Graduate industry traineeships: Nearly half find jobs after completing programme
More than 140 fresh graduates have completed traineeships aimed at helping them gain industry experience and move into full-time work. But experts warn such schemes should remain one of several routes into employment.
Office workers at Raffles Place in Singapore. (Photo: CNA/Ooi Boon Keong)
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SINGAPORE: When Mr Kenneth Chow, 25, graduated with a business degree in 2025 from Nanyang Technological University, he was considering a move into a different field: technology sales.
He started a traineeship under the Graduate Industry Traineeships (GRIT) programme in January, which gave him a chance to find out if that was the right path for him.
“I was questioning … whether I should venture into tech sales. GRIT gave me the confidence because it allowed me to work on real stuff that I would do if I were in a full-time role,” he told CNA.
Three months into his stint with professional social networking platform LinkedIn, he received an offer to convert to a full-time position as a sales development representative.
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GRIT, an initiative by the Skills and Workforce Development Agency (SWDA), was launched in October 2025 to aid fresh graduates who have difficulty finding their first job.
It offers traineeships lasting three to six months, with the aim of helping fresh graduates transition into full-time roles. The government funds 70 per cent of each trainee’s monthly allowance, with host organisations covering the remaining 30 per cent.
More than 590 of the programme’s 800 traineeship places had been filled as of July, according to figures provided to CNA by SWDA.
Over 140 trainees have completed their stints. Almost half of them have since found employment, with about four in 10 of those employed hired by their host companies. The rest found jobs elsewhere.
According to SWDA, the traineeships span more than 40 private-sector organisations in areas including financial and professional services, information-communications and media, wholesale trade and electronics, as well as more than 50 public-sector agencies.
The programme has also been extended to the 2026 graduating cohort.
A MORE CAUTIOUS JOB MARKET
The effort comes as fresh graduates face a more cautious hiring market and broader economic uncertainty.
The proportion of fresh graduates from Singapore’s autonomous universities who found jobs within six months of their final exams has fallen in recent years, from 94.4 per cent in 2021 to 83.4 per cent in 2025, according to the latest graduate employment survey released in March.
But longer-term employment outcomes have remained more resilient.
About nine in 10 graduates from the 2025 cohort had found employment 12 months after graduation, similar to previous cohorts, said the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) in early August.
For this year’s cohort, among about 18,000 fresh graduates, around 9,100 had found work as of June and about 3,600 were still looking. Another 5,400 were outside the labour force, mainly because they were pursuing further studies or taking a break.
NOT COMPARABLE TO COVID-19 TRAINEESHIP SCHEME
GRIT builds on the SGUnited Traineeships programme introduced during the COVID-19 pandemic.
Close to 90 per cent of SGUnited trainees found regular employment within six months of completing their training.
MOM has said the two schemes served different purposes. SGUnited was aimed at increasing capacity to reduce graduate unemployment during an economic crisis, while GRIT focuses on providing a limited number of quality traineeships for graduates.
Professor Lawrence Loh from the Department of Strategy and Policy at the National University of Singapore (NUS) Business School said comparing their employment figures would therefore be misleading.
“During the pandemic, the challenge was actually economy-wide, and the scale of that scheme was much larger than what we have in the GRIT scheme.”
He said a more important question is whether traineeships give participants useful experience and skills that improve their employability.
TRAINEESHIPS CANNOT REPLACE ENTRY-LEVEL JOBS
Analysts also cautioned against allowing traineeships to become the normal route into full-time employment.
Prof Loh said expanding government-funded traineeships could distort the labour market and give companies an incentive to use trainees rather than hire permanent staff.
He cautioned that some companies could see traineeships as a “free ride” to tide them through difficult conditions, only to let trainees go afterwards.
Mr Alvin Goh, chief executive of the Singapore Human Resources Institute, described GRIT as a “useful intervention”, noting that fresh graduates were currently “entering a very soft and rather uncertain market”.
But he added that GRIT should remain one of several routes into employment rather than become the default.
“We should be very cautious not to create a cycle where graduates feel that they need more traineeships to get full-time employment,” he said.
SWDA said graduates can also tap career coaching, skills support and job fairs to help them find work and meet prospective employers. It is also monitoring graduates’ transition into full-time employment and will review support where needed.
HOW MUCH EXPERIENCE IS ENOUGH?
While qualifications still matter for fresh graduates, experts say work experience is becoming a stronger way for candidates to stand out when employers are choosing between people with similar degrees.
“When I interview candidates, I generally look at their internship experiences and even their part-time experiences,” said Ms Isabel Lim, a senior professional at the Institute for Human Resource Professionals (IHRP).
“Why that matters is because it shows me whether or not the candidate has actually picked up skills from the workplace, even during their internship or part-time job,” she added.
For students, the pressure to gain such experience can begin well before graduation.
NUS business undergraduate Lim Xin Quan, who specialises in real estate, began her first internship at 17 and has since completed seven.
“So now that we are in Year 4, I still see people trying to cram in one final internship, just trying to hope that the internship will convert into a job,” she said.
IHRP’s Ms Lim said having more internships did not necessarily mean gaining more meaningful experience, as short-term placements may not give students the chance to go deeper.
Access to such opportunities is also uneven, she said, as some students may not be in a financial position to take on unpaid internships.
Rather than counting the number of internships a candidate has completed, she said employers should look at the quality and relevance of those experiences.
For Ms Lim Xin Quan, her internships taught her skills that were difficult to pick up in university, including how to communicate with external stakeholders while representing an organisation.
Fresh graduates may also find themselves competing with people who already have years of work experience.
“A few months or even a year of experience may not be that formidable (in a) market where many experienced people are entering due to restructuring or retrenchment,” NUS’s Prof Loh noted.
IHRP’s Ms Lim urged companies to provide pathways for young workers to gain their first work experience, with structured onboarding and opportunities to learn on the job.
“Employers need to recognise that a fresh graduate is a fresh graduate. They’re not going to have the deep experience that you’re looking for,” she added.
Source: CNA/mp(dn)
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