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Unemployment among Graduates: Study of

Employers Perception on GraduatesWei Sieng Lai

Faculty of Economics and Business, National University of Malaysia

43600, Bangi Selangor, Malaysia

Tel.:+60389214416, E-mail: lai_weisieng@yahoo.com

AbstractThis paper study on the issue of unemployment among graduates in Malaysia which is at a critical level. The aim of this

study is to discover the perception of employers in private sector on graduates in Malaysia and look for the qualities of a graduate

that an employer looking for. Besides, this paper also study the company needs for future graduates and suggest some measures that

universities should take into consideration in order to meet the needs of employers.

KeywordsUnemployment, graduates, perception, employer.

I. INTRODUCTIONThe unemployment rate in Malaysia is in a quite smallfigure. According to statistics released by Department of

Statistics Malaysia, the unemployment up to May 2010 was

3.3 per cents representing 385800 persons. The percentage is

small but the number is big. Thus the number of unemployed

workforce in Malaysia is still at critical state.

Among this unemployed workforce, our interest is the

unemployed graduates in this country. According to a report

released by Ministry of Higher Education on the statistics of

employment among graduates in 2009, out of 155278graduates, 45% are employed, 18.4% further their studies,

2.2% improving their skills, 7.6% waiting for job placement

and 26.7% are unemployed. The numbers of unemployed

graduates are 42514 persons. The statistics are as shownbelow:

TABLEIRESPONDENTS EMPLOYMENTSTATUS,GRADUATESOF2009

Employment status Total

Numbers %

Employed 69,959 45.1

Further studies 28,586 18.4

Improving skills 3,434 2.2

Waiting for job placement 11,785 7.6

Unemployed 41,514 26.7

Total 155,278 100

TABLE II

RESPONDENTS EMPLOYMENTSTATUSACCORDINGTOFIELDOF

STUDIES,GRADUATESOF2009

Field Employment Status

Employed Unemployed

Numbers % Numbers %

Literature and

Social Sciences

28,779 43.5 19,035 28.8

Science 8,260 44.1 5,398 28.8

Technical 20,154 45.5 13,252 29.9

Information and

CommunicationTechnology

5,468 47.5 3,147 26.5

Education 7,118 50.3 682 4.8

TABLE III

RESPONDENTS EMPLOYMENTSTATUSACCORDINGTOLEVELOF

STUDIES,GRADUATESOF2009

Level Employment Status

Employed Unemployed

Numbers % Numbers %

Ph.D 443 95.3 13 2.8

Master 5,842 86.6 553 8.2

Graduate Diploma 1,333 91.3 33 2.3

Degree 38,191 49.2 22,640 29.2

Further Diploma 563 40.8 457 33.1

Diploma 16,753 31.6 11,942 22.6

Certificate 6,787 47.0 5,860 40.6

Professional 47 25.1 16 8.6

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TABLEIVWORKINGSECTORSOFGRADUATES,GRADUATESOF2009

Sector Total

Numbers %

Government 20,389 29.1

Statutory Bodies 3,141 4.5

Multinational (Foreign) 8,507 12.2

Local Private 30,290 43.3

Self Business 3,553 5.1Others 888 1.3

GLC 2,107 3.0

NGO 1,084 1.5

Total 69,959 100

From the tables we can see that numbers of unemployedgraduates are high. Percentage of unemployment among

graduates from fields of Literature and Social Science,

Science, Technical and Information and Communication

Technology are almost identical.

II. LITERATURE REVIEWAccording to a research done by National Higher Education

Research Institute (IPPTN) on February 2003, the reasons

why graduates unable to get a job are:1. Graduates are weak in command of English language

and communication skill in this language

2. Graduates have difficulty in communication and

interpersonal relationship.

3. Graduates are not proactive and have no initiative and

having difficulty in completing a task alone.

4. Graduates having attitudes problem, too choosy in jobs,

cant work as a team, not willing to learn, selfish and demand

for high salary.

Some qualities and skills employer need from graduates are:

1. Graduates field of study match the requirement of the

job.

2. Able to adapt themselves to the environment at work

and easy to be trained to meet the needs of industry and

company.

3. Able to communicate in English besides having goodresult in academic.

4. Possess general knowledge and public and social

awareness.

