Necessary Skills help Student To Be Employable

By: Nurulaiman Nadhirah Kassim

All graduate students target to get a job after they had finish study. Sometime they are only focusing on achievement in academic without think what the employers outside need from this student to hire them as a future employee.

“Those day, ‘teruk-teruk pun orang ambil’ (employers will even take bad workers). Some of graduate set in their mind these words frequently. They are not realize that now days, employer can be choosy. Malaysian graduates lack attributes that make them employable. “This has to do with the growth of the country’s economy. As well as that of the world. All that is beyond us but what matters is that regardless of the economic situation, our universities have to produce students of certain attributes,” said Higher Education director general Prof Datuk Dr Radin Umar Radin Sohadi. This statement I picked up from News Sunday Times, article wrote by Sonia Ramachandran.

To help those student. Higher Education Ministry drawn up an instrument called Generic Student attributes (GSA) to mention the problem of unemployable graduate. There are nine basic requirement addressed under GSA. There are knowledge of profession, competency, communication skill, critical thinking and problem solving, team skill, entrepreneurship, ethic, ICT and positive outlook of life toward lifelong learning. One and two elements are not a big problem but the other seven elements are major concern.

Knowledge of the profession and competency in doing a job should mastered by graduate people. The meaning of knowledge of the profession and competency is engineer who can not analyze engineering problems and translate that into an efficient design are lousy engineers. Employers do not want that kind of employee. Graduate people who can do a multiple task can be an extra point to get a job.

Communication skill divided to two parts, verbal and nonverbal. Student needed this skill in order to get a job. It is not only how you talk to others, but how to be a good listener. It is also part of communication skill that graduates can improve the abilities of presentation. In communication, the best way is to use is two ways communication which is the listener also give a feedback and talk. Body Language and eye contact is needed to make sure the other give a concentration to you.

According to Dr Radin, student should have an ability to be a critical thinker and problem solve. In a real world, people do not work alone, especially in the company and organization, team work is the most important thing to ensure everything done. “You need your friends to make thing happen”.

Now, Malaysian wants to become a high-income economy base on innovation said Dr Radin, Entrepreneurship skill is an important requirement that employers in Malaysia wants. In our life, we have an ethical that we need to apply it. Even for our self, we must have an ethic. Same like a daily job, ethical is needed to make every progressing work going smoothly.

On lifelong learning, Dr Radin said students must know how to acquire skill to move on. Good academic achievement is not enough to be an employable. Language skills also can be a necessary requirement. In News Sunday Times on January, 10, 2010, the article under title Opinin had state that our students nowadays lack of language skills. “Whether a student studies Science and Mathematics in English or Bahasa Malaysia, in the larger world, fluency in English is a must. And mandarin is fast becoming an additional tool that separates the wheat from the chaff”. To achieve this all requirements students must learn and apply it in a daily life.