Thursday September 11, 2014
United in discussing graduate employability. Left to right: Chan Suit Fong, AirAsia Global Shared Services Sdn Bhd CEO; Devalaxhmana Param, HP Global Centre, Country HR Director, Malaysia, Indonesia & AEC; Venkkat Ramanan, Head of SEA, CIMA; Johan Mahmood Merican, TalentCorp CEO; Dr. Arham Director, Industry Relations Division, Ministry of Education; Muhammad Imran Kunalan Abdullah, General Manager, MDeC; Shankar Nagalingam, APAC HR Lead, IHS; Michelle Ann-Iking, Senior Organisation Development Manager, Citibank Berhad.
The graduate pool in Malaysia lacks skills that employers need, leading to employability issues in the country.
In Malaysia, nearly a third of those unemployed last year had a tertiary education, according to the Labour Force Survey Report Malaysia (2013).
In a recent series of roundtables organised by Chartered Institute of Management Accountants (CIMA) in partnership with Talent Corporation Malaysia Berhad (TalentCorp), and supported by Multimedia Development Corporation (MDec) in Kuala Lumpur, leaders from government-linked and private companies alike came together to express a wide range of concerns about the capabilities of young workers.
Recently, CIMA and TalentCorp released a report entitled Ready for Business: Bridging the Employability Gap. The Malaysian perspective. The report mentions that these skills that graduates lacked in particular were leadership, influencing, people-management, critical thinking and problem-solving skills.
To help bridge the employability gap, CIMA and TalentCorp have initiated a new CIMA-TalentCorp employability programme targeted at year one university students to develop additional skills desired by employers and enhance the students’ employability when they graduate.
TalentCorp CEO Johan Mahmood Merican said that efforts such as these are important to achieve the goal of Malaysia becoming a high income economy by year 2020.
“Employability is an issue keeping company directors awake at night. CIMA is urgently working with businesses and policy makers globally to provide companies with effective solutions,” said CIMA CEO Charles Tilley.
Charles added that CIMA’s certification is key to achieving the Chartered Global Management Accountant (CGMA) designation, which enables professionals to become powerful decision-makers.