By YS Chan

After reading a letter regarding the struggles of fresh graduates, I am prompted to offer an insight which may help those in such predicaments.

Many people may be aware of the gap between education and industry but few realise that it can be a wide chasm, especially for students with no inkling of what is required at work.

While work in manual jobs may be evident, work in the office is not quite so as productivity cannot be measured by the hours spent behind the desk.

There may be no correlation between what one has studied and what is required at the work place.

As such, general degrees can be of little value or can even work against weak graduates, many of whom remain unemployed or underemployed.

Many school leavers continue to study just because they do not need to work. Tertiary education can certainly help in a student’s development, but it does not mean that those who have it are better than those without.

Career success is determined by continuous learning and not by virtue of having attended college or university, as what was taught there may not be applicable at work, which requires industry, relevant knowledge and skills.

A school leaver with good SPM results, who has had to start working, usually performs better than graduates in many situations.

The former is willing to work hard and learn fast to prove himself, whereas the latter is more interested in being paid enough to cope with the high cost of living and repayment of study loans.

As such, bright school leavers are in high demand to start off as junior staff. Many carve successful careers by developing their full potential while many graduates are rolling stones who do not stop at a particular industry to develop their careers.

In fact, many graduates with general degrees apply for all kinds of jobs without knowing what they can contribute. They studied to get a degree but did not learn to perform well at a job.

On the other hand, students who know where their passion or at least interest lies pursue relevant professional programmes such as in medicine, accountancy, engineering or law. They are likely to succeed even if they choose a different career.

I have spoken to many undergraduates and fresh graduates while driving a taxi from 2000 to 2010.

I usually ask them which local public university they were attending, and from their replies, I could often tell straightaway that they were from a local public university.

I was no ordinary taxi driver as during that period, I set up a car rental business as general manager, ran a tourism training school as principal, and set up a golf tour company as general manager.

Since the early 1980s, I have interviewed thousands of job applicants and recruited hundreds of staff. I preferred graduates but not once did I bother to look at their certificates.

In the 1980s when jobs were scarce, walk-in interviews were the norm but I would clear a long line of applicants in no time at all.

Interviews were over in a minute if the candidate communicated poorly or displayed undesirable body language.

Good staff were easy to find up until the early 1990s, but the quality started to deteriorate and grew worse in the new millennium.

Ironically, many job applicants were graduates but weaker than the typical SPM holder of the 1980s.

I studied up to Form 5 and obtained a third grade Malaysian Certificate of Education, but I can speak and deliver commentaries in English without training, better than trained tourist guides of today. I should know as I was a tourist guide examiner for a decade.

As to staff recruitment, there are no right or wrong criteria for selection as it is the prerogative of the organisation or interviewer. I have used the same set of criteria for over three decades.

Many people think the five most important criteria are academic qualification, job experience, general knowledge, communication skills and character.

Many undergraduates and graduates were shocked when I told them my priorities were in the reverse order.

I gave 60% weightage to character and attitude, which grew sorely lacking as personal development was not given due importance in our education system.

Rote-learning was used for moral and religious studies. Students could recite the Rukun Negara but few practised the fifth tenet, which is good behaviour or courtesy, as their knowledge was superficial.

I normally asked the simplest questions which most Malaysians have difficulty answering well.

For example, I usually asked those with a diploma or degree in tourism to tell me what tourism was. Nearly all gave vague answers even though they had studied the subject for a few years.

I was less interested in getting the correct answer than I was in their reaction to a challenging situation.

It was the same when I asked them to describe the work their parents did as job titles and responsibilities were not the same.

I gave the highest marks to those who were honest and admitted they did not know and felt it was time to find out by talking to their parents.

Many could not answer and were controlling their anger, while others put on fake smiles. Needless to say, they did not pass my character test.

The second criterion was interpersonal communication skills, which was limited to speaking during job interviews. English was the lingua franca in the private sector and not much of an issue until the mid-1990s.

Today, many graduates and job applicants not only speak broken English but also broken Bahasa Malaysia, no thanks to the daily practice of using chopped up language for the short messaging service when using handphones.

Communication is more than active usage of social media. It starts with communicating within ourselves, by thinking deeply, which can be rare for many.

We then communicate with others not just information but also our feelings.

The fact that misunderstandings are common and many people get angry for nothing shows that we are poor in communication and character.

These two criteria have a weightage of over 80% combined.

Next comes general knowledge, which cannot be picked up overnight or from watching entertainment shows or reading fashion magazines.

Fresh graduates should spend a few months travelling with a backpack, if possible overseas and alone.

But many prefer the comfort of a tiny circle of friends, just as they had done in schools and universities. They need to be exposed to the real world and graduate from the University of Life.

Many graduates complain that if they are not offered jobs, they will not gain the experience that employers look for. Mediocre graduates will remain in this Catch 22 situation for a long time.

I got my first three jobs by applying for them without waiting for a vacancy to open. My focus was work in the service centres of motor companies and I was accepted by Champion Motors, Federal Auto and Tan Chong, with higher pay each time.

After that, I kept receiving invitations to join companies, including the seven travel, tour, training and car rental companies I set up from 1992 to 2008.

As I was well-versed in these businesses, I always hired staff without experience. I spent a lot of time training them and after two years, I would leave and let them run the companies.

I have interviewed very experienced applicants and discovered that those in the same job for 20 years may only have one month’s experience, repeated 240 times.

Lastly, graduates were shocked when they found that I gave the least importance to academic qualifications.

YS Chan is an FMT reader from Kuala Lumpur.

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