HR Hackathon Heroes
School of Business Management

Why specialise in Human Resource (HR)? That’s a common question many HR students get from those who don’t really know what kind of workplace problems HR specialists can solve.  

Three NYP teams from the  Diploma in Business Management’s HR Specialization at SBM had a clean sweep at this year’s Singapore HR Challenge (a Hackathon organised by the Singapore Human Resource Institute).  

Beating out 23 other teams from various polytechnics, ITEs and the Singapore University of Social Sciences was no easy task. Team Fast Sources (headed by Year Three student Muhammad Aqmal) clinched top spot by coming up with novel HR strategies for their ‘client’, Wildlife Reserves Singapore. 

The issue to solve? Getting employees to take ownership of their own training and development. Aqmal shares that it is an issue that is common to many companies, but it is not insurmountable.  

 “It was vital for us to think out of the box. With 23 other teams from different tertiary institutions fighting for the top three spots, I am proud to say that our achievement in this intervarsity competition has lifted NYP’s reputation.” 

Evangeline Wu, leader of Team BB, admits that time was not on their side during the process. After much perseverance, she led her team to the first-runner up spot. “After going through two rounds of presentations with our lecturers, we had to make drastic changes to our content in less than three days,” she says. “Although it was pretty demoralizing at first, we could understand and see the heart behind the constructive feedback -- to help us improve as much as possible and win this HR Hackathon.” 

Knowing when to seek help was important. And that’s something the leader of Team Fast Sources, Ng Jia Yi, learned. The Year Two student and her team came in second-runner up. Initially, they were stunned by the complex challenge they were given. “We didn’t have any direction at all,” she recalls. “Thankfully, we had our lecturers to guide us through. They even took time off their personal schedules just to have meetings with us to help us improve.”