Mother, programmer, and technopreneur, Charlotte Lim is breaking stereotypes on a daily basis and she leads JobTech, a relatively new player in the job market.
Built on an AI technology platform, JobTech provides optimized job matching tools and real-time labour market intelligence. The platform has grown in a short space of time to over 30,000 job seekers and over 250 enterprise users.
This isn’t Charlotte’s first stint in the technology world. After a stint with the Economic Development Board, she worked for a not for profit organization to advocate digital literacy in Asia, promoting Microsoft Office skills certification programs in Indonesia and even in South Korea.
When you can’t find Charlotte in the JobTech office, she’s most likely spending time with her young son and family.
Find out more about her story here.
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Sell us your company/service in 300 words?
JobTech was created in November 2016 with the sole purpose of using AI technology to connect people and jobs more efficiently and to help people stay relevant to the changing needs of the workforce. My co-founder, Wee Tiong, developed the technology in the Agency for Science, Technology and Research (A*STAR) and we’ve built on it to provide optimized job matching tools and real-time labour market intelligence.
The first thing we did was to use our technology to process online job postings to derive insights into what employers want, job roles and skillsets that are in-demand. We also use the information to support our job matching algorithms that help employers source and shortlist quality talents through a fully automated cloud-based platform.
Today we serve more than 30,000 job seekers and over 250 enterprise users.
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What is stopping you from having the largest company in the world?
We are fortunate that our technology allows us to develop and deliver products with a business model that is highly scalable. Our technology can also read Asian languages in addition to English such as Bahasa Indonesia, Bahasa Malaysia, Vietnamese, Japanese and Chinese.
Having said that, however, it is critical that we continue to hire the best people who can help us build and improve our business.
For example, people who take ownership in their work and can distill customers’ feedback into priorities to advance our development roadmap.
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If you could change one thing about the tech industry in Southeast Asia, what would it be?
It is my desire that everyone has at least some basic STEM (science, technology, engineering, math) skills regardless of age, profession or sector. According to a McKinsey report, a quarter of work activities in Singapore will be displaced by automation by 2030. At that time the average age of the workforce will be 40-45 years.
JobTech’s data shows a growing demand for hands-on technical skills at the Manager/Executive level. These include General Programming and Database Management skills like SQL.
What this means is, in addition to project management, which is still a sought-after skill, IT managers also need to demonstrate proficiency in specific technical skills.
Another example, from our data, is the increasing demand for HR practitioners to have data-related skills such as R and Tableau.
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Name one person in the region, who is making a difference in Technology?
I’m inspired by seemingly ordinary people who incorporate technology into their daily lives through fun and practical ways! Recently, I came across an article about a really cool mum who encourages her daughters age 8 and 10, to code and automate daily chores like building a pet care system and an app to keep track of their chores.
My co-founder, Wee Tiong, also inspires me. He stepped out of a senior and comfortable role in the government (where he headed Singapore’s first Business Analytics Translational Centre) to apply his technology in solving inefficiencies in the labour market through JobTech.
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What would you want people to remember you for, 100 years from now?
Honestly, for me, it is more important to think about the impact that JobTech is making and will continue to make 10, 20, 100 years from now. If someone can say that thanks to JobTech, I picked up Python because JobTech made me aware that Python is one of the easiest programming languages to learn, and is also widely sought-after (from JobTech data) due to its application in rapid prototyping/agile environments, I’ll be very happy already!
About Charlotte
Charlotte Lim is a co-founder of JobTech where she is responsible for business development, operations, and marketing.
Charlotte has more than 10 years of experience in strategy and business development for the government, NGO and private sectors. She developed regional business opportunities for DKSH, a Swiss-based market expansion services provider and implemented capacity building programs during her time with ECDL Foundation. Charlotte also previously served as Assistant Head of the Chemicals Division of the Singapore Economic Development Board (EDB) where she developed and promoted strategies to support the downstream integration of the petrochemical industry in Singapore, particularly in higher-value specialty chemicals.
Charlotte has a BEng (Hons) in Chemical Engineering from the National University of Singapore. She also completed the Management Acceleration Program (MAP) at INSEAD in 2016.
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Views expressed by the interviewee are not necessarily shared by Tech Collective. Some minimal editing is done for clarity’s sake.
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