How will the global economic woes affect jobseekers in the next few months? We ran a survey here in Malaysia earlier this month and it seems that a vast majority of the jobseekers we contacted believed that good jobs are still available but there are less of such opportunities.
So 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 said that it was 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.
(This article of mine originally appeared in BlogStreet.)