Merely 10 years towards our vision 2020, Malaysia is still very much behind from what our former Prime Minister was hoping for us to be. NO, I am not concerned about the economic tidal wave or how expensive our petrol prices are to most of us nor am I going to worry about the literacy rate in our country or how low our current minimum wage is. I shall not go that far, YET.

Attitude is what interests me the most. Our life approach, or merely their mind set or what we call their checklist in achieving their “Success”. My recent encounter with many fresh graduates; nearly 8 out of 10 of them replied “I want to have a great career and earn well” when the question “What do you want to do?” was presented to them

Looking at that often leaves us wondering with more questions. The mindsets of our younger Gen X’s “future plan” about having a great career, has no job specification or direction. And earning WELL with no details of how they are going to work towards that goal is like walking aimlessly.

Among most jobseekers, fresh graduates are by far the most challenging class to place. We are considered very fortunate to have the programs like “Train and Place” ready funded by our government to ease our fresh graduates challenge in seeking employment.

Young graduates are encouraged and recruited with no admission fees to join skills development programs to further advance their soft skills; yet selected recruitment agents are running out of candidates to assign due to the hesitation of young graduates in exploring this option.

Seeing the current statistic given by one of our local Print Medias, there are 200,000 fresh graduates in the market competing for a position together with another 100,000 retrenched employees. That statistic should be an eye opener to all graduates into realizing that being pernickety is not an option.

It might be a program so far from their prepared qualifications; however, at this moment of time it is the available option far better than being unemployed. To top things off, this program comes with a monthly allowance complete with job allocation prospects and as well as the opportunity in upgrading their aptitude.

Aptitude is a key measurement of an individual’s potential. Here lies our challenge; in order to develop great aptitude in any field one is required to have the right attitude. So without the correct attitude, we will fail miserably in trying to compete or assess our aptitude.