The Malaysian Insight

RACIAL discrimination is rife in the private sector with Indian candidates getting the fewest job opportunities compared with Malays and Chinese, according to a study.

Centre for Governance and Political Studies (Cent-GPS) found that there is a great difference between the races to land a job interview even though they have similar qualification. 

Two individuals, a male and a female, representing each race used make-up to change their skin colour. 

There were four female candidates where two represented a Malay woman with and one without tudung and three male candidates from each race. Each candidate applied to 547 jobs in all sectors. 

The team made up resumes which show the same qualifications, such as graduates with bachelor’s in business, second class upper honours from a local private university and having undertaken a three-month internship at a reputable institution. 

An Indian male candidate only received 20 call-backs out of the total jobs applied while the Malay received 43 and Chinese (179).

Meanwhile, for female candidates the call-back was Indian (49), Malay with tudung (50), Malay without hijab (70) and Chinese (240). 

“In a different perspective, Nicola (Chinese female) only needs to apply to roughly two jobs for her to get one call-back. Nur Sakinah, Malay candidate with hijab needs to apply to around 13 jobs to get one call-back. 

“Again quite devastatingly, Thivakar, our Indian male candidate, needs to apply to 28 jobs to get just one call-back for interview. If Thivakar applied to 200 jobs in one month, he would only get seven call-backs,” said the Cent-GPS director Zaidel Baharuddin today.

The candidates were also fluent in Mandarin but Zaidel said the language is not a real requirement in most vacancies.

Zaidel said more Malaysians will be marginalised because of their ethnicity if the trend continues. 

“This study is important because it shows us just how discriminatory our private sector really is. 

“Even as candidates with the same qualifications, education and experiences, the ethnicity of a candidate still plays a vital role in the success of a job application.

“Hardworking Indian and Malay students will not get the opportunity they deserve, creating a dangerous future of inequality and social instability,” he added. – March 7, 2019.