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Helping unemployed graduates in Malaysia

THE latest available statistics from the Department of Statistics (DoS), Malaysia, shows that Malaysia has a very low unemployment rate of 3.3 percent as of December 2012.

This would mean that with a labour force of slightly above 13 million, about 434,000 Malaysian were unemployed. Economically, this is an ideal situation as Malaysia is at full employment.

However, of concern is the number of unemployed graduates that Malaysian higher learning institutions produced each year.

This is an irony at a time when employers are finding increasing difficulty in attracting the right talents into their companies inclusive of my present workplace.

The Higher Education Ministry, in its "Graduate Tracer Study Executive Report 2010", published on Feb 11, 2011, shows that of the 174,464 graduates that responded to the ministry′s survey, 24.6 per cent of them have not found a job after six months of graduating.

DoS found that 65,500 graduates were unemployed in 2010 and they were predominantly in the 20 to 29 age cohort. They numbered 56,000. There were several deficiencies that our company has come across during the interview process of candidates. They include:

LACK of core knowledge and competency in the job they applied for;

LACK of communication skills and language proficiency; and,

LACK of general knowledge.

The question is, why are a quarter of our graduates unable to be employed despite spending three to four years of their lives studying?

This could be caused by a mismatch of talent produced by our higher learning institutions or it could be the ineffective delivery system there

The points raised above are not merely conjecture.

A study was conducted by Mckinsey Center for Government, entitled "Education to Employment: Designing a System that Works" by Mona Mourshed, Diana Ferrell and Dominic Barton.

The study analysed 100 education-to-employment initiatives in 25 countries and a survey of youth, education providers and employers of nine countries with diverse socio-economic backgrounds. Both took place from August to September last year.

The study found that:

SEVENTY-MILLION youth are unemployed;

HALF of youth are not sure that their post-secondary education has improved their chances of finding a job; and,

ALMOST 40 per cent of employers say lack of skills is the main reason for entry-level vacancies.

However, the study found a mismatch of perceptions among the three stakeholders: employers, education providers and youth.

Only 42 per cent of employers found that the employees they hired in the past year had been adequately prepared by their prehire education or training.

Overall, 45 per cent of youth thought that they were adequately prepared for entry-level positions in their chosen fields of study and not surprisingly, 72 per cent of education providers felt that graduates from their institutions were adequately prepared for entry-level positions in their chosen fields of study.

Given the high rate of unemployment among graduates in Malaysia, there is a need to look at the delivery system of higher learning institutions in Malaysia.

Our institutions should not concentrate too much on paper qualification and spend more efforts in preparing their students to face the reality of what the job market is looking for -- the right technical skills, the right soft skills and the right attitude so that ultimately, graduates will land a job in the field that they studied.

According to Mckinsey′s study, 46 per cent of those who enrolled were convinced that they had made the right institutional choice or field of study.

This would mean that we have 54 per cent of mismatched graduates who will eventually job-hop from one company to another or may not find employment at all.

This is confirmed by McKinsey′s study that 25 per cent of graduates work in unrelated fields of study and would want to change positions quickly.

The percentage rose to 40 per cent in emerging markets.

Again, according to McKinsey′s study in terms of building skills, "60 per cent say that on-the-job training and hands-on learning are the most effective instructional techniques, but fewer than half of that percentage are enrolled in curricula that prioritise those techniques".