The four strategies revolve around reinforcing talent, expanding careers of graduates, enhancing teaching and learning, and strengthening industry ties.

In launching the Graduate Employability Strategic Plan, minister Noraini Ahmad said it was based on a “quadruple helix” framework involving the graduates and academics, industry experts, government as well as the community.

“The plan focuses on strengthening the collaboration in academic development and employability of graduates by all interested parties.

“Enhancing innovation and technology in teaching and learning is also given special focus,” she said when launching the plan online this evening.

The ministry also signed memoranda of understanding with two agencies under the human resources ministry, namely the Social Security Organisation (Socso) and TalentCorp, to help address issues linked to the employability of graduates.

Noraini said Socso would provide graduates access to national employment portal MYFutureJobs and job-related data to help higher learning institutions plan more accurately.

TalentCorp, meanwhile, is offering its Nurturing Expert Talent module to help with career profiling.

This way, graduates would be able to determine the career they want after completing their studies, she said.

“And, more importantly, they will be able to identify the skills needed to succeed in their careers.”

Noraini also announced a strategic partnership between her ministry, Universiti Utara Malaysia, the Companies Commission of Malaysia and the Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) to develop a job matching module called JobMatching@GREaT.

GREaT (Graduates Reference Hub for Employment and Training) is a one-stop portal to help graduates seek information pertaining to training and employment.

The module, Noraini explained, has the ability to match the employment criteria required by an industry with that of the students.

“So there is no need for graduates to apply to fill a vacancy as they would be automatically matched. This module is meant to complement existing job-related portals.”