Take GES numbers with a pinch of salt.

There are many that won't tell the truth, or blow up numbers to make their school look like it should command a higher salary.

You will also be competing with people doing traineeships, what makes you think you can command a higher salary than them?

Face it, anything than the top graduates after 2020 will have it really hard.

Go for those reputed companies if you want higher starting pay.

My HR sent me few resumes of local grads that state expected salaries of 2.5k and below for interviewing. Think there are alot of ppl looking for jobs.

If that company can only afford to pay traineeship salary, your first concern should be whether the company is gonna collapse or not. Besides govt sector, a company only offering traineeship speaks volumes about the boss, probably another stingy SME lowballing locals even before COVID.

This is exactly why everyone siam SME unless they really bo bian... Pay peanuts get monkeys, pandemic or not, this won't change.

The real question we should be asking is if we want our local grads to rot under an SME that provides 0 growth or opportunities.

I see ignorant fresh grads posting here. SME contributes 50 percent of the GDP and hire 70 percent of the workforce. The employees (especially fresh grads) should be grateful to business owners who are capable to start a business and employ you guys. Without the SMEs, who is going to employ you all? You guys are just lucky that the good government stepped in to offer you all some protection. In a real world, 2K can get us a master/phd hirees with experience. Some still want to ask for 3K? My view is 2.5K is already a good enough salary. Stay hungry. Pls read and learn from the boss abt his interviewing experience with the 7 employees and learn some lessons from it.

Don’t listen to all these boomers.

Any offer below 3.2K (which is equivalent to a traineeship), it’s probably a shithole place of a job.

When all else fails, just swallow up your pride and join Big 4 audit. Even though the pay and working hours is bad, it still has way more growth opportunities than working in a pathetic SME that can’t even afford to pay you the market standards.

glad to be in the 30% of the workforce earning more than your pittance of an SME :)
"without SMEs, who is going to employ you all"? PLEASE. NOBODY WANTS TO WORK IN YOUR COMPANY OTHER THAN MALAYSIANS AND OTHER NEIGHBOURING COUNTRIES. FFS. this attitude is EXACTLY why SMEs remain SMEs and i choose to join a global firm and shun SMEs. talk so much about hunger. why not speak for yourselves - why is your company so poor and shitty that you have to whine about not being able to pay a decent wage? i don't see large companies scrimping on wages. REFLECT.

Not hungry enough. Pls read up on what the learned entrepreneur had to say about the attitude of the 7 local employees he had to interview. The younger generation is leading a very sheltered lives, probably still living off the hardworking parents whom most likely are working hard with / for local SME entrepreneurs to create the very stable and conducive greenhouse environment that houses the strawberries. We need to be rugged to survive. As much as I respect and admire the good leadership for creating a conducive environment for locals, I hope they can expose our young to the hungry and innovative workforce out there. 3K for a fresh grad? I believe 3K can get us a few top IT talents from developing countries where the young are much hungrier. The younger generation should really buck up or I fear we will lose our competitiveness.

I guess SMEs not hungry enough for local talent. You want get top IT talents from developing countries for 3k, then go ahead and try.

Growth opportunities as an employee? If you were that enthusiastic about pursuing growth, you should start your own business like the many great / brave entrepreneurs out there. Because of these brave souls, 70 percent of the population can have a salary to look after their families. I encourage you to step out and be a leader/giver for our people rather than being a minion in a large MNC and complaining about our SMEs