After settling on the seat in an aircraft heading towards Kota Kinabalu (KK), a middle-aged man sitting next to me started talking to me…
“Hi, are you going to have a trip in KK?”, the man asked in a welcoming tone.
“Nop, I’m pursuing my course in University Malaysia Sabah.” I replied.
“?? Was there an university in Sabah??”, the man asked with a pair of dubious eyes looking at me despite being a Sabahan, who stayed in Ranau, Sabah.
“Yes, it had been established ten years and above from today.” I confidently answered.
The following dialog would be the culminating point, namely climax of this post:
“Oh I see. We (our company) never and will not hire any employees graduated from local universities.”, the man said with a hint of sarcasm along with slight chuckling.
Frankly speaking, these unexpected and devastating words really turned me into a disillusioning and upset mode. Soon after it, I was further informed that the man was one of the higher-ups in a well-known listed company engaging in construction sector. The man added he had been pursuing the degree of engineering in England in 1970s.
“Sir, then can you kindly set out the reasons of not employing local graduates???”, I bombarded.
“It’s simply because they lack of wider and broader field of vision.”, he responded patiently. Afterward, he took out a gameboy of latest edition and became steeped in it throughout the flight.
Upon the ‘ball’ was returned to me, my thinking impliedly encircled at a question that are we (local undergraduate) resorting to failure and high possibility of unemployment due to our low competitiveness in the end?
I pressingly craved for an explicit answer ……
