By : MD IZWAN AND ZURAIRI AR
KUALA LUMPUR : Bad work
attitudes coupled with poor communication skills topped by unrealistic pay
demands are the three biggest grouses employers have in turning down fresh
graduates, Southeast Asia’s top online recruitment firm Jobstreet has found —
suggesting that the nearly RM500 million the Najib administration has proposed
to spend on jobless youths may not be enough to enough to make them marketable.
A whopping 64 per cent of
employers surveyed by Jobstreet said they rejected the fresh graduates because
the job seekers had asked for unrealistic remuneration during the interview,
the job search agency told The Malaysian Insider in a recent email inquiry.
File photo of Home Minister
Datuk Seri Hishammuddin Hussein with university student leaders after a lunch
early this year. Many graduates remain unemployed due to their poor command of
English.
Another 60 per cent said
they were forced to turn down the graduates due to bad attitude, personality
and character.
And more than half of 571
human resource managers polled by Jobstreet in a November 2011 study said they
were unable to hire the graduates due to the job seekers’ poor communication
skills, notably their lack of command in using English — which remains the
business lingua franca worldwide.
“Many are currently
unemployed because the courses they studied for at university do not have a
wide market. In fact, many graduates do not know what they want to do after
they finish their studies,” said an assistant human resource manager with an
international insurance company who asked not to be named.
In his Budget 2013 speech
presented in Parliament last month, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Najib Razak had
mooted setting up a Graduate Employability Taskforce with an allocation of
RM200 million to strengthen the employability of jobless graduates under a
Graduate Employability Blueprint by the end of this year.
He also announced an
additional RM440 million to be allocated for the Skills Development Fund
Corporation (PTPK), to provide loans for trainees to undergo skills training.
The government will also set
up a New Entrepreneur Foundation (NEF) with a start-up of RM50 million as part
of its efforts help young ICT entrepreneurs. The NEF will be the platform to
provide training and guidance programmes.
A separate Young
Entrepreneurs Fund will be set up and will be given RM50 million by the SME
Bank to hand out as soft loans to jobless youths aged 30 and below, providing a
subsidised two per cent interest rate for loans up to RM100,000 with a seven-year
repayment period.
The proposals are seen to
complement the National Education Blueprint 2013-2025 with the aim to be in the
top third of the Programme For International Student Assessment (PISA) test
within the next 13 years. The country is currently ranked in the bottom third.
The education blueprint
comprises 11 strategic “shifts” to inculcate six attributes in children —
knowledge, thinking skills, leadership, bilingual proficiency, ethics and
national identity.
Yet within its recent Budget
2013, the Barisan National (BN)-led government cut its education budget
drastically from RM50 billion in the last budget to RM38.7 billion, raising
doubts about the likely success of the educational blueprint in addressing the
nation’s flagging education standards.
The opposition coalition
Pakatan Rakyat (PR) called for abolishing the National Higher Education Fund
(PTPTN) to wipe out PTPTN debts, drawing criticism that such a move would
backfire as it would give students a sense of entitlement and increase their
reliance on the government.
Analysts have also suggested
that Malaysia’s dream of boosting its education standards through an ambitious
overhaul of the national school system will not happen as long as politicians
continue to be involved in drawing up its policies.
There are currently 20
public universities in Malaysia, including the International Islamic University
of Malaysia (IIUM), Mara University of Technology (UiTM) and Universiti
Malaysia Sabah.
Over the past 20 years, the
number of private higher education institutions has also increased to a total
of 60 nationwide, such as HELP University, UCSI University, Tunku Abdul Rahman
University and many more.
Jobstreet said the
government’s proposal to spend some RM500 million on training fresh graduates
and provide other incentives to raise their employability was welcome but
stressed that practical training courses needed to be strengthened and, more
significantly, the education system needed to be revamped in order to produce
quality graduates who possess the necessary skills and knowledge in line with
the job market.
