The top 20 companies on Singapore jobseekers' wishlist

4 home-grown firms also in demand.

In a release, LinkedIn today revealed the top 20 companies professionals in Singapore most want to work for. SingTel led the group of 4 home-grown companies, including DBS Bank, NCS Group, and OCBC Bank, that secured places in the Top 20 Most InDemand Employer list for Singapore. Within this list, IBM, Microsoft, and Accenture were the top three Most InDemand Employers in the eyes of professionals in Singapore.

A few interesting insights came out about what makes a desirable and sought after employer:

 Professionals in Singapore think tech is hot: Companies in the Internet and IT industries dominated the rankings and took the top spots.

 Financial services came a close second: Eight banks made up nearly half of the 20 companies in the list – perhaps unsurprising given Singapore’s status as a financial services hub in the region. Within this group, Standard Chartered Bank topped the list, followed by Citi, Barclays Investment Bank, Deutsche Bank and DBS Bank.

 Professionals in Singapore have their own idea of who’s an attractive employer: Only five companies – Microsoft, Accenture, Google, Apple, and Procter & Gamble - on Singapore’s list overlapped with the global top 20 list released in the fourth quarter of 2012.

 Bigger is better: None of the companies on Singapore’s Top 20 list have less than 8,000
employees each.

“It’s not a big surprise that IT, Internet and financial services companies dominated the Top 20 list in Singapore as these are key industries here. As the competition for top-tier talent continues to intensify, the need for a compelling employer brand will become more pronounced as companies seek to understand what levers they can wield in order to attract the right talent to fuel their businesses,” said Feon Ang, Regional Director, LinkedIn Talent Solutions.

“Currently, about 70% of companies on LinkedIn globally rank talent brand as a top priority. If anything, this percentage is set to grow,” she continued. According to information from LinkedIn, strong employer brands can halve a company's cost per hire and companies with stronger employer brands have a 28 percent lower turnover rate than companies with weaker employer brands.

The list of Top 20 Most InDemand Employers for Singaporei was derived by analysing interactions between members, and the more than 1,000 companies on LinkedIn globally that had at least 30 Singapore-based employees who are LinkedIn members.

This was then crossreferenced with thousands of survey responses, to pinpoint the specific activities that best indicate familiarity and interest in working for a company: connecting with employees, viewing employee profiles, visiting Company and Career Pages, and following companies.

The analytical framework for this analysis is similar to that used for the Talent Brand Index, a free service for LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions customers that allows them to measure and benchmark the strength of their employer brand, and offers new insights into how they can improve their ability to attract top talent.