Today’s graduates face a tough competition in getting a job of their choice. They prepare and submit resumes hoping to be employed. However, fresh graduates need proper experience to make their resumes look good in the eyes of potential employers. Thus, unemployment is not uncommon. In fact, on May 12, 2015 the Prime Minister’s Department announced that a total of 161,000 out of 400,000 unemployed are actually university graduates.
One of the reasons these graduates are not employed is that the courses they studied at university do not have wide market appeal. “The fact is many graduates do not event know what they want to do after they finish their studies, “said an assistant human resource manager with an international insurance company in Malaysia. Fresh graduates lack appropriate experience and obviously face problems in getting their dream jobs in comparison to those with greater talents and experience suited for the job market.
The fact remains that fresh graduates lack the kind of experience sought after by employers. As such, one of the options available for them is to “be your own boss” – to become an entrepreneur. Hence, the Faculty of Business and Accounting (FBA) took the initiative to organize a talk entitled “Be your own boss: Rewards and Challenges” on 22 September under the Professional Talk Series. A total of 48 participants attended the talk which had the following objectives: (1) to develop awareness among the potential graduates about the rewards and challenges of being self-employed; (2) to convince them that they can acquire experience by being self-employed, and to expose them to ideas on starting their own business.
The speaker, Ms Nurdieana Mohd Mardzi, a successful entrepreneur, is the owner of KD World which has been in operation for nine years now. Nurdieana who has a Masters in Management, a Bachelor’s Degree in Financial Management and a Diploma in Banking served 12 years in the banking industry prior to setting up her own business in the education sector.