Saturday August 18, 2007
Be trilingual to do well, grads told
KUALA LUMPUR: Graduates need to be proficient in at least three languages to make it in today’s workforce, said Umno Youth deputy chief Khairy Jamaluddin.
He said being bilingual was nothing unusual and today’s employers would view a potential employee who knew three languages as someone who could be chief executive officer or vice-president of a company.
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Raring to go: Foreign students undergoing tertiary education in Malaysia with Khairy after he launched a career and education fair in MidValley yesterday. |
It is being held at the MidValley Exhibition Centre until Sunday.
Khairy said graduates needed to ensure they were fluent in a few languages instead of complaining about the strict conditions a company might impose on them requiring them to speak certain languages.
He was asked to comment on whether being proficient in Mandarin was now seen as an advantage in the working environment.
Khairy also reminded fresh graduates not to be fussy when seeking their first or second jobs, as these were the ones that would provide them the experience and knowledge to get their “dream job” in the future.
He said the problem facing the employment market was matching the existing skills of a worker with the available jobs.
Khairy said those who graduated with a Master’s degree should not immediately assume that they would be employed, as their qualification may not match the job they applied for.
He said they should “start from the bottom” and go for on-the-job training.
Earlier in his speech, he said globalisation was not just a threat but also offered many opportunities where large foreign corporations had a “fierce desire” to market their services to Malaysians besides using the country as a hub for other Asean countries.
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