[Survey results] Guess how many Malaysians have jobs totally unrelated to their studies?

A while back, we asked ugaiz to reminisce about your long gone childhoods by telling us about your cita-citas when you were growing up, and whether you got to achieve dem career goals at the end.

We ran the Silap Cita-Cita Survey with our longtime friends from Taylor’s University, and got some awesome stats regarding how many of us have jobs that are totally different from our degrees, how long we stay at a job, which industries have the happiest employees, and so much more!

So before we get into the nitty gritty, let’s skodeng who took this survey:

• Total Respondents: 1,088
• Survey duration: 13 Sept – 26 Sept 2021
• Gender Demographic: Male (61.8%), Female (37.1%), Others (1.1%)
• Age Demographic: majority are aged 30-39 (42.5%) and 21-29 (41.9%), but we have respondents from all age groups (below 17 and above 60)
• Languages Spoken: English (84.1%), Chinese dialects (43.6%), Malay (39.1%), Indian dialects, Others (3.2%) – yes it’s more than 100%, cause Malaysians are polyglots!
• Top locations: Selangor(42.9%), KL (22.4%), Penang (7.4%), Johor (5.5%), Sarawak (4.4%), but we got respondents from every state except for Perlis 🙁

Now that the boring stuff is out of the way, lesgo!

 

1. Malaysians’ top cita-cita choices were Doctor, Engineer, and…. Firefighter?!

You would think it’s either doctor, lawyer, engineer, or disappointment. That’s not completely wrong though, cause out of all our respondents:

1. 34.3% of kids wanted to be doctors
2. 24.1% had dreams of being police officers, firefighters, and soldiers
3. 23.3% wanted to be engineers

Meanwhile, becoming a lawyer is much further down the list at #6, with only 16.2% marking this as their childhood ambition.

But while most kids were busy planning out their careers, 4% of our respondents had a different ambition in mind: Getting married. And to our surprise, this number was the highest among our Chinese speaking respondents 😲!

 

2. Sadly though, most Malaysians did not achieve their childhood dreams :'(

Most of us probably thought we were going to achieve those childhood dreams at some point in our lives because we were all young and hopeful once :’D

Buuuut sadly only 11.5% of people achieved their ambitions at the end of the day, with another 20.3% doing something related to their cita-cita, and the majority (55.7%) not being anywhere close to achieving their childhood dreams.

Interestingly, most of those who were able to achieve their childhood cita-cita said they ended up in their careers through careful planning; and most of these future minded youngsters turned out to reeeaalllyyy like their jobs, which means that career planning does seem to help people discover their future interests in life!!

Or so we thought, because…

 

3. More than half of Malaysians basically burned their uni/college degrees.

Okay la, we all know that a lot can change over the years with life being the way it is, but we didn’t expect to find out that 58% of our respondents had completely different careers compared to what they studied in university, especially since getting a degree is so expensive nowadays 😓

However, we did also get quite a few comments from our respondents who said that their interests changed while they were still in university.

So we then looked at how many Malaysians who were brave (or privileged) enough to change their courses during their uni days, and found out that the vast majority of Malaysians (81.6%) were loyal to the courses they chose to study in uni. However, for our respondents who did change their course, their reasons were:

• 35.5% of them realized that they didn’t like the field they were studying
• 11% said that the course ended up being too difficult for them (#mood)
• 25.6% changed courses because they failed their original course; and our male respondents are 2x more likely to fail uni than the girls (not we simply say one ah, you guys gave us the data ah)

But of course, changing your course of study isn’t always the best option because you might need to spend even more time relearning everything and maybe even end up paying more for the change 🙁

Which is why Taylor’s University has curated the Taylor’sphere, where they encourage students to branch out and explore beyond their course of study through various learning modules like mixing & matching their subjects, multidisciplinary group projects, and even more that we will touch on at the end of the article! 😉

 

4. The average Malaysian switches jobs once every 2.5 years!

After doing some heavy math, we discovered that the average Malaysian tukar kerja roughly once every 2 years and 7 months, and stays in a certain industry for an average of 5 years and 8 months.

We compared these numbers between different age groups to see if there are any major differences between them, and we found that:

• Those who’ve been working for 1-3 years tend to stay at a job for 1 year & 7 months on average
• Those working for 4-9 years tend to stay at their jobs for 2+ years
• Those working for 10-20 years tend to stay for 3+ years, and it gets even longer as you get older! *eh don’t think dirty k*

This trend is also similar when it comes to switching industries, where those who are just starting out their careers (between 1-9 years of experience) tend to switch between industries more, and the average number of years that someone stays in an industry gets progressively longer the more that they’ve been working.

 

5. Malaysians who were happiest with their jobs were mostly working for… GOMEN?!

Some of us love our jobs, while others may dread going to work every single day. So, we asked ugaiz how y’all felt about your jobs to see how satisfied Malaysians were with their career choices.

