On a new track to fulfilment

These Gen Zs are flipping the script on finding purpose in their career

- Srinidhi Ragavendran

After graduating with a diploma in nursing from Ngee Ann Polytechnic in 2021, Ms Suhada Wang entered a workforce gripped by the Covid-19 pandemic. She stepped in as a locum nurse, spending her shifts administering medication and monitoring vitals on the front line.

The job was stable, but repetitive. "Every day was the same," she said. "I had a sense that life must be more than this."

That sense of "more" took shape after an 18-day budget trip to Bali in 2022. Somewhere between cheap eats and shared hostels, she was reminded of her teenage dream of working in the media industry. Nursing had been her mother's choice, but chasing stories and documenting travel felt like hers.

Back in Singapore, she set her sights on The Travel Intern, a local travel content platform that reflected the kind of career she wanted. With no portfolio to show, she continued working nursing shifts while saving for short trips.

Over a year, she travelled to Laos, Vietnam, the Philippines and Thailand, documenting her experiences along the way. This eventually made her a perfect fit for The Travel Intern, where she has worked full time since April.

Ms Wang, 25, is part of a growing wave of "career imposters", a term increasingly used on social media to describe people, often Gen Zs, who pivot into careers they were not formally trained for.

It plays on the idea of "imposter syndrome" - the feeling of being a fraud or unqualified - while reclaiming it to reflect agency and reinvention, rather than inadequacy.

For many career imposters, the goal is not climbing the ladder, but carving out a path that brings meaning and fulfillment.

A 2023 study by global workforce solutions company ManpowerGroup found that 97 per cent of Singapore respondents said having meaning at work was important to them. Yet, only one in five reported feeling "very satisfied" with the level of meaning in their jobs.