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International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences

Open Access Journal

ISSN: 2222-6990

Graduates’ Mindset in Designing their Initial Career

Nur Hayati Abd Rahman, Shafinar Ismail, Abdul Rahim Ridzuan, Khairunnisa Abd Samad

http://dx.doi.org/10.6007/IJARBSS/v10-i10/7798

Open access

This paper aims in understanding the graduates’ mindset on how they design their initial career, either as job seekers (work in public or private sector) or job creators. It is due to the fact that the graduate unemployability in rising, owing to the COVID-19 pandemic. By using a qualitative research design, semi structured interviews were conducted to ten interviewees who were the fresh graduates from one of the tertiary institutions in Melaka, Malaysia. The results found that 80 percent of the interviewees prefer to be job seekers, while only 20 percent choose to be entrepreneurs. Despite of the rise in the gig economy, none of the interviewees have mentioned about working as a freelancer by engaging with gig works. These findings clearly indicate that the graduate unemployability will be worsened in the near future if the graduates’ mindsets remain the same. Hence, the tertiary educational providers should look at this matter by instilling new mindsets consistent with the new norm, and offering more courses related to the entrepreneurship and skills-oriented courses in the near future.

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In-Text Citation: (Abd Rahman, Ismail, Ridzuan, & Abd Samad, 2020)
To Cite this Article: Abd Rahman, N. H., Ismail, S., Ridzuan, A. R., & Abd Samad, K. (2020). Graduates’ Mindset in Designing their Initial Career. International Journal of Academic Research in Business and Social Sciences. 10(10), 917-924.