Unsurprisingly, most Malaysians were just “okay” with their career picks, with 46.8% giving their jobs a solid 3/5 star rating. This was especially true in Kelantan, where ALL of the respondents felt pretty “meh” about their jobs.

On the other hand, 37.8% of Malaysians did like their jobs, with 27.4% giving their careers a 4/5 star rating on YELP, while the other 10.4% gave their jobs a full 5/5!

And so we decided to check out which industries these very satisfied Malaysians were working in, and found out that most of the respondents who loved their jobs were working in the entertainment industry, and for… the government.

If you’re wondering why these people are so happy working in gomen, they said it’s because they get to learn new skills, have job security, and most importantly…

Looks like it’s time for this writer to reconsider her career options 🚪🏃💨  #cili-bye

 

6. If Malaysians could time travel, they would most likely change what they did during their uni days.

Finally, after looking at how Malaysians felt about their education and careers, most our respondents confessed that they wished they did things differently while they were still studying:

• 33.7% wished that they explored more options in university
• 32.6% of respondents wish they pursued a different course of study
• 26.4% wished they decided on a direction earlier in life
• 21.8% wished their uni/college allowed them to try different courses and practical coursework
• 20.6% of people wished they worked harder during university

For this last point, we compared this information with our age demographics and found out that this was wayyy higher for those within the Generation X and Generation Z categories, and Millennials were more content with the amount of effort that they had put in during their university days.

 

Finding your path takes time, tribulation, and trial & error

From our survey, it’s easy to see that most of us don’t really know where our passions lie when we’re young, and can spend years finding our footing. So if you ever look back at your past and question your career decisions, know that you’re definitely not alone…

That’s why Taylor’s University wants to change that for the next generation, by providing them with the opportunity to explore their options with Taylor’sphere! So instead of just choosing a degree that only focuses on one discipline, Taylor’s students get to have a taste of different industries and explore their passions!

It’s not all theory either, because Taylor’s is a huge believer in letting their students gain real world experiences. Aside from getting to mix-and-match their subjects, minors, and majors, Taylor’s students also get access to a variety of labs and facilities where they can work on inter-disciplinary projects. So if you’re a business student with an interest in culinary arts, you’re totally welcome to use labs to test out whether your fried chicken is crunchier than KFC’s.

Students can also bring their ideas to life using world class facilities provided by Taylor’s. There’s the Me.reka Makerspace, a workshop with 3D printers, laser cutting machines and more, where students get to design prototypes (like this 19-year-old student who made RM400 PCs and donated them to B40 families). If they wanna commercialize their projects or pitch to investors, then there’s Bizpod. And if students would like to commercialize their Intellectual Property (IP), then Taylor’s Research & Enterprise is here to help.

Many of Taylor’s degrees also have a Work Based Learning option where students spend the last year of their degree working at an industry partner company. Whereas for students who are looking to start-up their own startups early, some degrees will soon offer an entrepreneurship option where students can opt to start a business during their degree!

With access to a variety of facilities, a broad-based education, the right networks, and a practical learning curriculum, Taylor’sphere aims to nurture their students intellectually, mentally, and emotionally, so that students would be able to experience their own optimal development and growth before entering the workforce!

So, if you’re looking for a well-rounded educational experience that lets you experiment and find your potential, then you should definitely click here to learn how you can begin your journey at Taylor’s University!

And as usual, what’s a Cilisos survey without bonus stats! So here are some extra findings that didn’t make the cut for all you data nerds out there:

• 44.4% of people living in Singapore like their jobs because they feel like they’re earning good money and are doing what they like. Now.. we don’t know if these people are Malaysians living in Singapore or just kiasu Singaporeans who decided to kepoh in our survey. But either way, thanks for bragging about your exchange rate :’D
• Malaysians’ top 4 career priorities are: money (70.6%), work-life balance (48.7%), working environment (42.2%), and career growth (41.1%).
  • Indian dialect speakers cared more about career growth than work-life balance, while Malay speakers felt the opposite.
  • Chinese dialect speakers aren’t the only money-faces, as all dialect speakers cared about money equally across the board.
• The most tembak-ed answer students put for ambitions is accountant (35%) and teacher (30.7%). Very “creative”…
• Then there’s also 2.4% of respondents who bercita-cita to one day become a politician.
• 49.2% of respondents went to uni just to get a certificate, but came out of uni with important soft skills such as interpersonal skills and adulting 101.
• 1 out of 5 respondents wished that they spent more time in uni making friends with the datuk’s son *laughs in TV3 drama pukul 7*
• We also found out that some Malaysians were feeling pretty dry, because here’s what they gained from their university experience:
  • These two people decided to do Tinder IRL and found their forever person in uni:
  • Meanwhile, 0.97% of Malaysians chose their uni/college based on the best worst reason… because the uni got a lot of lenglui/lengzai.