ISE GRADUATE EMPLOYMENT SURVEY 2021

Year after year, Industrial and Systems Engineering (ISE) graduates consistently report healthy employment and high starting salaries in the Graduate Employment Survey (GES) conducted by the Ministry of Education each November.

• The 2021 cohort is no different with 96.7% finding employment within six months of completing their final exams.

• The median gross monthly salary of fresh ISE graduates in full-time permanent employment increased to $4,500 in 2021, up from $4,380 in 2020.

• Latest figures were extracted from the MOE website for the GES 2021 figures for comparison.

• ISE graduates are also expected to report healthy employment and salaries in next year’s GES.

Associate Professor Ng Szu Hui (Head of Department, Industrial Systems Engineering and Management) said, “We are heartened to see that our ISE graduates continue to enjoy high employability and competitive starting salaries. Our ISE curriculum places strong emphasis on both fundamental analytical knowledge and industry ready skill sets, and our core Systems Design Project (SDP) cumulates these in a real-world consulting project that provides students with experience in developing innovative and practical solutions. The knowledge, skill sets and experiences acquired throughout our program have helped our graduates to remain highly relevant, adaptable and employable in today’s complex and rapidly evolving world. ISEM will continue to enhance our industry ready curriculum with new opportunities and specializations to enable our students to acquire state-of-the-art knowledge, skills and practices so that they can continue to remain relevant, adaptable and competitive”.

It is expected that ISE graduates will continue to report healthy employment and salaries in next year’s GES as many in the 2022 cohort have secured jobs before graduation, some even before the start of their final semester at NUS.

Ong Jing Quan is a final year BEng (ISE) student. He chose ISE due to the versatile nature of the course, giving him time to understand what he truly wants during his tertiary education. The ISE curriculum allows him to explore different career routes.

He adds, “ISE gave me a glimpse of the various opportunities that I can pursue. The modules equipped me with relevant knowledge and skills. For instance, after taking ISE’s core module, Project Management, I went on to apply my knowledge as a Technical Project Management intern at Shopee. The ISE curriculum also helped me to build technical fundamentals which I used to explore my interest to minor in Data Engineering. This built my confidence to take on more technical related internships, such as my internship with DBS as a DevOps under the Young SEEDer Internship Program. Additionally, with ISE’s supportive department that regularly notify us on hackathons, workshops, internships, and job openings, I am not surprised why ISE graduates are doing well even during this pandemic. The support allowed me to secure a full-time role as a Technology Analyst in Citibank’s Graduate Analyst Program even before the start of my final semester. I have batch mates that were equally fortunate to secure jobs in various industries too, including top management consulting firms to big tech companies. Lastly, the amazing people I befriended in ISE, we had our fair share of fun in and out of school as we strive together for projects and hackathons. These are memories that cannot be forgotten.”

Christopher Png, who will be joining DBS under their SEED programme upon graduation, is another student from the 2022 cohort who has secured employment before the start of his final semester. He said, “ISE, with its rigorous and broad curriculum, has equipped me with a multitude of skills to be future-ready. These skills include modelling and analytics, risk analysis, project management and systems thinking just to name a few. ISE places a huge emphasis on developing both our technical and soft skills, and grooms us to be all-rounded individuals.

A unique component of the ISE curriculum is the compulsory Systems Design Project (SDP) where students are placed in groups of four and are attached to companies as student consultants to address a real-world problem. My group was attached to Micron Technology, and we had the privilege of working with engineers and data scientists to develop innovative solutions for Micron. This unique opportunity provided us with a chance to apply what we have learnt in school and with invaluable working experience before we graduate.

Furthermore, our professors are hugely supportive of us initiating our own projects and going on overseas learning programmes. This provides us with a lot of flexibility to customise our learning experience at NUS.”

Ong Wei Cheng is a student from the 2022 cohort who graduated in January and is currently working at Meta as a developer support engineer. He shared, “The flexible ISE curriculum allowed me to undertake 4 internships and graduate within 3.5 years. This flexibility allowed me to apply the knowledge I gained from school to the actual world. This helped me build my portfolio which played a pivotal role in helping me secure a full-time job with Meta.

For my Systems Design Project (SDP), I was attached to an eye clinic in Changi General Hospital (CGH) and tasked to reduce the turnaround time of the patients. My group and I developed a rigorous simulation model in Python and reported the findings to various stakeholders in the clinic, including the Assistant Director of CGH. Under the tutelage of Professor He Shuangchi, we were able to develop an assignment algorithm that can potentially reduce the turnaround time by 20%. This experience helped me obtained internships with TikTok and DBS Bank subsequently. I am truly grateful for all the soft and technical skills that I developed through SDP. ”