Photo via StudyMalaysia

There’s no telling when Malaysia will be out of the woods as we continue to brave through our third COVID-19 wave, especially with so many Malaysians having lost their jobs amid the pandemic, and are finding a hard time to find work elsewhere.

Having said that, what does this mean for fresh graduates who are looking to start working next year?

Well, a recent survey from award-winning recruitment, market research, education and employer branding company, Talentbank has painted a brighter future for students coming out into the working world in 2021.

The “Employers’ Top University Choice” survey, conducted among 196 local organisations, revealed that a whopping 73.41 percent of respondents intend to hire fresh graduates from private and public universities in Malaysia next year (2021), while a total of 76.3 percent of respondents were optimistic they would be hiring fresh graduates in 2022.

“This is indeed good news in this period of volatility and uncertainty brought about by the ongoing Covid-19 pandemic which has caused many companies to cut operating costs by reducing manpower in order to get past this crisis,” said Talentbank Chief Executive Officer, Ben Ho.

The survey results revealed promising job prospects for fresh graduates with backgrounds in these fields; Accounting, Business Management, Marketing, Computing and Information Technology, Human Resource Management, Mechanical Engineering, Electronics and Electrical Engineering, Mass Communications, Banking and Economics.

Monthly salaries offered to fresh graduates from all fields average between RM2,501 and RM3,000, while internship allowances average RM1,000 monthly.

“We asked employers if they placed a greater emphasis on attitude or academic results when hiring fresh graduates and the responses came as no surprise. A majority of 91.91 percent of the respondents chose good attitude over academic results while the remaining 8.09 percent stressed on academic results over good attitude,” added Ho.

He also pointed out that these results point to a growing demand for talents who are versatile, able to pick up new skills and take on new responsibilities thrown at them.

Finally, the survey found that the 10 most important recruitment metrics that leading employers used when hiring fresh university graduates were career readiness, extra-curricular activities, university reputation, recruitment processes, Cumulative Grade Point Average (CGPA), salary range, time to hire, cost to course applications, employee retention and students’ international exposure.

Hey, at least we’ve got some hopeful news going into 2021!

Source: Syok