Malaysian research agency MIMOS and the ministry of higher education (MoHE) expect a 75 per cent success rate in matching the country’s fresh graduates to the right job as a result of a newly-launched initiative. The two parties are just about certain of that percentage point, given the agreement they signed in October.
Under the agreement, MIMOS and MoHE launched an apprenticeship programme—called Domain Expertise Acceleration (CODE8)—aimed at harnessing fresh talent, which is industry-ready in the information and communications technology (ICT) sector.
“CODE8 is part of MIMOS efforts in growing globally competitive indigenous industries, which includes developing domain experts,” said MIMOS president and chief executive officer, Dato’ Abdul Wahab Abdullah.
“The development programme is aimed at ensuring Malaysia has a talent pool that has the right skills and is in the right place at the right time.
The programme helps the apprentices gain valuable life skills, which in turn improves productivity and performance in the workplace. The future growth of Malaysia’s talent pool including domain experts relies on this home-built supply chain.”
CODE8 is a mentoring and coaching training programme designed to provide workplace experience to fresh local and foreign qualified graduates in the fields of software engineering, computer engineering, electrical engineering, artificial intelligence, wireless communications and/or knowledge engineering.
Increasing the number of knowledge professionals
Wahab said apprentices would be provided the opportunity to be involved in real-life projects with a guide of a RSE to develop and evolve in their favoured discipline. “Under the agreement, MoHE will provide funding for CODE8 while MIMOS will provide the technical expertise. At the end of the one-year programme, MIMOS will assist in finding job placements for all apprentices in line with their competencies.”
“MIMOS and MoHE’s CODE8 is in line with the national aspiration of increasing the number of researchers, scientists and engineers (RSE) from 18 per 10,000 workforce in 2008 to 50 per 10,000 workforce by 2010,” he said.
