Wednesday, December 23, 2015

What Do Industries Need from University Students?

Yesterday, I attended a workshop held by the faculty where I work for – Faculty of Economics and Business, UNPAD. There were two speakers from industry i.e. from Bank Jawa Barat & Banten (BJB) and Mediatrac, Inc. The first institution is banking while the second is big data analysis company. They delivered two things namely testimony and industry’s hope from FEB Unpad’s students. The two speakers, namely Mr. Isa and Mr. Regi Wahyu, said that there are at least four things that firms need from college students. The following paragraphs explain the points.


The first thing needed by BJB from the students is leadership. The fresh grads who have a good leadership skill will be able to manage the firm well. This skill can be mastered through integrated learning both in class and outside the class. The university curriculum needs to accommodate industry requirement and thanfully my study program has been implementing it. Leadership skill can be attained by joining university’s extracurricular or student organization. The students who have experiences in organization shall later have plus point when they work at any firm. Aside, they will have more opportunity to be positioned in the higher level of management. The students who lack this skill shall find some sort of difficulty to get higher position.


The second thing that is required by industry from university students is communication skill especially communicating in foreign language such as English. I would say that most of Indonesian college students have this barrier. Unable to properly communicate in English shall later hamper the carrier of the employees. Therefore, university needs to let students get more English exposure. This can be done by carrying out exchange program and by providing scholarship to have short course or study abroad. Aside from formal approach mentioned, English can be studied in communities, too. I believe that learning at regular basis is the best approach and we can do it at English clubs or communities. At BJB, English is definitely required when employees communicate with investors from overseas.

The third most important thing is appearance. This does not mean that successful students are pretty much the handsome and gorgeous ones. This means that to keep ourselves confident in front of people is indeed crucial. The skill such as table manner skill is needed, too. In order the students to learn this, university is highly recommended provide table manner course or maybe golf course and the like. Anyway, this must not always in the curriculum, so the students may learn it in campus organization.

The fourth thing is network. This means that during the study, the students are better to build network and link. This is done by interacting with as many people as possible. Again, this can be done in campus organization. Therefore, joining campus organization is a-must-thing to do by students. Mr. Regi called it beyond the textbook.

Those are the points that I noted from the workshop. I personally agree with them because the practitioners have different point of view from us. They are able to see the angle that the lecturers or academicians cannot. The points they delivered are really inspiration for us to improve our education.