Job Seekers believe Good Job Opportunities Are Harder to Come By

Highlighting a recent Press Release by JobStreet.com on the sentiment of job seekers in Malaysia.

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JobStreet.com: Jobseekers believe good job opportunities harder to come by in next six months

Kuala Lumpur, 25 Nov 2008: How will the global economic woes have an effect on jobseekers in Malaysia in the next few months? According to a JobStreet.com survey in Nov 2008, a vast majority of jobseekers contacted for their opinion believe that good jobs are still available but there are less of such opportunities.

The word is out. Unless you have a plum job waiting for you – meaning a new job with many additional perks and benefits, including a salary increase – it may be worth your while to stick around to your present job, ride out any economic storm that may come our way and perhaps use the time for productive self-improvement through taking up some courses or further studies.

However, it doesn’t mean that you should stop looking for a new job altogether. Almost all the jobseekers surveyed by JobStreet.com believed it important to continue job-seeking activities but 62 percent of them said that every new job opportunity should be evaluated thoroughly before making any firm decision. A small eight percent said that they would not move even if a good job opportunity presents itself while the remaining 30 percent would accept any good move without question.

So while there are still a lot of jobs being advertised, the pessimism is there that there are now less good ones available as companies begin to be more selective in their hiring needs.

Overall, 86 percent of the surveyed jobseekers indicated that it would be difficult for jobseekers to find new good job positions in the next six months, as compared with 12 percent who indicated that such job opportunities would be about the same and a smaller two percent who expressed optimism with their future job-seeking prospects.

Here are more results from the JobStreet.com survey:

• More pessimism among managers and senior managers who felt that new job openings for them would be at the most difficult in the next six months.
• Clericals and non-executives expressed the confidence that job opportunities would remain relatively unchanged for them.
• On a regional basis, jobseekers in the Klang Valley and Johor seemed least concerned with finding new job opportunities in the next six months with one-sixth of them saying that it would be the same or even easier.
• In contrast, the confidence level in Penang was low with jobseekers there indicating that it would be very difficult for them to move from one job to another unless the economy picked up.

We also asked the respondents what they thought about their annual salary increment come next year. Generally, despite the economic gloom, we found a lot of hope and optimism:
• 45 percent of the respondents said they expected a better salary increase next year.
• 29 percent hoped that it would be the same quantum as this year.
• 7 percent thought that their annual increment would be less.
• 19 percent said that they were not expecting any increment at all.
• The greatest confidence was shown by jobseekers in the lower position levels (executives and non-executives), while those in the more senior levels were more guarded in their expectations.
• Only 19 percent of senior managers and 34 percent of managers thought their increments would be better next year; while 37 percent and 41 percent of them respectively expected the quantum to remain.

Disclaimer: The above findings were summarized from a random survey of about 1,000+ respondents from the JobStreet.com member base in November 2008. It does not claim to be a conclusive or authoritative report but is useful to provide a general feedback from the public who are JobStreet.com members.


About JobStreet.com
JobStreet Corporation Berhad operates the JobStreet.com on-line recruitment websites presently covering the employment markets in Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, India and Bangladesh. The Group currently services over 50,000 corporate customers and over 5 million job seekers.


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