Fresh Graduate Employment in Malaysia

According to the 2011 Graduate Tracking Study of the Higher Education Ministry said that they are about 40,000 graduates in the country are still unemployed. The percentage of graduates which are still unemployed was 21 per cent from the public institutions of higher learning, 27 per cent from private intuitions. In addition, The Human Resource Ministry of Malaysia said that there are many graduates are good only in theory and many fresh graduates were unable to meet the expectations of the corporate sector. The concept of employability is general mean that employability refers to a wide range of attributes and competencies that enable the jobs seekers to gain and maintain employment such as, but not limited to the communication skills, logical, analytical and problem solving skills, personality, confidence and integrity, innovation and creativity, flexibility and adaptability and team spirit. Employability skills are not job specific, but are skills which cut involve with all industries and all jobs from entry level to chief executive officer (Sherer and Eadie, 1987). Recently, employer find out that there are a lot of graduates leave universities without the skills, attitude and understanding, all of that are necessary to successfully enter the world of works.
One of the factors that causes the current graduates are unable to meet the employers’ expectations is most of the graduates are lacking of soft skills. As can be seen, in Malaysia many graduates that with the excellent degrees cannot get a good job at a popular or highly reputable company. This is because most graduates are lack of soft skills which are required from the employers. From these, the soft skills are very necessary for graduate jobs in the future. In addition, employers believe that universities and colleges have placed too much emphasis on academic achievement compared to the soft skills. Academic qualifications are essential, but the attitudes of graduates are equally, if not more,