Unemployed Graduates

Almost all those who attended the interviews I conducted recently were University graduates, eventhough the advertisement didn't specifically mentioned so.

What does this show?
It's an indication of the number of graduates our country is churning out yearly, unqualified to be blunt. Most of the interviewee (graduates) have just been in their current employment for about 6 months or so and most of them have been working in at least 3 companies prior to that.
This brings me to the subject of today- Unemployed Graduates: just how many are there & why are they there?


UNEMPLOYED GRADUATES*
In 2004, there were 4,594 unemployed graduates of which 163 were Chinese, 207 were Indians and 4,060 were Malays;
In 2005, there were 2,413 unemployed graduates of which 31 were Chinese, 70 were Indians and 2,186 were Malays;
In 2006, there were 56,750 unemployed graduates of which 1,110 were Chinese, 1,346 were Indians and 50,594 were Malays.
In 2007, there were 56,322 unemployed graduates of which 1,348 were Chinese, 1,401 were Indians and 49,075 were Malays.
In 2008 (as of June) there were 47,910 unemployed graduates of which 1,403 Chinese, 1,569 Indians and 44938 were Malays.



University & Percentage of Graduates Unemployed
Universiti Teknologi Mara 16.2%
Universiti Utara Malaysia 7.6%
Private Universities & Colleges 6.0%
University Teknologi Malaysia 5.7%
University Kebangsaan Malaysia 4.8%
University Pertanian Malaysia 4.5%
Other Public Universities 4.2%
Universiti Malaya 2.6%
Universiti Sains Malaysia 2.5%
Universiti Malaysia Sabah 1.8%
Universiti Islam Antarabangsa 1.8%
Foreign Graduates 1.7%
Universiti Malaysia Sarawak 0.9%
Universiti Pendidikan Sultan Idris 0.2%
Others 39.5%

Out of the total unemployed graduates, 70% were from the Public Universities & 26% from Private Universities.

Remember also that prior to 1969 (year of the May 13 incident), there were just 2 Public Universities. Between 1969 & 1999, nine Universities were set up & thereafter another nine.

No wonder the friendly burgerman next door was a graduate.

University of Malaya inside Top 200!

University of Malaya up to 180 from 200 last year! What jubilations....but wait, National University of Singapore is ranked 30 and Nanyang Technological University at 77. Good try , maybe next year we may break the under 100 barrier.

We hope the standards of our University graduates will improve in years to come but not right in the foreseeable future, what with the current entry selection criteria.

I have interviewed countless candidates for job positions in the companies I worked with and most aspiring applicants never ceased to awe me. Poor spoken English, lack of knowledge in the fields whose jobs they were looking for. About 85% of them didn't know what jobs they were applying for!( You see, nowadays ready-made resume are available and these job aspirants just didn't know which positions they were looking for when the time came for them to be interviewed...and they just don't care. When asked for the positions they were looking for, a few answered " any positions available"!

If the Government is just interested in churning out pre-packed graduates from our Universities, I say let them expire after their time out on the shelves.

Additional Costs of Exporting to Venezuela

Recently, I have the misfortune to witness the immense red tapes it took me to process the shipping documentations and procedures just to ship some products to Venezuela. Officially it is called the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela and the people there speak Spanish. Population about the same as Malaysia ,26m.
Be ready to cover all hidden costs and set your selling price straight or you may end up a few thousand ringgit poorer.
Almost all shipping docs must be endorsed by various approving authorities before you may ship or unload your cargo at destination.
For a start,

EXPORT TO VENEZUELA ---Legalisation of documents
Docs required:
1. Registration of Co. cert (ROC).. Form 9
2. Memorandum of Article & Association
3. Particulars of Board of Directors ..Form 49
4. Company registered address..Form 44
5. Manufacturing license
6. General commercial letter
7. Certificate of Origin (CO)
8. Commercial Invoice
9. Packing List
10. Bill of Lading

Most of these docs have to be notarised by a Notary Public, Authenticated by the Ministry of Foreign Affair and then legalised by the Venezuela Embassy.
Of course, the CO has to be issued by FMM or the Chamber of Commerce.

Moneywise, it will cost RM50 to get each docs notarised and RM199 to get each doc(6~10) legalised by the Venezuela Embassy. We are grateful that Wisma Putra does not charge anything, I think. By the way, it costs RM266 to get the CO legalised by the Venezuela Embassy!
(Well, just a rubber stamped..)

All in, minimum RM1542..it may be more.

And mind you, we have not even touch on the port, forwarding, Custom, etc charges at destination yet.

So for those of you who are thinking of exporting anything to this South American northern coastal country, compute your costing carefully to recoup your profit margin.