Malaysia’s mushrooming local
higher education institutions churned out a total 184,581 graduates last year
according to the latest statistics released on the Higher Education Ministry’s
website. Of that figure, 44,391 people or 24 per cent are unemployed.
According to data from the
ministry, the most number of unemployed graduates are those who studied arts
and social sciences (19,784), followed by those from a technical field (12,321).
But in comparison to their peers from the same field, science students have the
highest unemployment rate — making up 29.5 per cent of jobless graduates.
The ministry’s statistics
also show that job-seekers armed with only a diploma (17,095) are more
successful in landing a job than those who holding a bachelor’s degree
(21,248).
And as many as 6,852
graduates hail from Selangor, Malaysia’s richest and most-industrialised state,
forming the country’s biggest group of jobless degree-holders, followed by
Kelantan (5,232), which ranks among the poorest in the 13-state nation.
In a separate survey
involving 1,830 fresh graduates, Jobstreet found nearly a third of graduates
blamed their persistent jobless state on stiff competition.
Mohd Al-Amin Omar graduated
from Universiti Sains Malaysia three years ago with a distinction in industrial
technology and has been unsuccessful in securing a permanent job since.
The 27-year-old has been
working as a technician to support himself.
“For three years I have been
looking for jobs and I have tried various agencies but have failed up to now.
After three years, I feel like quitting and am fed up of looking for a job,” he
said.
He blames his failure to
secure a full-time position on the limited market for his field of study and
some employers whom he says refuse to pay remuneration suitable for his
university qualification.
“Every year graduates
complete their studies but the industry has not expanded. Look at the ads in
Jobstreet, Jensjob and other job recruitment agencies, how many vacancies are
there for those qualified in this field?” Mohd Al-Amin asked.
He is not alone.
For Desiree Nair, an
accountancy and management graduate from Segi College, the pressure of being
unable to secure a permanent job has been building over the last two years.
“The pressure is there, but
I’m still hanging on. I’ve had four interviews since June but until now I have
not been able to find a stable job,” the 25-year-old said.
Unlike Mohd Al-Amin, Nair
believes she was passed over due to stiff competition and the racial attitudes
of some employers.
“The market for my field is
wide, only competition is tough which I have to face especially with those who
studied abroad for the same course.
“Apart from that, I am also
disappointed with some employers who act racial. In their advertisements, they
list all kinds of criteria like language and race — how can I get a job if it’s
like this?” Nair asked.
An estimated 76,200
graduates are currently unemployed because the majority do not possess adequate
job-hunting skills and are too dependent on others for information on available
jobs, Deputy Human Resource Minister Datuk Maznah Mazlan was reported as saying
in May.
She was reported by state
news agency Bernama as telling the Dewan Negara that 77.14 per cent of 1,994
respondents in a study by the Labour Department said they needed a mentor or
coach to guide them on ways to find a job.
Malaysia is seeking to make
the leap into the ranks of a high-income nation status in the next eight years.
Analysts have also warned
the ambitious nation still stuck in the middle-income trap to brace for a
significant slowdown here due to rising linkages with top trade partners
including China, the world’s second-largest market, which economists say is
headed for a sixth consecutive quarterly drop in growth, with worse to come.
Malaysia is among the most
vulnerable Asian economies should a “perfect storm” of a disorderly debt
default in Europe, a slowdown in China and the US, and rising tensions in the
Middle East materialise, strategy research house Roubini Global Economics (RGE)
said in a report in July.
RGE, best known for its
founder “Dr Doom” Nouriel Roubini who predicted the collapse of the US housing
market and the 2008 global financial crisis, said that Malaysia had the highest
exposure to a pullout of capital as its eurozone and US bank claims amount to
more than 25 per cent of GDP.
The World Bank also urged
Malaysia earlier this year to expedite reforms such as subsidy cuts and
broadening the tax base, key initiatives that have stalled ahead of an
impending federal election, if it wants to achieve Putrajaya’s target of being
a high-income economy by 2020. (TMI)
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