Malaysia IT career opportunity analysis based on classified advertisement in the New Straits Times (2000–2008)

Abstract

Many studies worldwide have been conducted to provide insight on the trend and changes of IT job market. IT job market is said to be moving along with the fast changing pace of Information Technology itself. In Malaysia, research done to identify and analyze the IT job opportunities is lacking. In this study, the jobs opportunities, jobs skills, qualifications and working experiences that are sought from applicants in IT industry were analyzed. The method that was implied in this study is conceptual content analysis research based on newspaper advertising. The newspaper that was chosen was The New Straits Times and the advertisements were analyzed between the years of 2000 and 2008. From these 9 years of advertisements, the results of the analysis have shown several changes. The findings show that job position for IT management category has the highest percentage of advertisements while web programming has dominated in job skill requirement. Degree holders are mainly sought after in the job market whereas their experience is not specified in most of the advertisements.