SINGAPORE: After a legal recruiter said on a recent podcast that companies are now choosing to hire “hungrier” workers from Malaysia, Vietnam, and the Philippines, and are letting go of Singaporean workers, this caused no small amount of comments online.

The recruiter, who is also the founder of Aslant Legal, is a 42-year-old former lawyer named Shulin Lee. Ms Lee was a guest on an episode aired on April 30 of CNA’s Deep Dive Podcast titled “Why are younger workers leaving stable careers just a few years in?”

A short clip from the episode was posted on social media and has been widely viewed and commented on.

In it, Ms Lee says, “For the young employees, you need to be a little bit more paranoid about what the future holds, because the companies that I now work with are letting go of Singaporeans in favour of hiring people in Malaysia, Vietnam, Philippines, not because they’re necessarily more skilled, but because they are a lot hungrier. And that hunger is now irreplaceable. 

No amount of enrichment classes will make my children smarter than AI. I’m telling everyone to double down on their relationship-building skills. You have to go for a job interview, be able to look into someone’s eye, and carry a conversation.”

She added that many Gen Zs, those born between 1995 and 2012, are unable to carry on a conversation or explain what they do to a stranger, something Ms Lee said she finds terrifying.

Many who have commented on Ms Lee’s remarks have not held back in disagreeing with her, taking a particular exception to the issue of whether or not Singaporean workers are less “hungry” than those from other countries.

“Hungrier = Willing to accept low pay and longer hours. The old adage – ‘Will work for food’,” a Facebook user remarked drily.

“‘Hungrier’ in corporate language translates to ‘desperate’ in layman’s terms. If there’s a job offer in another country that pays me 3 or more times more for the same job here, I would also react with the same ‘hunger’ for that job,” chimed in another.

In the same vein, a YouTube user wrote, “I disagree with the statement ‘foreign workers are hungrier’. They are merely more incentivised to work due to the higher exchange rate. They can finance 2 bungalows back at home with a salary here. Don’t believe me? Depreciate SGD by 80% and see if foreign workers are hungry to work here.” 

Another who said they agreed with the commenter added, “If they are hungrier, why are they not contributing and grinding in companies in their own countries?”

“Employers say they want hunger… yet when you show hunger, they want to put you in your place and obey, then accuse you of rocking the boat by proposing new ideas,” a commenter shared. 

Another wrote, “This recruiter is pushing a toxic work culture on young people. Hunger is great, but once you lose steam, you are immediately discarded w/o a second thought.” /TISG

Read related: ‘They’re acting like scammers’: Singapore jobseeker raises concerns about recruiters in today’s job market

This article (Recruiter causes stir for saying foreign workers are ‘a lot hungrier’ than Singaporeans) first appeared on The Independent Singapore News.