For a young one (well, not that young, actually), he said it best, IMHO. His was perhaps the fifth blog post I read this morning on the issue of the rising number of unemployed fresh graduates in Malaysia. When are the rest going to realize that if you want to make something of your life, YOU yourself have to take charge of it?

The government, the Ministry of Tertiery Education can only do so much and it irks people like me (and others) who have gone through the system (which young people are complaining about) and gotten jobs, which now the same young people demand be handed to them on a silver platter. Look, I have nothing against fresh graduates. I was once like them too with my own dreams and hopes for a better life. But I was realistic. No one owed me a living. And frankly it is still that way now. I had to work to be where I am now and because of that, I’m proud to say that I did it all on my own (with the support from my family). My relative who is three years older than me started off as an auditor with a small company earning RM700 and about nearly four years later now, he’s with the tax division of PriceWaterhouseCoopers with a 100K car (plus a little Kelisa).

We all had to start somewhere. Fresh graduates who complain that companies refused to hire them because they have no experience need to open their eyes and look beyond the mindset of “I want this job; the company owes it to me, yaddah yaddah”. My company just hired about four new graduates in one intake out of ten people with a starting pay of 2.5K. And these people were the cream of the crop so to speak. Competition is tough out in the real world. Not only would you be competing with people your age own, you would be competing with older AND younger people.

I’ll be honest. Everyone now has a degree. When you’re sitting out there in the interview room, you and the rest of the peeps coming in for the post all look the same to the interviewer. So you need that extra special oomph to make you stand apart from the rest and that can NEVER be taught. It comes from years of maturity, personality and character – knowing what you want yet coming across as humble, independent yet dependent enough if ask if unsure of things, etc.

Before anyone start pulling out their shots at me (although they are perfectly welcomed to it), I was once a fresh graduate too…for a whole two weeks after my last class. I went for three job interviews and I settled for my first job as a content executive with an unknown company then (but is now THE thing for web solutions software) with a rather good pay – 2K – but the interview was tough. I got questions like “what’s your role model?” “what are your strengths and weakness?” “where do you see yourself in the next ten years?”. Why I said it was tough? Because when I asked several young people in my former workplace (I was in teaching), they couldn’t answer me OR better still, when I asked one of my older friends, she said she answered “I don’t know” to that question. Hm.

We are starting to live up to our own stereotype – we want everything handed to us on a silver platter. We want the easiers jobs with the highest starting pay for fresh graduates. We want this and we want that. But we never seem to think beyond what we want, do we? Otherwise we wouldn’t have to address this issue of unemployment in the local newspapers with it making the headlines. Malaysia IS not going through a bloody recession, many industries need workers. I have been receiving updates from Jobstreet.com on vacancies and it is phenomenal – jobs for marketing, jobs for teaching, jobs for this and that.

The thing is graduates now are TOO picky; TOO lazy; TOO indifferent. I’ve had students who come in and tell me that they want glamourous jobs – radio DJ, newsreader, etc – but do they ever look inward at themselves and ask this “Am I suitable for the job? Do I have the personality to go with it? What makes me unique?” Nope. They just go “I want it. If I can’t have it, it’s not my fault. The govy, my parents and the education system is at fault.”

Typical. Always putting the blame on other people but never yourself. You know what is really sad about the whole thing? Thinking that way WILL never ever build character and people like this will always remain stagnant in life. It makes people like me who have worked hard to be where we are now damn pissed because we LEARNT to work around the bad stuff, we LEARNT to move towards our goals…

If the mountain won’t go to Muhammed, Muhammed must go to the moutain.

Similarly, if you want to eat, you’ve got to work. Stop depending on handouts. Developed countries didn’t get to where they were by relying on other people ALL the bloody time. It is time our young people learnt to stand on their own two feet and make us proud by seizing the world and not shame us by expecting old foggies like my parents (me included) to pay for everything their hearts desire. We had to work, why not our young people?