It's the language, "stupid"

Not meaning to offend anyone, the above is a spin-off of the much quoted "It's the economy, stupid", an often used phrase during elections in the US. A reader, by the name of Kal, sent me this link to a short Edge interview with Piyush Gupta, the current CEO of Citibank / Citigroup Malaysia (at least I think that's who the journalist is interviewing). No great insights but worth comments worth repeating since he is the country head of a major banking group and his comments on Malaysia is likely to carry beyond our shores, now and also in the future.

His main take on the reason as to why some graduates find it difficult to find employment in the financial services in Malaysia:

The single biggest issue that the financial services industry has with graduates is language. The lack of English-language skills is a big impediment. If you find me a graduate who speaks English well, it is very easy to take him in and do the training in the banking context. We can find people with the thinking pro-cess, that's not really a problem, but language skills are a huge issue

His take on the disparity between local and foreign graduates:

There is, but a large part of the disparity is driven by language. Language refers not only to communications but also to confidence. The big difference is that graduates who come back from overseas are just that much more confident because they interact easily in the language and they don't have a problem communicating and speaking. As for local graduates, if you see them through the analytical thinking process — and I've done this — they stack up. But if you think of them as a performer in terms of being able to deliver, lead and manage people, they can't stack up. So, it is not an IQ [intelligence quotient] deficiency, it is an EQ [emotional quotient] issue.

I found it interesting that he referred to language ability in a more holistic manner - to include confidence, leadership and EQ.

Finally, his take on soft skills:

Aside from language skills, the other thing is the ability to weave a lot more professional development into academia. While I think that a general degree is good and broad, if you can overlay that with professional development like presentation and negotiation skills, it would definitely create a far more employable person.

Personally, I think this is an area which the US system really excels at. You're encouraged to speak out and present your ideas (even when they are not very good). At the graduate level, I'm amazed at the number of opportunities in which graduate students get to present their work to each other and to faculty in a setting which encourages debate, discussion and criticism. I'll be amazed if I can find a similar kind of intellectual atmosphere among graduate students in Malaysia or other parts of Asia for that matter.

So the conclusion to the matter? That our policies to teach English in our local universities (and before that) is leading to a dichotomy in employability between foreign and local grads.

I'll probably write a more extensive post on this issue later but for now the thoughts and insights of Mr. Gupta will suffice.

Caveat: Citibank employs many of its management staff from top universities in the UK, US and Australia so I would imagine that the quality of recruits would be better than the average foreign grad.