Job seekers must be ready to adjust to changing environment

Our human resource development program must be tailored to produce people who can perform to the peak of their efficiency in their jobs primarily to meet the demands of the both the domestic and global markets. The State, the country as whole, cannot afford to have people with the attitude to work as they like or just follow what other people are doing. 

The program must also help to enlighten job seekers, including degree and diploma holders, to approach their jobs with open mind and preparedness to adjust to work environment. After all Darwin did not say the strongest should survive nor did he say only the cleverest and the strongest among the fittest would survive.  What he wrote was only those that could adapt to change should survive or the ones that can adapt to changes are the ones that will survive.

In the modern economic settings, workers have to work in the environment of change. Therefore, it will do us well to remember something that Darwin wrote 700 years ago. Basically job seekers or workers must be able to adapt to changes, which form prominent features of development in the state and country. The general thing there is always present in the development of Sarawak is change, which necessitates job seekers to develop the ability to adapt to change. Preferably, they must develop such qualities before they actually go to the work places.  

Obviously, one of the most conspicuous things about Malaysia, with the drive to make the private sector to become the new engine of growth, is the rapidly expanding export sector of the economy. The state has to depend on the ability to find market at the international level in what ever industry it undertakes to do. The domestic market is still too small for the fast developing economy. 

As the manufacturing industries gear toward the world market, the State must  begin to play the same role as Germany, USA and other most advanced trading nations of the world.  However, it must equip local workers with relevant knowledge and skills to exploit the potentials of the world market. The State must increase the capacity and capability to produce goods and services not only to meet the need and demand of domestic market but globally. In other words, the goods and services must be able to compete in the world market.

Obviously, which ever way the State looks at job opportunities, one thing is certain, jobs availability will be determined by the world market. In this respect, though training remains an important factor of employability, it is increasingly being calibrated by skills to ensure job seekers can face the challenge of competing in the world market.

However, as the country becomes more prosperous, there is a tendency among the people to take things easier. Some people think that they do not have to worry as they are sure to get job once they leave colleges or universities. Nevertheless, job requirements will be more exacting or objective – oriented.  Of course, things can be made easier by having more focused procedures to impart knowledge to children, greater improvement in the information industry and the ability to marshal all other techniques to pass knowledge to potential job seekers. They may not be difficult to do. But what ever young people learn in the institutions of higher learning are insufficient for them to do their jobs well in the market.

Therefore, job seekers must acquaint themselves with skills that can help them to make full use of their basic qualifications to do their jobs well.  In certain areas, job seekers also need to develop soft skills like the ability to get along with their core workers and the discipline to tap the brain of their superiors as a way to improve performances. In this respect, they must be prepared to swallow some of the big feelings that as graduates they know all.

The State government has been getting a lot of feedback on the necessity for fresh graduates to acquire knowledge and skill on how to pick the right jobs in the market. Admittedly, human resource development program through educational institutions, as indicated by Human resources survey, is quite general. 

Secondly, efforts have to be made to study ways and means how the State can take full advantage of the widespread use of computer in the world.  Besides, necessary steps must be taken to minimize the problem of a general mismatch between what the State produces in schools and what the job market can offer. Admittedly, the analysis on problems being faced by job seekers, who include degree and diploma holders, indicates there is a general mismatch between the education system and the requirements of the job market.

Hence, efforts must be made to rectify the problem, though not easy to do so, to avoid creating bigger problems for the new generation. Admittedly, human resource development program through educational institutions, as indicated by Human resources survey, is quite general. Therefore, there is a need to identify new areas in our economy with the potentials to create new jobs for the people.

Generally, fresh graduates must endeavor to acquire a lot of skills as they prepare to enter into the world of employment. Besides, they must have the humility and ability to adjust in working with other people and generally be more open minded in their work to enable them to improve and benefit from performances of their colleagues. Undoubtedly, the greatest aim of any job situation is the ability to improve oneself with the attitude that in what ever one does he must do it well. That is what the big job is all about in the future.

Perhaps, there is a need to scale down some of the expectations of graduates as a way to impress upon them the necessity to develop relevant skills to prepare for the jobs market. They must avoid thinking that as graduates they may know all only to find out that they may not be so. For example, they may consider developing soft skills before deciding to take permanent jobs.  For this reason, capacity building is being embedded in Human resource development program as a way to prepare job seekers to anticipate their roles and responsibility as modern workers. For example, they   must be able to appreciate the need to interact with their colleagues and make family life consonant with the search for happiness in the working life. In other words, the pursuit for job must be harmonious with the way to structure our family life.

Besides, fresh graduates, as job seekers must also realize the need to get along with the society in order to develop faster than those, who prefer to become world flowers or people who want to stand in a little corner of their houses. This is a fact of life. Generally, people, who can get along with the society, tend to develop faster than those, who prefer to be on their own.

Hitherto, the State has been experiencing a fast pace of development as part of the transformation from a poor to a rich country. It helps the people to realize that it is not easy to become rich as it is not just the question of money but having the ability to do the jobs and enjoy good relationship with people, who are within our circles of friends, colleagues and others.  Of course, soft skills embrace quite a lot of fields of activities mainly to prepare participants to enter their new work places with greater feelings of confidence and preparedness to interact with the core workers; they should not feel completely alien to their new work places.

Reviving old mission 

The Prime Minister’s concept of One Malaysia is basically a new dream to revive old mission to get people of diverse ethnic groups and religious beliefs to get along with each other in perpetuity. Its primary objective is to emphasize on the need for the people to be multi-racial in outlook and belief and not to be trapped in the little corner of their life. The people should not be comfortable with what they are familiar with only.  Instead, they must appreciate the need to have a common aspiration or One Aspiration of being part of a united country.  There must be interactions among the people, who must have the ability to appreciate all the good things in others to be able to appreciate those inside them.

Basically, the One Malaysia concept is trying to tie two things together. It is trying to get the society gradually to become cohesive and make it easier for the people to undertake challenges, which are mostly made by acts of team work. The days of trying to invent electric bulbs in little garage or in the basement are over. Nowadays no new invention can be undertaken without very elaborate support and co-operation of colleagues working together in a very complicated environment of laboratory and other testing places.      

Understandably, the biggest research now is a very complicated act of coordinating small findings of people of various disciplines in the common efforts to find an answer to the present worst economics meltdown and climate change. As the world moves more and more towards areas of specialization, the State  must make conscientious efforts to upgrade the research capability to enable us to co-operate meaningfully in a bigger form of co-operation with the rest of the world.

Generally, the State is heading towards an increasingly sophisticated economy which requires us to prepare ourselves for it. We can anticipate this general environment as we move forward to become a developed country by the year 2020 and beyond. Hence, we must make conscientious efforts to develop the capacity and capability of our human resource to enable us to compete on stronger positions for better jobs in future. Generally, the State will require more people with good qualifications and technical skills to accelerate the pace of industrial development in order to become an industrialized state by the year 2020 and beyond. 

benuasains

*Photos Source: google.com images : http://www.cbg.sarawak.gov.my/index.php/gallery/