This morning, there was a live session on the local radio station on job related issues.

Today we are facing two scenarios:

1. Employers find it hard to hire people for jobs due to higher salary and perks demanded by job seekers.
2. Job seekers find it hard to get a job due to low wages and lack of perks offered by employers.

Personally, I think that the job market has to be more transparent if employers want to hire the right people for the job. This is a fair deal. In fact, there should be a healthy competition between companies in order to create a better job scene and make salaries be on par with current market.

To become a high income society, we can have minimum wage to help the hard core poor. What about the middle income earners? Can we have mandatory transparency in job listings by spelling out the exact salary, working hours, over time pay and benefits?

Salaried workers in Malaysia are often cheated by employers. They were hired for a specific job but ended up doing a lot more without a pay rise. Some employers think they are the KING and they own the workers hence they can demand them to do anything. At the same time, they rake in more and more profits.

If the company is not doing well and not making money, isn’t it something wrong with the business strategy or people handling the company? Some business owners still enjoy high pay and paid holidays but they tell the staff the company is losing money and therefore benefits are cut and bonuses withheld.

Yes, people can choose to leave if they are not happy with their current jobs. For those who try, they find that a lot of time is wasted attending interviews to find that companies did not allocate that much budget for the vacancies. Then why are HR departments calling up people who are not within their budget for interviews? Are they trying to show that they’re doing their job? This is unfair to job seekers, especially for experienced hires who probably need to take leave to attend interviews.

I think it is high time companies wake up and stop abusing the lack of guidelines and rules in hiring processes. I hope the government do something about this. A property or car advertisement must list out the price. Why can’t we have job posting spelling out salary?

When you pay peanuts, you get monkeys. If higher pay is not possible, perhaps some form of compensation in other forms like flexible working hours, 4-day work week, shorter working hours etc. To some people, money is not everything. They welcome flexibility in order for them to stay in the job market and attend to their personal needs at the same time.

A creative business man will come out with creative ways of running business. If everybody in this country stick to the old ways, it will be hard for us to progress.