Final Essay

With the significant increase of university graduates being unemployed right after their convocation, are we still holding on to the narrative “Get into university so you’ll get a good job”?

Though many people do hold on to that narrative, there also a group of people emerging, claiming that getting a tertiary education is a waste of time and energy, and school drop-outs can sustain their life better. This leaves the high-schoolers to be confused, the first-year students to rethink their life choice, the ones halfway studying to hastily drop out, and the final-year students to panic.

There are no one to blame here. The unemployment rate in Malaysia had increased from the year 2007 to 2009, with the percentage of 3.2% to 3.7%. It is also found, from a census conducted in 2005 by National Economic Action Council with the collaboration of the Department of Human Manpower, that there are 59000 graduates and diploma holders being unemployed, while there are 30000 graduates working in unrelated fields with their higher educational qualifications (Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2011). According to Hanapi and Nordin (2014), even though the unemployment rate in Malaysia is relatively low compared to other countries in Europe, it is not an issue to be neglected, as graduates are human workforce that is crucial and is the core for high-income economy.

Thus, this essay will elaborate on the problem Malaysian graduates’ unemployment in the current time, and how it can be solved by graduates having clear career vision, identifying and adapting with the changes, and also bringing value and innovation to the workplace.

Unemployment itself brings many negative effects. On the personal level, unemployment can bring adverse effects on one’s health, especially on one’s mental health. The negative psychological effects of unemployment are found to be more impactful than some life-change events such as divorce (Clark & Oswald, 1994). Morshidi et al. (2004) once conducted a cross-section study on Malaysian graduates. The results showed that the mean scores of negative psychological attributes, such as being sad and feeling worried for unemployed graduates are higher than for employed graduates.

On the national level, nations lose their precious human resources. Without qualified human resources, a nation may become weak as the lack of human factor that can initiate new initiatives in socioeconomic activities (Asmawati, 2011). In macroeconomic framework, Okun’s Law is a well known relationship, which states that there is a negative relationship between unemployment rate and real GDP. So, high unemployment means that labour resources are not being efficiently used. Hence, full employment should be a major goal of any government because the output can be maximized (Noor, Nor & Ghani, 2007).

There are three causes of unemployment in the current time that will be discussed in this essay, together with the solutions, explained later. The first cause is the changing career landscape. New jobs emerge, old jobs start to be displaced by robots and artificial intelligence, and both employers and graduates are lagging in figuring out and navigating their actions due to this change.

The second cause is the graduates not having a clear career vision. Most graduates choose to pursue a tertiary education in the first place mainly because that is usually the mainstream path after completing secondary education. And especially due to the changes in the career landscape mentioned, where jobs are changing, graduates don’t really know what to do or what to aim after graduating.

The third cause is due to high competition: This is the current era where the supply of human labour is far higher than the demand of the workplace; there are a lot of competent and excellent graduates, competing to work for similar positions and same workforce. Employers are getting more selective, making it harder for a lot of competent and excellent graduates to secure their positions and get jobs. Because, in reality, job vacancies are increasing. However, these job vacancies are filled by only a part of the workers (The Department of Statistics Malaysia, 2011). So, unemployment issue in Malaysia does not happen because of the lack of job opportunities, but because these graduates lack what is needed to get and keep jobs (Gurcharan Singh & Garib Singh, 2008). Especially, many literatures support this, emphasizing that the low quality of the graduates and the lack of necessary skills possessed by graduates are the main factor of unemployment in Malaysia (Rahmah et.al, 2011; Gurcharan Singh & Garib Singh, 2008).

As for now, the solutions to the unemployment being popularized are emailing the perfect format, preparing the most attractive resume, improving interviewing skills, or to some extent, even faking interview answers. These do not solve unemployment as a whole, as they are only hacks in influencing the minds of the ones responsible in hiring future employees.

So, what do graduates need to get and keep jobs?

Firstly, graduates need to have clear career vision, which may comprise of, but not limited to, the position, the job, and ways to get onto the job. There is a strong correlation between not having a clear goal and the failure to actualize of the goal. A study conducted by Ramlee et al. (2008) found that nowadays graduates of have a minimum preparation in facing the globalization and k-economy era. Especially in the current time where specialization is prioritized, having one’s energy and resources focused on one particular goal, or at least few particular goals, will increase the likeliness of achieving that goal. In addition, the abundance of knowledge is a huge advantage in this current time, where one can simply conduct research and check the qualifications needed, the job scope involved and the mechanism of hiring. Regardless of that, not all graduates are able to construct a solid plan, and following the previous point, predicting things is not easy. However, if graduates do this, they will have a strong foundational plan to act upon, and can foresee risks and challenges ahead.

