Give Your Career Plans A Fitness Check at NTUC Youth Pop-Up

Nobody hands you a manual for life after studies. One day you’re stressing over submissions and finals, and the next you’re supposed to already know what a portfolio is, how to network without cringing, and what an actual workplace looks like from the inside. Most of us just fumble through it in real time, on Google (or TikTok) search at a time.

Well, luck is on our side because NTUC Youth’s roadshow is built around closing that gap. “Your Career Fitness Starts Here!” treats career readiness the way a trainer treats fitness. That is to say career readiness improves with the right regime put into place.

Launched as part of NTUC Youth’s 21st anniversary celebrations, the roadshow reflects its broader commitment to supporting young people in their career journeys by equipping them with practical insights and resources. The pop-up’s concept is pretty straightforward: explore three activity zones, rack up career fitness insights and build a six-month training plan to get you career ready. Here are what you can expect!

Discover Zone: Uncover your values at work 

What’s in your gym bag? Perhaps what you bring may reveal a thing or two about you. In this zone, you will choose three gym necessities you’d bring to the gym, whether it is a water bottle, a resistance band, or a foam roller, and each one maps back to a value. 

Grab the one tied to resilience, and you’ve said something about how you handle setbacks. Grab stability, and you’ve flagged the kind of environment you actually want to work in. It’s a shortcut to naming things about yourself that usually take years, and a few bad jobs, to figure out on your own.

Train Zone: Find out how you handle pressure

How do you handle pressure when the going gets tough? This is a question fresh graduates or fresh entrants to the workforce may struggle to find an answer to. Here, you are exposed to three different but realistic scenarios, where you will have to make a gut-call each. 

Say a new project lands on you with barely any details but a deadline. Do you dive in and figure it out along the way, or chase clarity first? There is no right answer, but the corresponding choice you choose can show a thing or two about how you perform under pressure.  

Progress Zone: Walk out with an actual plan

An AI-powered kiosk sizes up what's actually going on with you, whether it be finding out where the gaps are or knowing what's holding you back. Plus, someone from NTUC may help shine a light on what you could be looking out for. In other words, you can customise and build a six-month training plan to beef up your career readiness. For one person, that might mean widening their network before the job hunt even starts. For someone else, it's confidence conditioning ahead of job interviews, or something else entirely. Nothing here comes pre-packaged. 

When and Where Is The Next Exhibition? 

The roadshow's making its rounds across polytechnics universities and public spaces in Singapore over the next few months, so there's a decent chance it lands near you. Bring your bestie along for the wefie wall, then cash in your Career Fitness Booklet to redeem exclusive NTUC merchandise… and yes, you can receive a complimentary CHAGEE drink or OATSIDE while stock last!

A Friend You Need

Whichever stage you're at, NTUC Youth doesn't stop showing up once the booth's packed away. 

Brand new to school, haven't sent a single application yet or haven't even picked a lane? An NTUC Membership is a gateway to something greater, whether it is helping you figure out which industry actually suits you, learn to work alongside AI instead of getting outpaced by it, and build the right habits before you need them.

Fast forward to final semester, resume half-finished, and the questions change: sizing up a job offer beyond the pay slip, knowing if a role's actually right for you, what to prioritise in your first three months, getting a resume to actually stand out. The same membership can give you headway wherever you are standing.  

A few years into working life, but starting to feel the wear? As priorities shift, juggling with work and life can be about managing stress before it inches into a burnout, knowing when a role's worth stretching for or when it's time to move on, figuring out what skills are actually worth building next. 

However far along you are, I am glad that NTUC Youth’s support doesn't clock out.

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Want to hear more of such stories? Catch our NTUC Youth in action on Instagram (here) or TikTok (here).

Contributed by Sng Ler Jun 

Note: The views expressed in this article are the writer's own and do not represent that of NTUC Youth.