IT is a known fact that the pandemic has gravely impacted Malaysians’ access to job opportunities, be it for those who were already employed or those who are looking for employment.
This caused most people to seek out new skills and expertise to stay relevant in the challenging job market last year, despite facing reduced working hours and pay cuts.
According to the latest LinkedIn Opportunity Index 2021, it was found that six out of 10 Malaysians were affected by COVID-19-related challenges work-wise, such as pay cuts, difficult job searches and reduced working hours.
This has likely led to a less optimistic economic outlook amongst Malaysians, with only 21% of the respondents expecting the economy to improve over the next six months and even fewer (19%) expecting their financial situation to improve over the same period.
However, despite the bleak economic outlook, there were some positives as Malaysians sought new opportunities — including starting their own business (23%), providing safety support items such as sanitisers and masks to their communities (33%), with women leading the way.
Actively seeking mentors (28%), building or nurturing a network (23%) and mentoring others (21%) were also key opportunities pursued by Malaysians.
“It’s been about a year since COVID-19 hit us, but many still continue to struggle from job losses and instability. Therefore, it is heartening when you see people put their focus on helping the community,” said LinkedIn vice president of learning and talent solutions for APAC Feon Ang.
LinkedIn data also revealed that 26% of Malaysian started looking for opportunities to move to a new career path last year.
Among the most sought after (31%) new soft skills that people were looking for in 2020 were creative thinking, problem solving and defective communication, apart from hard skills such as business analytics, artificial intelligence and cloud computing (30%). – Mar 5, 2021
