GRADUATES ON THE HUNT FOR JOBS FLOCK TO VARSITY
TANJUNG MALIM: Throngs of graduates craned their necks forward to see what jobs or training slots were on offer before jotting them down in the Skim Latihan 1Malaysia (SL1M) notebook provided when they registered for the Open Interview Programme.
For business degree holder Nur Aquilah Badrul Hisham, 24, this was just a first look as she plans to return for the second day of the programme at Sultan Idris Education University.
“Right now, I want to see what jobs are available, and whether I think I have a good chance of landing an interview.
“Then I’ll go home and tailor my resume, and return to submit it,” said Nur Aquilah.
Nur Fatiha Awatif, 24, won a Hewlett-Packard laptop in a lucky draw organised by SL1M’s secretariat.
“I brought 10 resumes for this programme. Hopefully there is an opportunity for me,” said Nur Fatiha, who graduated with a degree in animation from Limkokwing Uni- versity of Creative Technology.
She hoped that SL1M would also consider expanding the programme to other companies in non-traditional sectors such as animation, given that the Malaysian animation industry had matured in recent years.
Trainers from social enterprise Leaderonomics were busy giving tips on how to improve resumes to small clusters of applicants.
“Several resumes shown to us by applicants had some basic but fatal flaws,” said Leaderonomics analyst Farah Nadzirah Khairuddin.
These errors included errors such as typos or grammatical errors, basic formatting and font issues as well as the candidates themselves selling themselves short in their resumes.
“People tend to put their duties or positions, but they don’t list down their achievements or what they had learnt in the course of their jobs, all of which could set them apart from other applicants,” said Farah.
“Graduates need to learn that a good resume only gets you one foot in the door; it is no guarantee of a job offer, because you still have to pass the interview process,” she added.
Mohammad Fadzril Abdul Rahim, 30, who visited the fair to pick up career enhancement tips, said he had learnt a lot from the resume clinic.
“At least I learned formats and what sort of mistakes to look out for, so I’ll stand a better chance if and when I’m on the search for a new position,” he said.