By Daniel Spencer | 28 Aug 2024
I was born in Kenya to Australian missionary parents. Growing up, I was used to navigating different cultures and felt a desire to travel to new places. In my younger years, I had the opportunity to live in Tanzania and Australia and to study and work in France. In 2016, I married my American-born wife, Natalie, in Sydney, Australia.
As the daughter of a diplomat, Natalie experienced a similar upbringing; so after a few years working in Sydney, we felt the itch to move again. It was time for a new chapter in a new country.
We wanted to live in Asia, so we reached out to our contacts. After speaking with a few different contacts across Japan, Thailand, Vietnam and Singapore, Singapore emerged as the most interesting relocation destination: English is widely spoken, job and visa opportunities are seemingly more apparent and Singapore is an international hub for the world.
Job Hunting from Abroad
The most important step to getting a visa in Singapore was to secure employment. So in September 2018, we both started to look for jobs.
My wife is a Registered Nurse, Midwife and Lactation Consultant; she went online to JobStreet and found 6 open roles in Singapore. Thankfully, Natalie being an International Lactation Consultant meant that she could work from Day 1 in Singapore as she held an international accreditation. If she had decided to work as a Nurse or Midwife in Singapore, she would need to recertify which would have taken around 9 months.
Natalie applied for all 6 jobs on a Saturday night, had 2 interviews the same week and on that same Friday, she had a job and visa offer from Thomson Medical Centre to join their team as a Lactation Consultant. So out of the different markets that we had been exploring, the door to Singapore was now wide open!
As for me, my background is in International Business. I have worked for the past 15 years as a trade, investment and management consultant for private companies and in Senior Trade roles with the Danish and Irish Government Trade Representative Offices. My roles have always been to support companies to set up in different markets and so the focus of my job search in Singapore was more in this same field.
My plan of attack for job hunting started by filtering my personal LinkedIn network by ‘Singapore’, where I had 300 connections.
I reached out to everyone in this target list over the next 2 weeks. I saved all the contacts in a spreadsheet to more easily track my outreach progress. Out of the 300 connections, 30% replied, and in the end I managed to secure 5 job interviews. One of these interviews was with Sleek.com who had been recommended to me by an old colleague who had invested as an early shareholder in Sleek. He shared the founder’s whatsapp and recommended them to speak with me!
That’s how I joined Sleek.com, a new fintech startup that had recently launched in Singapore, as of the early employees of the team.
Having both secured a job and visa offer, in January 2019, Natalie and I quit our jobs in Australia and jumped on a plane from Sydney to Singapore with 2 suitcases and a sense of adventure. Neither of us had ever been to or visited Singapore before so it was quite exciting! I still remember all the new experiences in my first week – the incredible sounds, smells and of course the humidity!
Building networks in Singapore
I joined Sleek in my 2nd week in Singapore. For the next 4 years, Sleek played a large role in my Singapore experience. I joined initially as a Senior Sales Executive and after 3 months I was promoted to lead the Singapore sales team and then later to the position of Head of Sales & Customer Success.
Between 2019 and 2022, Sleek’s revenue grew more than 540% and Sleek was recognised as the 20th fastest-growing startup in Singapore. My most memorable experiences with Sleek in Singapore were hiring and onboarding more than 17 sales and customer success team members to fuel the Sleek Beast, initiating and launching Sleek’s White Label Solution, leading the project that secured Sleek’s Approval as a Productivity Solutions Grant Vendor and personally meeting more than 1,000 referral partners for Sleek over my 4 years in Singapore.
In my role, I met so many interesting people that I used to invite them all to a personal networking drinks that I used to host every month called “Daniel’s Networking Drinks”. On average, between 40-100 people would turn up each month to a bar to meet and network.
In September 2020, I joined the AustCham Board and shortly after I founded the new SME & Startup group for the Chamber.
The catalyst for starting the SME & Startup group for AustCham was because every month our Sleek team were helping hundreds of new Australian companies to enter Singapore. A common question I would get from these Australian companies as the ‘Token Aussie’ in the Sleek team was, “Where can I go next to network, find partners, market insights and clients in Singapore?” The answer quickly became the AustCham SME & Startup network!
The SME & Startup Group quickly grew after launching and within the first 6 months we had 100 active participants all connected in a WhatsApp group. I organised networking sessions every 6 weeks which attracted around 50 regular attendees.
One of our most memorable networking events was hosted by Steve Dawson and his team at Asia Market Entry in their beautiful Boat Quay offices. It was our very first in-person networking session post Covid and everyone was very happy to finally meet in person after supporting each other online for so many months.
The SME & Startup group quickly became a valuable go-to-forum where new Australian entrants into Singapore could ask questions and get advice, where members could share challenges and ideas and where the voice of startups and SMEs could be heard within the Australian Chamber.
Parting words
My biggest advice for anyone looking to move to Singapore is to network. You should aim to connect and speak with as many people as you possibly can that have some form of connection to Singapore. A personal philosophy I I live by is that everyone you meet in life can teach you something and on average would have 150 ‘close contacts’ within their personal network to whom they could introduce you if there is a mutual benefit.
The best way to connect with someone when the aim is to find a job is not to ask for a job. My recommendation is always to go in with the angle of asking for their advice or recommendations if they were in your shoes. The job opportunities should naturally follow.
In life, there are people who are natural givers. These are the people who will always make an effort to reply back to you and give you their time or help; these people are hard to find so never take their time for granted. Come prepared with your questions, respect their introductions and advice and remember to thank them for their help.
If they are based in Singapore and help you while you are yet to arrive, when you do arrive make it a priority to seek them out and buy them lunch or a coffee. Remember givers are hard to find, so keep them in your network as long as you can.
Finally, check out my personal blog: Daniel’s Tips & Tricks to Life in Singapore. I wrote this over my 4 years of living in Singapore, and there is a whole section on ‘Tips to Finding a Job’ in Singapore. As I returned to Sydney in January 2023, some of the content may now be out of date, however many of the general tips and insights remain the same.
Network, network and network. Don’t be afraid to meet new people, be organised and never stop hustling.
Meet Daniel
Daniel is a passionate networker, hustler, mentor and Head of Sales & Customer Success at Sleek.com in Australia – a leading provider of company registration and accounting support across Singapore, Hong Kong, Australia and the United Kingdom. His expertise is helping businesses to start, grow and scale in international markets. Connect with Daniel here.
