SINGAPORE: A Singapore graduate has called out his coursemates for labelling themselves startup founders and hedge fund traders on LinkedIn, despite apparently having little more than school projects and personal investments to show for it.
On Tuesday (Oct 13), the graduate shared on the r/asksg subreddit that he had finished his studies at one of Singapore's Big Three universities this year and created a LinkedIn account to look for work. However, he was taken aback by the professional titles some of his peers were using to present themselves to potential employers.
He claimed that some were “branding themselves as startup founders over a school/personal project, retail investors calling themselves hedge fund traders, and people basically claiming they graduated from Harvard because they completed a HarvardX course on Coursera.”
His post comes as fresh graduates face a tougher employment landscape. In 2022, 87.5% of fresh graduates secured full-time jobs, but the proportion fell to 74.4% in 2025.
Against this backdrop, the graduate wondered whether the pressure to secure a job had become so intense that some candidates felt they had to embellish their credentials to get noticed by recruiters.
“WTF am I seeing?” he expressed. “Is the job market really so bad that we have to start larping just to get a job? At this point, should I also start calling myself a founder and a portfolio manager, or is being normal still a viable career strategy?”
‘Fake it till you make it’
In the comments, one user wrote that “this has always been the case” and that it has absolutely nothing to do with the tough job market. “Don't underestimate the strategy,” they added. “It works on casual inspection.”
Another said, “Fake it till you make it. That's how SG came about.”
A third user added, “It's normal; the government wants more grads to be entrepreneurs too. This is the new trend moving forward.”
Several commenters also suggested he concentrate on his own job hunt rather than policing his peers' LinkedIn activity.
One told him, “You’ve an odd way of thinking. Your goal of setting up your own LinkedIn is to get a job, right? Focus on that. Instead, you’re making posts about your peers wildly exaggerating their accomplishments.”/TISG
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