Following strong growth in The Philippines with over 2.9 million registered users and servicing 10,000 enterprises, Bossjob, a prominent chat-driven employment platform in Southeast Asia, has set its sights on Singapore.

However, the Market isn’t what it used to be, so there are now more challenges than a crowded market. As of 2021, Singapore reported 19,000 unfilled positions in the technology sector, with projections indicating the necessity for an additional 1.2 million digitally skilled workers over the next three years to mitigate the talent deficit. At the same time, tech jobs have been cut around the region with major tech companies announcing multiple rounds of layoffs.

To find out why they are launching in Singapore, we spoke to Kiat How Quak, Bossjob’s co-founder and COO, about how the company aspires to bridge this gap within Singapore’s labour force.

Bossjob’s platform is centred around the candidate and uses artificial intelligence and chatbot technologies, to create a new and potentially more engaging experience for jobseekers. The platform is available on both web and mobile.

Congrats on the launch into the new market. What are your plans for the Singapore market?

Thank you for the well-wishes. Having successfully built our presence in the Philippines and in China, we are extremely excited to be able to bring our game-changing platform into Singapore. We have currently established three main plans to fully leverage the striving ecosystem in Singapore and to further cement our position as a leading chat-driven job portal in Southeast Asia. Firstly, as Bossjob continues to expand in Southeast Asia, we are looking to expand our team with more experts and talent to develop and provide better products and services for consumers. Hence, in addition to looking to onboard more new hires in areas including business development, marketing and engineering-related roles, we have also moved our Singapore headquarters to an office with a much bigger workspace for us to welcome a much bigger team to help facilitate our growth. 

Secondly, we’re in the midst of expanding our local team to better serve the Singaporean job market while simultaneously enhancing our recruitment services. Additionally, we are focusing on developing our growth strategies by intensifying our brand awareness initiatives and strategically positioning ourselves for a more substantial market share in Singapore.

Lastly, our primary emphasis is on research and development where we plan to continue to improve and enhance the products and services we offer. When it comes to R&D and developing the best products for our consumers, our main aim is really to bolster our market core competitiveness. 

Why choose Singapore’s crowded talent market for expansion? 

With Singapore being the second fastest-growing market in the Asia Pacific, only second to Australia, in terms of the number of recruitment agencies, choosing Singapore as our next location for expansion almost comes as a no-brainer for our team. Nonetheless, in such a saturated market crowded with talent, structural challenges such as a mismatch of talent skills and jobs in Singapore are inevitable and are still one of the main causes of short and medium-term unemployment in Singapore.

I believe that with Bossjobs’s fundamental strength lying in its combination of AI-driven intelligent matching and direct chat functionality, the unique blend of solutions positions us to swiftly establish a strong competitive edge in Singapore, where we can capture a larger share of the talent market. 

How do you plan to grow your presence in Southeast Asia?

Currently, we have more than 10,000 startups, SMEs and MNCs including Google, Lalamove, Accenture and many others onboard, 2.9M active and responsive talents, and helped 94% of employers connect with new talent daily in markets such as The Philippines and China. Following this success, we are looking to grow our presence in Southeast Asia by expanding into Singapore, which is a great extension of our company’s global strategy with the completion of a successful $5M funding round. Especially with Singapore and the region showing a continuous demand for talent, it continues to further cement the country’s position as an ideal market for Bossjob’s groundbreaking chat-driven approach to job-hunting. 

Is the tech winter impacting Bossjob’s growth or your plans for the future?

The recent tech layoff from global tech companies including Google, Meta and Twitter showcases the unfortunate event of multiple tech startups and companies experiencing a tech winter where they are witnessing a significant slowdown in business growth and investment which led to layoffs and recruitment slowdown in the tech industry. However, this shouldn’t impact Bossjob’s growth drastically as the platform not only caters to the hiring of tech talent but also talent across all industries. 

Even though MOM noted evidence of cooling labour demand in Singapore, the total employment rate was observed to have grown in the first quarter of 2023. With Bossjob being propelled by globalisation, we are constantly diversifying our consumer demographics where we work beyond global tech companies. The Bossjob platform also caters to industries including traditional manufacturing and emerging retail among many others, that are on the lookout for hiring more talent within their organisation. As such, as we continuously advance our talent pool and profiles, I believe that Bossjob will continue to exude vitality and resilience in the times ahead. 

How does the chatbot feature work and what does it add to the job-hunting experience?

The integration of the chatbox feature revolutionalises a typical job-hunting experience for both employees and employers as it allows employers to seamlessly chat with talents in real-time where they are able to arrange interviews online, respond to questions and allows them to connect with the right talent fit for the role – saving time for both employers and employees. Additionally, our comprehensive AI-powered application connects relevant employees to employers and has also integrated the popular AI-powered chatbox, ChatGPT 3.5 to help employers generate job descriptions in seconds, creating a highly effective and seamless job-hunting experience for both employees and employers. 

What’s next for Bossjob?

Our strategic roadmap for 2023 revolves around strengthening core capabilities and reinforcing our technological and data prowess to facilitate future expansion. Our objective is to ensure an enduring capacity to serve both global and growing enterprises, and individuals, offer unique regional corporate solutions, and maintain a competitive edge in addressing client essentials. While Bossjob charts its path toward global reach, we aim to amplify our capabilities in pivotal domains including commercial viability, scalability and perpetual innovation. We pledge to uphold a flexible, forward-thinking strategy to ensure success within the dynamic global business landscape. If you are interested in our platform and would like to see it for yourself, we will be holding our first public showcase at the Singapore Business Show 2023!

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