Malaysia's unemployed graduates

A student that has just finished their study in college or universities is called fresh graduates. These fresh graduates students need a fixed job in order to survive in this world which has problems in economy, political issue and many more. In Malaysia, this fresh graduate has to face some obstacle before they are employed by a company or get a stable job. According to Balakrishnan (2018), the youth unemployment rate in Malaysia is three times higher than the national unemployment rate.

This statement really prove that this fresh graduates hard to get a job after they finished graduated. Every year, over 290,000 students graduate from institutions of higher learning. Unfortunately, 1 out of 5 graduates remain unemployed, with the majority being degree holders. These graduates make up 55% of those who are unemployed (Leo, 2019). This unemployment is a negative issue that can occur across the country. This current issue is one of the controversial political problems and also a hardship on people living through it.

If no one takes any action about this issue, significant long-term negative effects will result.

As we can see, the number of graduates continues to rise every year, in the midst of unstable economy, hence this will be a tough competition for all the students. Leo (2019) claims that being a university graduate no longer guarantees you a job. It is clear that Malaysian mentality believes that when they send their kids to universities, they will have higher hopes and opportunity that they will graduate and receive high-paying jobs. Therefore, we need to set back our mind that not all company in Malaysia will accept a fresh graduate student.

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These thoughts can motivate us in order to survive in this world that full of obstacles. We believe that Malaysian fresh graduates are hard to get a job due to low skill level, not enough exposure to the world of work and lack of appropriate career guidance.

Firstly, a lot of fresh graduate students from Malaysia have insufficient skills when they finished and leaving their universities. This is because they are still new to this world of work and still need to learn new things in order to get a job. Soft skills include analytical thinking, communication skills and leadership. Aziz (2018) states that the reasons for unemployed graduates are low proficiency in the English language and lack of soft skills such as creativity, communication and critical thinking. For instance, we can see in Malaysia many current graduates with excellent degrees or 4.0 cgpa cannot afford a good and stable job at popular company. This is due to they are lack of soft skills and does not meet employers expectations. Palko (2018) also proposes that dealing with employees that are unable to meet expectations is the challenges that managers often encounter.

Hence, students should take an action to fix these problems. In order to get a job, graduates should think outside the box which means think differently and that will make you unique and can attract the employers attention. According to Bortz (n.d.), Research from the Society for Human Resource Management found that employers actually care more about soft skills than they do technical abilities like reading comprehension and mathematics. We must know that employers are more excited and interested when the employees know how to communicate with their peers. Soft skills such as communication skills will absolutely boost your performance in interview sessions because it will help the graduates to deliver excellent work. We need to highlights that straight As and a high grade point average(gpa) does not guarantee the graduates employment. This proves that soft skills are really important in gaining a job.

Furthermore, fresh graduates hard to earn a job due to lack of exposure to the real world of work which means they lack of working experience. According to UCASs research (2017), among two third of employers are looking for graduates with real work experience in order to help the company to prepare for work and create a general understanding of business. Nowadays in Malaysia, we can see that many students that graduates with exemplary degree cannot get a right job at a highly reputable company. Frierson (2016) indicates that graduates student who does not have any work experience might think that they do not deserve to compete with graduates who do. This is because every company when they interview candidates, they require that graduates have experience in a work place.

Shephanie Kuan who is Malaysian millennial discovered that a fresh graduates with university degree alone is not deserve to land them a job, in fact experience, prospective employers are matters as well (Leong, 2019). Students must be wondering on how to write a resume without any working experience, How Do Fresh Graduates Get a Job Without Experience (2018) mention that we can promote ourselves by highlight our academic achievements and describe to the interviewer that you can contribute to a big project. Next, this problems also can be fixed by graduates should complete an internship of your courses that you learnt in college. Next, students also can search for a part time jobs because this will provide and develop working experience at the application and interview stage. Even so, we must remember that the job market will expand day by day and new jobs will require a variety of skills sets. Hence, to gain the skills and working experience, we must take up internship. Internship are available in many courses and sector. Examples of internship sectors are engineering, business, hospitality and marketing. When take up an internship, we will gain more career-specific skills and knowledge. Leong (2019) claims that employers of a company prefer degree holders and they want someone with at least two years work experience as well. This working experience is very important because it helps them prepare for work and develop general business awareness. Furthermore, working experience also will helps a company to save up their time to teach or train a new employee from a fresh graduate students. Therefore, fresh graduates are struggling to find jobs due to lack of working experience.

Lastly, high rate of unemployment among fresh graduates in Malaysia is due to lack of appropriate career guidance. In such a way, they become too selective in choosing a job. They demand high salary and require a comfortable office environment. Balakrishnan (2018) state that JobStreet had highlighting the problems within the fresh graduate in Malaysia and the first problems is unrealistic salary expectations. Why is this thing happening? This is because these current graduates are too confident they will guarantee to have a flexible job due to their education level. In Young and jobless in Malaysia, (2018) a young person often lacks both labor market information and job search experience. Therefore, they need to learn and be well prepared to enter this world of work. According to Leong (2019), Malaysian fresh graduates which is two-thirds of them took part in a 2017 JobStreet survey had asked for unrealistic salary demands between RM2,400 and RM3,000 a month. For me, with fresh graduates with degree requirements and not enough working experience, employer would not have any interest to accept this kind of worker to work in their company. We have to take note that most of the employers would not have the budget to pay that much salary for a fresh graduate. The employer will have problems whether to hire this current graduates with such unrealistic salary then it will be unfair for the current worker or the current graduate will not work for a long term if the salary is below expectation. Hence, when finished study in universities, students should find out more or do a research from reliable sources about the company background before interview. Then, graduates also can visit job fairs and exhibitions or any career fairs that available in order to know about popular companies that exist in Malaysia. Thus, this shows that fresh graduates should have proper career guidance.

To sum up, we have to remind that this degree that we choose to study does not determine our entire future yet. Even so, degree will prepare you with right knowledge that are related to your field. To having a high grade percentage average also is a good start to be called for an interview. Next, with high academic results also can create better first impressions for the interviewer to interview the fresh graduate students. Thus, by achieving an excellent result in your degree are important for student. Nevertheless, fresh graduate need to realize that to have a flexible job, it requires more than just straight As and fresh graduates with a 4.0 grade percentage average. Last but not least, the government has to take an action in accepting these fresh graduates in order for them to have experience in working in a large company. In fact, the company should do training to a large number of fresh graduates students and also give an allowance to them so that they are interested in working at that company. This is because they are a lot of jobless in Malaysia is from fresh graduates students because they do not get the chance to work. According to Dass (2018), At the tertiary level, Malaysian bachelor degree holders recorded the highest unemployment rate at around 28% in 2015. This is because, this fresh graduates will be facing a financial crisis when they grow older.