I am so enlighten after reading all the professional comments here written by veteran pros. Even though I do not have as much as 8 years of exp in IT but I do have some humble views.

It seem like theres a conflict of interest among education and industrial line. One blaming others for not giving changes for freshies to gain experience, the other one blaming that they are not getting the people they want.

Education system is being praised for teaching the students the way of thinking and learning. But in truth, how many of these students are as good as what they expect? Or, what the 'customers' expect? Students is like a product here, and the customers are those employers who seeking out capable employees. After all, after 20 years of education, most of the students are just doing what others(parents, gov, etc) what them to do, and there are barely any learning/thinking process, they are forced to memorised exam tips and print them down on answer paper during finals. And after 20 years of primary, secondary and tertiary education, many failed to understand common sense.

So, is this the exam system to be blamed? Is our education system up to the standard? Did our students really doing the right thing? Did our kids being exposed enough to be able to make decision on what they want or they are just overprotected? Or it is just our culture of being mass producing everything without focusing on quality?

The industrial lines are surely a very demanding lines, we cant blame them for being choosy on what people they want to use, because in the world of business, every seconds would means winning or losing a business which also indicate do or die for a company. They simply do not have the room for these freshies to play around, or spending valuable time to train these new people up about what they are expected to know, or spoonfeed them like what most education line did. And many companies who once dedicated on training up new people would learn a hard lesson that whenever they trained up a guy they would frog jump to a better offer, loosing not only human resource but also the valuable time which you would make millions. If spend a bit more can hire a guy that require no training and can take care multiple task, why not? Time = money.

Should we blame the industrial players being selfish? Or should we blame the job seekers not initiatives enough to learn more about the required skill? This is a chicken and egg problem, I dont get the job, I learn the skill for what? You dont have the skill I hire you for what? And the industrial players being selfish also due to tough competition by OTHER industrial players which tends to dig capable workers from competitors(like banks).

I worked as part of the support team for a conference about collaboration between education and industrial(sth like that), the education representative said they will make sure the students going into industrial training(attachment) will get the correct job scope otherwise they will warn the employer, the industrial rep have opinion that they are simply some cheap labour to operate the photostate machine.

How is that job really is actually depends on the student self, is he/she the one who always making its-note-my-job complaints, or he/she is the one who can accept any given task and perform? The first type will only conclude the employer whether they want to take this person or not in the future, the second type will be the one who make good impression.

Mindset is the key. Even only doing photostating job or cleaning toilet, you can also score a few thumbs up, showing how dependable you are.

Who would give you an expensive server to maintain if you cant even do a simple task?

My really humble 1/2 cents.

How true, taking the MS office off my resume right now

Anyway, always customize your resume according to the employer, if Java is what they want, show them the codes if necessary.

This post has been edited by rexis: Nov 2 2006, 11:25 AM

How true this is, a respectible industrial player always said that he is not looking for 9-5 staff, they are just barely some mindless workers, they are looking for those who can dedicate themselves fully. Sort of like selling your soul to your company.

Well its really doesn't matter if it is your own project or at least you think that way, if you have to be so calculative then its better you off the job.

That what I do. If i must trade off my personal time for nothing but some dont-be-so-calculative sh!t, we are done. We the least is that I cant find any passion to continue being a mindless worker.

This post has been edited by rexis: Nov 2 2006, 12:17 PM

I must comment that definition of 'success' is very different from person to person, some would think that owning the biggest oil palm estate in Malaysia is success, while some might feel that he is the luckiest guy in the world by having a happy and caring family.

Also, another very important point is, work smart to be success, not work hard. (while 'work smart' has a different meaning according to people too, some ass might think selling fragrance oil and conning people money is smart, some might just decided to work out a proper schedule to the entire department to eliminate OT)

Am I mixing the problems, or they are the problems from the same source? Its very true that each job has a different requirement, while some might just specifically need freshie, some just cant affort to hire some jokers to play around! Business world is like the real nature, you either eating or got eaten.

These were the topic of a conference, sth like colaboration of acedemia and industry sth sth like that. So theres a few university rep and industry rep talking on the stage on this topic. In the end, there seem like no conclusion, the guy who said that industrial training undergrads are just like cheap labour kept silence after being countered by all of the uni reps(they are all dato, dr, etc). The educational people are not facing the problem directly, meanwhile continue cheating students to take part in their courses making false promise that they can be system analyst, network engineer, programmer, etc.

While industrial people, some are willing and kind enough to take in freshies, but, as darun said, supply surplus demand, they can only absorb a handful of freshies.

This post has been edited by rexis: Nov 2 2006, 05:31 PM

Lets be a bit more specific, there's too many IT students who do not really have a clue about what should they do or the initiative to do.

Waaaay too many.

IT + Agriculture

How it sound like?

Hmm, will it be like all jobs sucks but just that IT job people get to moan about on forum frequently?

Malaysia is very much a developing country, whats more many of our leaders also shown us that their brains are still developing as well. Therefore, many company do not really utilize the latest IT technology in their business. It is a huge difference working in a MNC IT company, big MNC, small MNC and a local company.

In IT there is no such thing and learn one thing do forever, new things always pop up, and you have to constantly crack your head to solve the problem, and this is not always appreciated by your top management as you take time to do research and handle the problem. Thats where IT people gets frustrated.

Furthermore, local employer are exploiting IT technical workforce, especially exploiting the freshie as the do not know much about employment.

Exploiting as in:
- very low pay, some IT worker even getting less pay then a popular bookstorekeeper
- extremely unreasonable working hour(weekends, midnight, dawn, 7-11, 24-7)
- unreasonable job scope or dateline(this seem to be a global problem)