Secondly, employers, graduates and the education system need to adapt to the changes. Graduates need to have the knowledge of the skills and applications related or required, and familiarize themselves with them. If a graduate already have a career goal in his mind, the next thing for him to do is to follow, keep up and familiarize themselves with whatever is happening in the field or industry. In addition, the employers also need to follow, keep up and familiarize themselves with whatever changes that are happening in terms of recruiting employees. The curriculum being given towards graduates should also be able to adapt to the changes in the career landscape. This is supported by the interviewees in Hanapi and Nordin’s interview (2014). Being lecturer themselves they believe that the curriculum should be improved by making relationships with the industry and exposing graduates more to the real working environments, apart from other suggestions that were given. If graduates make the commitment to adapt to the changes, they are on the right track on updating themselves and ensuring that they are always employable. Employers and educators adapting to the changes ensuring that the industry is always propelling forward. But, it is undeniable that predicting and following along with the changes is not easy.

Finally, graduates need to bring value and contribution to the workplace. For a number of time, it’s been told that the most important employable attribute for graduates in the twenty-first century is soft skill. However, Nazron, Lim and Nga (2017) conducted a study towards the graduating students of Universiti Malaysia Sabah (UMS) in. The findings of the study suggest that there is no significant difference between the underlying distributions of soft skill attributes of the employed and unemployed graduates. The paper further explains, while these students most probably display high level of employability skills, it is possible that organisations are more willing to offer job or absorb graduates to their organisations especially when the graduates performed well during the training period. Thus, the program serves as a pathway for recruitment of human resources recruitment. Within the distribution of the graduates yet to be employed, 41.5% have undergone their industrial training at the government agencies. It shows here that, rather than the soft skills, the organizations used the training period to monitor what values and contributions do the students bring into the organization instead.

Value here refers to the intrinsic aspects, such as graduates’ work ethics, principles, interests, passion, and others related. In this era especially, they should not hesitate to show how intrinsically attached they are to the industry. In fact, soft skills are the result of the manifestations of these values. Meanwhile, contribution here refers to in what valuable ways graduates would contribute to the workplace. Small, repetitive ones are sufficient enough, as long as they are needed. But if they have big, unique perspective or solution to a problem haunting the industry or organization, graduates should showcase them as they are really needed. These two, if showcased properly, can secure not only the position of the job, but the suitable organization or working environment customized to the graduates as well. In addition, the graduates will intrinsically enjoy their jobs while providing real, valuable contribution to the industry. Despite the benefitting benefits, this needs awareness, and many people rather to focus on external aspects rather than internal aspects.

In conclusion, the factors that are currently contributing to unemployment in Malaysia is the changing career landscape, graduates not having a clear vision and high competition among job hunters. Thus, this essay had elaborated the solution to the factors, by them having clear career vision, identifying and adapting with the changes, and also bringing value and innovation to the workplace, respectively. These solutions focus on intrinsic aspects and what the graduates can control, instead of focusing on the external aspects that are constantly in change and graduates have little to no control over them. In addition, they are also relevant to the current time, where graduates do have what it takes to research on their future career prospects and the changes happening onto them, in addition of being faced with plenty of choices with the promotion of self-awareness increasing over time. It is not said that these solutions are invincible to weaknesses, but compared to other typical and popular solutions, they are more relevant and in one’s own control.

References

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Clark, E.A and J.A. Oswald. 1994. Unhappiness and unemployment. Economic Journal 104: 648-659.

Department of Statistics, Malaysia (2011). Statistics Labour Force. Ministry of Human Resources.

Gurcharan Singh, G. K., & Garib Singh, S. K. (2008). Malaysian graduates’ employability skills. UNITAR E-Journal, 4(1), 14-44.

Hanapi, Z., & Nordin, M. S. (2014). Unemployment among Malaysia Graduates: Graduates’ Attributes, Lecturers’ Competency and Quality of Education. Procedia - Social and Behavioral Sciences, 112, 1056-1063. doi:10.1016/j.sbspro.2014.01.1269

Morshidi Sirat, Abd. Aziz Buang, Abd Majid Mohd Isa, Ambigapathy Pandian, Moha Asri Abdullah, Mohamed Dahlan Ibrahim, Mohd Haflah Piei, Molly N.N. Lee, Munir Shuib, Rosni Bakar, Rujhan Mustafa, Shukran Abdul Rahman, Siti Zubaidah A. Hamid, Susie See Ching Mey and Wan Ahmad Kamil Mahmood. 2004. Masalah Pengangguran di Kalangan Siswazah. USM IPPTN Monograf 2/2004. Penang.

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Nazron, M. A., Lim, B., & Nga, J. L. (2017). Soft Skills Attributes and Graduate Employability: A Case in Universiti Malaysia Sabah. Malaysian Journal of Business and Economics (MJBE).

Noor, Z. M., Nor, N. M., & Ghani, J. (2007). The relationship between output and unemployment in Malaysia: Does Okun’s law exist. International Journal of Economics and Management, 1(3), 337-344.

Rahmah et, al (2011). Employer Perceptions on Graduates in Malaysian Services Sector. Medwell Journals, 5(3):184-193.