5. Possess leadership skill and able to coordinate.

6. Proactive and initiative.7. Able to work as a team.

8. Possess skills in ICT

Suggestions from employers for Institute of Higher

Education are:

1. Students should be given freedom to choose course that

they want.2. Students should be encouraged to interact with other

races to get more exposures on careers.

3. Examination-oriented should be reduced to produce

open-minded graduates.

4. Institutes of higher education should put more efforts

on producing graduates with multi skills

5. More attention should be given to mathematics and ICT.6. Relationship between universities and industries should

be enhanced for benefits of both parties.

7. Lecturers should have experiences in industry.8. Employers should be involved in designing materials of

the courses in institutes of higher education.

There is also a statistic released by Ministry of Higher

Education on the reasons of unemployment among graduates

in 2009.

TABLE V

REASONSOFUNEMPLOYMENTAMONGGRADUATESOF2009

Reason Total

Numbers %

Looking for jobs 29,807 71.8

Jobs offered not suitable 915 2.2

Responsibility on family 835 2.0

Not confident to enter jobmarket

30,290 43.3

Chose to not working 179 0.4

Not interested to work 164 0.4

Want to rest 1,189 2.9

Health problems 171 0.4

Further studies 6,923 16.7

Others 1,060 2.6

Total 41,514 100

From the statistics, it is obvious that majority of the

unemployed graduates are looking for jobs but couldnt get

one. Thus the issue arise here is the factors leading to the

decrease in demand for these graduates.

The general consensus among employers indicates that the

main problem with graduates is they lack of the soft skills

[1]. Employers nowadays are looking for graduates whose not

only equipped with specific knowledge and skills but also

possess the ability to be proactive enough in respond to

problems. Employers in Malaysia are seeking for graduateswith good achievement in academic and at the same time

possessing soft skills such as interpersonal skills,

communication skills, problem solving skills, flexible and

proper attitude [1].

There were few surveys conducted by organizations such as

Multimedia Development Corporation Malaysia andJobStreet.com (2005). The results showed that the weaknesses

of graduates are communication skills, command of English

language, bad social etiquette, demand too much pay, degrees

not relevant and too choosy. Thus it can be concluded that

graduates are unemployed because most of them lack of soft

skills.The aim of this research is to study the employers

perception on graduates performance and employers needs

for future graduates.

III. RESEARCH OBJECTIVES

The main objectives of this research are:

a. To study the perceptions of employers on graduates

performance.

b. To identify employers needs for future graduates.

c. To study the employers evaluation on universitygraduates.

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VI. METHODOLOGY AND RESEARCH DESIGN

The primary data was collected by distributing survey forms

to employers in Selangor and Perak. The number of

respondents was 50.

The performance of graduates that were surveyed was as

follows:

Enpowering Field of Specialization Interpersonal and Communication Decision Making and Problem Solving Skill of ICT Leadership Team Player Work Planning Thinking Skill Value and Ethic Other Skill Language Proficiency

A five point Likert scale was employed and the respondents

were required to state the extent to which they strongly agreedby giving a score of 5 or giving score of 1 for strongly

disagreed with the statements in the survey form. The survey

forms was personally distributed to respondents and short

interview were conducted at the same time.

VII. FINDINGS

The respondents of this research are at manager levelincluding Human Resource Manager, Sales Manager,

Development manager and Production Manager. Most of them

possess more than 10 years of working experience in private

sector.

According to the perception of employers on graduatesperformance, graduates scored average on qualities as below:

1.Clear understanding in their field of study.

2.Able to apply their knowledge.

3.Able to adapt their knowledge with job requirement.

4.Able to adapt their field of study to current need and

changes required.

5.Able to give proper and clear direction6.Good command in communication in English (both

writing and oral).

7.Good command in communication in Bahasa Melayu

(both writing and oral).

8.Confident in conveying information

9.Able to give opinion clearly and convince others.10.Gather the complete information before making a

decision.

11.Consider other alternatives before making a decision.

12.Anticipate potential problem in the future.

13.Responsible upon action and decision that have beenmade.

14.Able to seek relevant information through the internet.

15.Good at word processing such as Microsoft Word.

16.Good at data processing such as Microsoft Excel.

17.Able to present information using audio visual such as

Power Point.18.Give encouragement to the employees and colleagues.

19.Encourage cooperation spirit within organization

20.Distribute work task well to employees.

21.Able to lead new ideas and practises.22.Encourage cooperation within the organization.

