Despite sending out more than 70 resumes in two months earlier this year, the architecture graduate did not get a single job offer.
So when the SGUnited Traineeships Programme was launched in June, Mr Pung Li Kuang, 25, who returned to Singapore after graduating from the University of New South Wales in Australia last December, signed up immediately.
Now, just three months into his year-long traineeship, he may have found his calling.
As a civil design engineer trainee at Greyline Solution, a new division set up by interior design firm WEDA StudioInc, Mr Pung helps other firms adopt prefabricated containers as temporary housing for migrant workers - a project aligned with his own ideals of designing for good causes.
He told The New Paper: "It has been an adventure. Although this is not really my expertise, I have learnt a lot."
As of end-August, 33,100 locals have found jobs or training positions with the help of various government schemes, including the SGUnited Traineeships Programme, the Ministry of Manpower (MOM) said yesterday in its weekly jobs report.
This is up by 9,100 from the 24,000 job seekers who were successfully placed as of end-July. And 29,580 of the 33,100 were placed into jobs, up by 5,580 from end-July.
More also took on long-term jobs, as placements into jobs of less than 12 months fell from 58 per cent to 55 per cent.
This was mainly due to an earlier focus in placing job seekers into short-term public sector jobs to handle the surge in Covid-19-related operations, said MOM.
A total of 117,500 new jobs, training and attachment opportunities have been created under the $2 billion SGUnited Jobs and Skills Package, surpassing the initial target of creating 100,000 opportunities when it was announced in May.
Of these opportunities, 70 per cent are jobs, said MOM.
"It is good progress," Manpower Minister Josephine Teo said at a briefing yesterday.
She said: "We're not just making progress in terms of pulling together the opportunities. There's also very good progress in getting people placed. Being placed into jobs is something that is of high priority."
Despite this, MOM noted that a significant number of vacancies remain unfilled due to a continuing mismatch in expectations and skills.
"The focus now must be to try and get as many of those vacancies filled as possible... We will have to have a very strong emphasis on jobs matching," said Mrs Teo.
Appealing to employers and job seekers to keep an open mind, she urged the former to look beyond candidates who are an exact match and focus on transferable skills.
She advised job seekers to consider seeking career guidance early.
Ms Intan Adam, 47, could not get a job after more than 60 applications in over a year.
In August last year, she turned to Workforce Singapore, which helped her improve her resume and online profile.
WEDA StudioInc recruited Ms Intan in April this year after finding her profile on MyCareersFuture.
She had to take a 20 per cent pay cut, but by May she was helping to set up Greyline Solution, which in turn recruited Mr Pung after he signed up with the SGUnited programme.
Said Ms Intan: "I don't know if it will be easier now that there are a lot of government initiatives, but I hope people looking for a job never give up."
Meanwhile, Mr Pung is taking courses and working towards a diploma related to his current work. He said: "If you don't try, you'll never know. A position as a civil design engineer was something I had never thought about."
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