The modern workforce is changing everyday. Today, we have heard about jobs that might not even exist 10 or 20 years ago. Our youths are the most important category of people in the country. Between the age of 15 to 35, some of them are pondering about the future while the others are struggling to climb the career ladder. Therefore, we need to know what our youths think about the current job market and career path.

Realizing the need to understand our current generation, Jobstreet, being Asia’s largest online job portal, initiated this research project to allow youths understand the job market better, and help employers to shape better job positions for today’s generation.

Here is the is summary of this Career Survey:

Participants

There are 3,217 youths participated in this career survey:

Age:

• 46% of them are male and 54% of them are female.
• 7% of the youths are below 17 years old.
• 13% are between 18 to 22 years old.
• 37% are between 23 to 27 years old.
• 39% are between 28 to 32 years old.

Employement Status:

• 40.75% of them have a job.
• 40.41% of them are still studying and not working.
• 15.54% of them are unemployed and looking for a job.
• 3.29% of them are unemployed but not looking for a job.

Factors

Different people have different factors when it comes to choose a career:

• 39% of youths would choose a career based on ‘stable and high income’.
• 27.5% of youths would rather have ‘passion and interest’ in their career.
• 3.5% of youths love to have a ‘high position’ whereas 1% of youths want to have ‘fame’.

It seems that as our youths grow older, they become more ‘jaded’ and less idealistic than the younger counterparts.

Inspiration

Talking about inspiration, 32.5% of youths agree that they are their own inspiration to pursue their dream career. However, 26% of the youths mentioned parents and family as their inspiration, 16.5% mentioned their friends, 11% mentioned teacher, lecturer and professor, and 8% mentioned successful people, idols and celebrities as their inspiration.

Curricular Activities

I am sure you remember that we need to participate in extra curricular activities to show how active we can be. Now, it is time to see if there is any good of it. 52.35% of youths said that extra curricular activities do contribute to their dream career and 47.65% disagreed.

Millionaire

Who doesn’t want to be a millionaire? Most of our youths think that they can achieve their first million somewhere between the age 30 to 40.

Perks

Moving on to the perks they look forward to get from a company. 50% of youths want flexible working hours. Good choice! However, 45% of youths (below 17 years old) listed gadgets to be their preferred perk.

Difficulty

62.63% of youths believe that it is very difficult to get a job in Malaysia these days. This proves to be true but if you keep looking, you will be able to find what you are looking for.

Loyalty

90.27% believe in work loyalty, which is good. Most employers appreciate loyal employees and reward them handsomely.

Training and Guidance

95.05% of youths believe that it is the company’s responsibility to provide job training and guidance to new employees. Good news is most companies do provide training and guidance for new employees.

Incomes

Most of our youths believe in the importance of high and stable income especially those who are 33 years old and above with an astounding of 53% followed by those who are 28 to 32 years old with 47%.

Working Hours

Are you willing to work longer hours for a higher pay? 56% of youths are willing to do so.

Overall, we can conclude that those who are below 17 years old are dreamers. Those who are male and between 23 to 32 years old tend to be corporate crusaders. As for those who are female and between 23 to 32 years old, they tend to be holistic hunters.

So where are you standing right now?

The one and only pillar to captivate client interest and intrigue them to such a scale that they continue to keep coming back with new projects, is to entertain all those previous assignments with all your aces. This is a market strategy that will not fail and doesn’t fail. However, you are not a programmed machine, as a soul with flesh and blood, your desires in exchange of your work must commensurate with proper rewards, or in simple declaration.

The client also must reflect generously, so that your inner-self becomes suffonsified, sharpening and streamlining your talent to deal with more and more projects with constant proficiency. Below are a catalogue of 28 (25 from FreelanceSwitch + 3 from AsiaPartTime) genre of repayments you should ask from your client:

Asks from AsiaPartTime

1. KNOW THE CHAIN: Ask the client how did they came to know you, from where they’ve heard about you and your work, this helps to select more marketing options and fortifying the ones you’ve now.
2. ARRANGE THE PAPERS PROPERLY: You should write a formal contract paper where it must be stated that if they retreat from payment then what should be done, make it signed and stamped.
3. EXPORT THE EXPERIENCE WITH YOU: Ask the client to share the experience working with you to his friends and other contacts, they will remember and when they will need, they’ll contact you.

