A man checks job vacancies on a notice board outside the Today Top Star employment agency in Kamaryut township, Yangon. Filling senior company positions is difficult in the face of an under-skilled workforce and poor labour-market information among jobseekers, Yangon employment agents and business experts say.

KO Myint Aung knows the meaning of hard work. After graduating with a Bachelor of Engineering last year, the 24-year-old mechanic has been toiling six days a week in the dirt and heat of a heavy machinery company on the outskirts of Yangon.

Keeping his spirits up during his 9-5 grind is the confidence that a bigger paycheque awaits if he sticks through the low-paid early years of his chosen career.

“I am looking for a lucrative job. My salary at the moment is only K45,000 a month. I know it’s not much but I’m working to get job experience,” Ko Myint Aung said on a recent Sunday off.

“These days it’s so hard to get a job if you don’t have work experience.”
A little elbow grease can ease one’s rise through the labour market, but a range of factors, from applicants’ job-seeking skills to a work culture based on seniority, are holding back many Myanmar workers from securing the employment they want – as well as keeping companies from filling positions with the most capable staff, experts say.

U Aye Kyaw, principal of the MHR training centre in Yangon, which offers courses in management, business administration and human resources development, said there was an oversupply of unskilled workers and not enough with the abilities needed to fill senior management roles.

“There are a lot of vacancies at the clerical and supervisory management levels,” U Aye Kyaw said. “There is also some demand for middle management staff, as evidenced by the job vacancy notices we often see in newspapers. But there is both low demand and low supply at the senior management level.”

Despite little turnover of workers at the higher echelons of a business, U Aye Kyaw said when vacancies do arise there can be problems filling them due to a lack of qualified applicants.

“Last year, I interviewed about 30 people wanting to be brand manager for a cosmetics company. Not one of them met the requirements I think are needed for the post,” he said. “I still haven’t been able to fill that job even now.

“Mid-level management requires problem-solving skills, decision-making ability, leadership and the capacity for team-building, as well as educational qualifications,” added the veteran business educator, who over the years has guided six MHR students to world-first results in the United Kingdom’s Business Administration Diploma.

In the absence of applicants with core management skills and faced with a work culture that emphasises advancement for long-serving employees, U Aye Kyaw said companies were promoting people into positions beyond their ability – and this was hurting businesses.

“What I find strange in Myanmar is that some companies are appointing managers who have served with the company for the longest time to senior posts like CEO (chief executive officer), COO (chief operating officer), and GM (general manager).

“Giving someone a senior management job based solely on the length of his service in one department is very dangerous,” he said.

While sticking with a firm for year after year should perhaps not guarantee a climb up the corporate ladder, there is a strong case to be made for practical work experience rather than reliance on academic results, human resource specialists say.

Yangon employment agencies said young people coming to the job market with a pile of certificates but little experience would likely have trouble getting the job they want.

“It is difficult to find positions for these people,” said a recruiter at one Yangon job agency that finds work for people in Myanmar and abroad.

“There is this misconception that the more certificates you have the easier it is to find a job.

“This is not the case – most employers prefer people to have work experience in preference to a long list of degrees and certificates,” she said, requesting the company not be identified.

A human resources consultant at another employment agency said certificates presented by applicants frequently give no indication of the jobseeker’s true skills.

“I recommend young people emphasise their real skills rather than rely on certificates,” the consultant said, also asking not to be named.

U Min Oo, regional sales manager for Myanmar Vineyard Management, said he worked his way up to his current position by teaching himself the basics of sales while honing his skills in the workplace.

His qualification – a Bachelor of Science with a geography major – has never been applied in his career.

“When I started working as a salesman in 1994, I couldn’t attend any marketing courses because I couldn’t find one at that time.

“I learned marketing by reading whatever books I could get and I compared what I learnt with actual field experience. I shared those experiences with colleagues and thought of the best ways to satisfy customers,” U Min Oo said.
“There is no place to learn something like the workplace – experience is invaluable.”

MHR head U Aye Kyaw said many young people getting started in the workforce and those wanting to change jobs often don’t know where to look.

“I think the reason why some people can’t find even a clerical job is not because there is a lack of opportunity out there but because they don’t know where the job vacancies are, and they don’t know how to apply for them.

“Most people don’t think to check for jobs at a company’s notice board (usually inside a company’s premises). They just look at newspaper ads. Not all vacancies are advertised in newspapers or journals. For instance, job openings at NGOs are usually put on their notice boards,” U Aye Kyaw said.

Once a vacancy has been found, many then miss out on the position because their résumé or application form is not in order.

“According to my experience, only about one percent of CVs include a “career goal” and less than 10pc include references.

“Although I can’t say for sure that a CV that includes references will mean the applicant is hired, it certainly enforces the credibility of other information being provided,” U Aye Kyaw said.

“If papers are dog-eared, torn or stained, they usually get rejected based just on that,” he added, warning that people should also put the effort into preparing for an interview.

“They should learn about the nature of the job they’ve applied for and about the company's background, its goals and trends.”

The advice may seem basic, but U Aye Kyaw insisted simple mistakes were costing people important career opportunities.

“Some people don’t get hired, not because they aren’t qualified or there isn’t a vacancy, but because of the above errors that can easily be avoided,” he said.

Ko Myint Aung, the mechanic, envisions moving on to a better-paid job when his contract expires next August, but for now he is still learning how to put theory into practice.

“At school, most of what I learned was from a text book – there was very little practical work. So when I started this job I was afraid to even open up an engine.

“Now I’m becoming more familiar with engines every day, which is crucial to my career development,” he said.