GREaT initiative to match jobless grads with potential employers
THE Ministry of Higher Education (MOHE) has taken the initiative to develop a one-stop portal known as the Graduates Reference Hub for Employment and Training or GREaT in its effort to increase the employability of graduates who have been affected by the country’s economic downturn due to the Covid-19 pandemic.
Through the GREaT portal, graduates will be able to reduce their time in seeking information on employment, opportunities to pursue further education, education sponsorship, and entrepreneurship programmes as well as skills enhancement programmes.
For example, graduates can access information and apply for the National Economic Recovery Plan (PENJANA) KPT-Career Advancement Program or PENJANA KPT-CAP through the portal.
GREaT portal also includes information on the PENJANA KPTPACE programme (Professional Certificate) which is offered to final year students at public universities, private higher learning institutions, polytechnics and community colleges.
These initiatives offer opportunities for graduates and final year students to pursue skills enhancement programmes.
Its aim is to produce competent and skilled graduates to fulfil the labour force demand.
MOHE’s 2020 Graduate Tracer Study has found that the employability rate of graduates has decreased by 1.8 per cent to 84.4 per cent compared to 86.2 per cent in 2019.
The response rate of the study was 85.4 per cent or 260,701 out of 305,301 local graduates in the current year, and 15.6 per cent or 40,550 of the respondents were local graduates who were still unemployed within six months of graduation.
This indicates that the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic from the economic aspect has not only shrunk employment opportunities but also affects the opportunity of graduates to obtain jobs that fit their qualifications and skills.
Concerned with the current graduate employability scenario, the function of GREaT Portal was expanded to include the JobMatching@GREaT module.
The JobMatching@GREaT module aims to help graduates secure jobs, especially in dealing with the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic.
This module implements job demand and supply matching using the latest technology that supports the second strategy of MOHE’s Graduate Employability Strategic Plan (PSKG), which is Student Career Expansion.
It is a platform which helps the industries track graduates and offer suitable employment opportunities based on qualifications and competencies, thus further increasing the country’s graduate employability rate.
Vacancies in the industry are automatically matched with the graduates’ data in the Graduate Tracer Study System (SKPG) based on the set criteria.
The JobMatching@GREaT module was developed by the Ministry in collaboration with Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM), Malaysia Digital Economy Corporation (MDEC) and the Companies Commission of Malaysia (SSM).
It is not the module’s objective to compete with other job search portals but rather to complement them.
Unlike the existing job search portals, JobMatching@GREaT module does not require graduates to apply for jobs.
The ministry believes that this will be very helpful, especially for graduates who might face constraints in finding a job.
The tagline of this module is “Tracking Graduates by Industries”, where the industry will track graduates without them applying for jobs, based on the industry’s required criteria.
Data of unemployed graduates in SKPG are matched using multicriteria screening and ranking methods available in the module.
The industry can select graduates according to their preferred criteria such as programmes and level of study, name or type of higher education institutions (HEIs), CGPA, state of residence, MUET band, third language skills, ICT skills and others.
The JobMatching@GREaT module will be expanded to match not only unemployed graduates but also underemployed graduates in the SKPG.
In addition, this module will be extended to match final year students’ data from the MyMoheS System with the upcoming Industrial Training and Apprenticeship module.
MOHE is indeed committed in its effort to increase graduates’ employability.
The expansion of the functionality of the GREaT portal with appropriate modules will be implemented from time to time.
This is a benchmark for MOHE’s efforts in addressing the need to increase employability among students, future graduates, and graduates.
It is hoped that the JobMatching@GREaT module will raise the graduate employability rate, which will in turn contribute towards the country’s economy.