23.Ensure goals of team work is clear and directional.

24.Give good ideas to the team work.

25.Contribute personal expertise to the team work.

26.Construct work target plan.

27.Evaluate achievements of work target.

28.Arrange priority on work activity/task.29.Improve achievement of work target.

30.Propose new idea.

31.Make improvement and innovation in jobs.

32.Being responsive in giving ideas and new solutions.33.Search for alternatives to improve organizational

performance.

34.High control on own self mentally and physically.

35.Persistance and hardworking.

36.Obeying rules and regulations.

37.Being punctual.38.Present ideas/reports.

39.Analitical thinking.

40.Critical thinking.

41.Innovationand computer literate.

These results show that employers perception ongraduates performance are not at the terrible level. Thus we

can say that graduates are not having serious problems in

possessing those qualities listed.

On employers evaluation on university graduates, majority

of the respondents disagree that current graduates are more

trained compared to five years ago. Besides, most of the

respondents disagree that new appointed graduate ready to

work without guidance. From here we can say that on

employers point of view, graduates nowadays are not well

trained to be ready to work during their 3 or 4 years time at

university.Furthermore, majority of the respondents agree that the

training period needs for new appointed graduates are 3 to 6

months. This indicates that most of the graduates require more

than 3 months for training.

In the organization needs for future graduates, below are the

criterions which are rated as important:1.Field of study.

2.Communication skill.

3.English language proficiency.

4.Thinking Skill.

5.Decision making and problem solving skill

6.ICT skill.7.Team player.

8.Work planning.

9.Value and ethic.

10.Self-confident.

11.Characteristic and attitude.

12.Leadership.

13.Personality.

14.Work experience.

The criterions which are less important are as below:

1.Intelligence and public knowledge.

2.Degree from oversea.3.Malay language proficiency.

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4.Good academic qualification. (CGPA: 3 and above)

5.Graduatess network/associations.

Also from the survey, there are some suggestions from

employers:

1.Graduates should have a good attitude and willing to

work hard such as working under pressure, willing to

work long hours and responsible.

2.Graduates must love what they are studying when theyare still studying. They should have strong foundation of

some technologies database knowledge. Besides that, the

communication skill and working attitude are equally

essential.3.Graduates must be able to communicate their ideas to

co-workers and expose themselves to alternatives and

enrich their experience with various resources by

adopting new technologies.

VIII. DISCUSSION OF MAJOR FINDINGS

The major finding of this research is that employers are

looking for graduates with good soft skills. It is not the

matter of academic results that causes the unemployment

among graduates. Besides, employers perceptions on

graduates, especially local graduates are quite satisfying.However, the results also shows that graduates are still unable

to achieve excellent level in term of the soft skills required.

Another major finding is the important of good command in

English language especially in private sectors. Last but not

least, lack training is also one of the weakness among

university graduates.

VIIII. SUGGESTION FOR INSTITUTE OF HIGHER

EDUCATION

Institute of higher education should build a long termrelationship with employers in order to get the information on

employers needs on graduates. Besides, employers can also

be invited as consultant in designing materials of courses in

university.

Furthermore, the institute should also put more effort on

designing ways that can improve all the soft skills neededamong graduates. Technical skills especially knowledge in

ICT is essential for graduates from all fields of study and they

should be exposed with sufficient knowledge on ICT.

Industry training is also another important ways to improve

the qualities among graduates since working experience and

training are also important for employer. The current industrytraining program should be revised to make it more effective.

X. CONCLUSION

The cooperation between institute of higher education and

employers is the key for solving the issue of unemployment

among graduates. Universities and industry should not be

separated in this issue. Institute of higher education play a

very important role in producing good quality workforce for

industry while industry make full use of these products to

become more competitive in the local and foreign market. As

a result of this close relationship between the institute and

employers, the unemployment rate among graduates can be

reduced and our economy will be better.

References

[1] Gurvinder Kaur Gurcharan Singh, and Sharan Kaur Garib Singh,Malaysian Graduates Employability Skills UNITAR E-JOURNAL,vol. 4, no.1, Jan. 2008.

[2] (2010) The Department of Statistics Malaysia website. [Online].Available: http://www.mohe.gov.my/web_statistik/satistik_2009.

[3] National Higher Education Research Institute, Research onUnemployment Among Graduates, Feb. 2003.

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