Asks from FreelanceSwitch.com:

ASK FOR A DOWN PAYMENT: No paucity of fraudulent clients in the venture of haunting down freelance figures and their privation. So, be smart, arrange a down payment and refund papers in case you fail to comply. This way, you save yourself from a probable debacle, and in any case, genuine clients will not voice any grievance. Normally, we request 50% of the total project cost as down payment.

ASK FOR EXTENSION OF DEADLINE IF REQUIRED: Sometimes you can get overboard with the assignments, thus declining your performance. If that happens, then take a break, do something fun, but do not lax too much, least you miss the deadline, but in any case if you do, then do not hesitate to ask for an extension, keeping yourself perked up is as important as dong the work itself.

CLARIFY THE REQUIREMENTS: You must be able to glean the exact expectations from the client. Client may not always be able to express it clearly, but aid him, assist him by asking things that may not seem obvious to him at first the place. This is a vital step of basically any project.

ASK FOR REGULAR EXPECTATION: To client, the product may seem ground-breaking some day and average the other day. But if you believe your work is consistent, then ask your client to have a consistent expectation. But ensure that you have some kind of quality measurement installment installed in place.

ASK FOR RECOGNITION : When the client is really over the moon with your performance, ask for some kind of recommendation letter, this will indeed help you in the future to get more assignments.

SEEK FOR REFERRALS: Ask your clients if they know anyone who could utilize your service, and ask if you are permitted to contact with them and introduce yourself.

SEEK FOR TESTIMONIALS: If you have a black and white proof of your work, from your satisfied client, then it boost your chances of getting more work, some good words written in a mere paper do hold a lot of strength. Please you like our community, please do give us a testimonial as well.

ASK FOR ANY SUGGESION: Develop a friendly relation with the client, feel free to ask for if anything he deems worth changing or enhancing.

CHURN OUT EXCLUSIVE TIME ZONE: If the client is always sticking like glue, then you may feel constrained and thus may not perform optimally, do not lay back, tell your client that you too need some time alone.

UTILIZE CLIENT’S BUSINESS: You can do freelance works in exchange of not only money, but also you can trade your skills with their own business or service they provide.

FEEDBACK IN THE FORM OF SURVEY: One great way to get feedback from client about your work is to prepare a survey and get it completed, and you also preserve it for later comparison. Here is some online survey templates you may try out.

CLEAR PAYMENT ISSUES: Do not keep those important payments for your work pending for too long. The client may have been forgotten, in that case it is your duty to remind him in an amicable manner.

SOCIAL NETWORKING: This is as important as normal life networking, create a profile in few popular social networking sites, and send its link to your clients who already have this kind of profile, then you’ll get to know people in a much quicker rate and vice versa. This is a much cogent way to get and manage contract outside your current country.

ASK FOR BONUS: Ask for a bonus of your work which you think you can do it in a very very professional diction with splendid offshoot. And obviously in a tactical manner.

TRY TO TIE UP A CONCRETE CONTACT: If your work is grand, client is satisfied to the brim, ask if you can also be taken as the permanent choice for that specific skill.

KNOW CLIENT’S EMAIL: Always good to have a way to communicate other than phone, and in modern days, any professional person do hold an email address. I would recommend you to use a CRM tools to keep track all your customer information. One of the best CRM tool are Zoho-CRM. It is a free CRM tool and it is comparable to SalesForce.com.

ASK FOR REFERENCES: Before hitting a deal with client, ask them if they’ve worked with other freelancers before or not. If you see a long list and most of them unhappy ending, then you better think twice before running into any paperwork.

ASK FOR A SHOUT-OUT: If the client already have any kind of blog site or ezine article, then ask them to put a shout-out on behalf of you.

LOOK FOR TIPS: If your client runs a successful business ask for tips from them, try to get more knowledge about how things flow.

ARRANGE A PROPER DEADLINE: Fix the deadline with enough time on hand, do not pressurize yourself, that may hamper work quality.

ASK FOR BUSINESS CARD : Don’t hesitate to ask for their business card, it’ll project what is the actual occupation of the client and will also show professionalism.

GET PHONE NUMBER: It is important that you hold on to client’s both office and personal contact number.

ASK FOR RECONSIDERATION: If the requirements look to gaudy and convoluted and the final objective can be achieved through a much simpler form of design of requirement, then approach the customer with your idea.

CLARIFY THE REQUIREMENTS: How much obfuscate may be the client’s idea seem, clear first.

LOOK FOR COMMENTS: If you run a blog or participate in social networking sites, ask the clients to leave a positive comment about your work if they are satisfied.

Following these steps can bring the best of performances out of you, and out of your client too.