#TECH: UTAR works with Jobstreet to help graduates with internship placement
KUALA LUMPUR: Given the current challenging job market for both experienced workers as well as fresh graduates, Universiti Tunku Abdul Rahman (UTAR) is taking proactive measures to ensure its graduates continue to be in high demand with potential employers.
The university today inked a Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) with JobStreet whereby various initiatives were introduced to ensure UTAR’s students are equipped with the relevant knowledge and expertise to succeed in the working world.
“Our partnership with JobStreet goes beyond academic learning. Instead, our aim is to nurture students to be forward-thinking global professionals and entrepreneurs who are knowledgeable, competent and ethical life-long learners who would bring positive impact to society,” said UTAR’s president Ir Prof Dr Ewe Hong Tat.
Among the initiatives under the MoU is the JobStreet Student Portal, where students can apply for various internship positions with both local companies as well as multinational ones.
“The purpose of the JobStreet Student Portal is to help students land their first roles in the working world,” said Ewe, adding that portal simplifies processes making it easy-to-use for internship applications.
The MoU also covers both parties exploring and conducting joint research collaboration activities, as well as joint academic-industrial collaborative activities including conferences, webinar, workshops, publications, and seminars.
Meanwhile, JobStreet’s country manager, Gan Bock Herm, expressed delight to have concluded the MoU, which he described as a “collective effort to ensure UTAR students stay above the rest”.
“The current job market is challenging for both experienced workers as well as fresh graduates as companies take steps to review their operations amid the Covid-19 pandemic and the lockdowns,” said Gan.
“Covid-19 greatly affected the job market even for fresh graduates. However, we have since seen progressive recovery of the job market with restrictions being eased,” he added.
The number of fresh graduate roles have increased by 300 percent in this period, bringing the total number of fresh graduate jobs to over 1,700 available jobs, making JobStreet the largest job portal for fresh graduate jobs in the market.
From a recent JobStreet Covid-19 survey, findings indicated that 25 percent of the employers surveyed will be looking to hire again in the next 6 months and this will include fresh graduates.
“Based on the research, the top 5 industries still hiring are information technology, food & beverage, science & technology, government and health & safety sectors,” said Gan.
He also shared that, as the MCO had changed the way companies need to operate in order to survive, skills related to digital and IT are highly sought after.
“The demand for new roles such as digital marketing analyst, social media executive, data science executive, big data analyst, junior mobile application developer and UX designer is even higher as companies move into digitalising their business,” he said.
Source: NST
