Universiti Teknologi Malaysia (UTM) through the Big Data Centre (UTM BDC), has developed a public dashboard specially to address the employment analysis to aid the Malaysian government on the current situations of the country’s employment.
The dashboard was designed by UTM BDC internship student, Miraj Ahmed and research officer Rozita Abdul Jalil.
The Director of UTM BDC, Assoc. Prof. Dr Azlan Mohd Zain said it is a public dashboard to show the employment analysis for the country that presents the total number of employed and unemployed population for each state in Malaysia that are very useful to assist the government to see the future needs of the workforce.
The dashboard, namely “Interactive Dashboard of Malaysia Employment” can be accessed online at https://bigdata.utm.my/employment/.
“The most important data that could be obtained from this dashboard is the employment and unemployment ratio, which could be a big concern for the government.
Employability refers to the capacity of a person to obtain and retain jobs.
Employability for individuals depends on the expertise, skills, and abilities they have, in addition to the way they provide employers with those properties, “he said.
He added, other than the ratio, the dashboard also presents the skills and techniques, in addition to the academic qualifications.
“Employers nowadays focus more on skills and techniques rather than a mere degree, thus this dashboard can be a big proof of how the non-certificate holders, including those who never attended any educational institutions can also contribute to a big number in employment category. This shows how much mandatory “building skill” is,” he said.
According to him, unlike many countries with minor ethnic groups, there are three major ethnic groups in Malaysia and the dashboard also represents the performance in terms of employability by those three major ethnic groups as well as foreigners who also contribute a big number.
It comes with numbers and visible percentages that are easy to understand by the public.
“Other than for the government and employers, employability skills are also vital issues in the job market especially for fresh graduates.
The employer’s expectation towards the agriculture graduates concerning the skills, knowledge and personal qualities is quite high and it stresses on certain standards,” he added.
Dr Azlan said, from the analysis, the dashboard indicated that the employers chose leadership, oral communication, planning organisation, team working and technical as top five most important skills to be possessed by graduates.
