs a year ago.

We will continue to raise awareness of PCPs among jobseekers and employers to support reskilling and career conversion.