Graduates being too choosy in applying for jobs and universities offering courses that are not needed by the industry, are among factors resulting in over 600,000 job vacancies not filled, Higher Education deputy director-general Prof Dr Mohd Cairul Iqbal Mohd Amin said.

Another reason, he said, was the poor response, especially among the young people, to take the job opportunities available, Bernama reports.

“With the number of the graduates that we have, which is less than 100,000, 600,000 is not a small number” he said when opening MyCareer@MOE at Universiti Sains Islam Malaysia (USIM) yesterday (Nov 5).

Also present was USIM vice-chancellor Prof Mohamed Ridza Wahiddin.

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Yesterday, Human Resources Minister M. Kula Segaran was quoted as saying that as of last August, there were 50,326 job vacancies for graduates registered by employers and 642,798 job vacancies for non-graduates.

Meanwhile, Dr Mohd Cairul Iqbal advised graduates to learn to listen and accept new learning to enable them to meet the needs of the industry.

“Among the complaints received from the industry is that graduates have the skills and certificates with a high CGPA of 4.0 … they can talk, but they don’t want to listen.

“They are also not ready to learn, while graduates should not only have certificates and can talk , but are also prepared to learn all the time. They also need to listen and understand,” he added.

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