Welcome Note

Hello there!

The Recruiter’s Lens section is all about getting the inside scoops where I aim to shed light and share the daily grind and voices of recruiters, learnings from HR leaders and anything under the sun in the world of tech.

I am a firm believer of a squiggly career, where I myself has walked through non-linear, unconventional paths which has so far lead me to various twists, turns, and diverse career experiences.

Having graduated from Nanyang Technological University (NTU) with a specialisation in Human Resource Consulting, I am a born and raised Singaporean recruiter for one of the Big Tech giants. Apart from being a IHRP-CP and SHRM-CP professional, I am also on my path to be a certified career coach.

Although I completed 4 HR internships in my short 3-year direct honors programme in NTU, I chose my first full-time career as a Crisis Management Investigator (Community Response Specialist) in Airbnb. This decision came as a horror to a lot of my HR peers, university professors and even HR leaders but I learned a great deal of skills (will share more in subsequent articles). Albeit a very short stint, this leap of faith into a completely new role and in the world of tech really opened my eyes and made me fell in love with the tech industry - its fun and open culture, its brilliant people with great work ethics and the scale of work we do.

I then started my global recruiting career as a Campus Recruiter in Shopee and then moved on to recruit for experienced tech professionals for tech unicorns and bigger tech giants/FAANG** such as Google, Meta and even now in Microsoft. For the last 5 years, I have exposure recruiting in markets across APAC, EMEA and US regions and even witnessed a tech unicorn went through SPAC listing.

Get Ahead is an idea which was conceptualised and eventually crystallised because of the waves of tech layoffs (I was impacted myself) which spurred more deeper reflections and conversations about future-proofing one’s career, career transitions and pivots and breaking / returning into these firms. Is it worth it or not?

As a recruiter myself, I hope that my personal experiences and my network of recruiters and working professionals across different industries can offer diverse perspectives, recruiting insights and learnings to the people who love to invest their time and effort in their career journey. I am hopeful that Get Ahead isn’t just exclusive and relevant to the tech industry but applies to all industries, across all kinds of roles, across all geographical regions.

Get Ahead doesn’t necessarily mean always striving for the next best thing, but more so about charting your own unique career journey, knowing what’s success and even failure really mean to you both professionally and personally and how you can achieve it in your own terms and conditions.

I hope you look forward to the career stories and the sharing from the recruiter’s lens. Cheers!

Best,

Mei Yu

**For the uninitiated, FAANG is an acronym that refers to a group of five major American technology companies, which are considered some of the most prominent and successful in the world. Now, it has evolved from FAANG to MAMAA which includes Meta (formerly Facebook), Amazon, Apple, Microsoft and Alphabet (formerly Google).