High demand in legal, banking, engineering and tech roles

According to Robert Walters, legal, banking, engineering, and technology roles will be in high demand in the Klang Valley due to the implementation of new government policies and the increase in digitalisation of business processes.

Sharpen Skills To Stay Ahead

In its 2019 Salary Survey, it said engineering and mechanical skills will continue to be in high demand in Penang as the state maintains its position as a manufacturing hub. Top talents in supply chain with good communication skills will be highly favoured. Other skills in demand include leadership, mechanical design, embedded software and system development.

Job seekers in Malaysia seeking middle to top management positions will also need to sharpen their soft skills in leadership, communication, business partnering, business strategy and learning agility to increase their chances to secure these high yield positions as talents in these areas are very limited.

."Hiring managers in the industrial sector will be increasingly looking for professionals with strong functional experience, strategic mind sets and strong leadership skills," said Robert Walters' country manager for Malaysia Kimberlyn Lu.

The Digital Transformation

Digitalisation will continue to be a key market driver and strong information technology talent will be highly sought. This is in line with the new government’s direction where compliance to regulation imposed to reduce waste and lower operational expenses are expected to be the order of the day.

Companies will look forward to hire human resources professionals with more than generalist or administrative experience

Technical knowledge is also a key requirement as digital transformation and automation of various key sectors are still ongoing and professionals need to have the ability to take advantage on a variety of technological and analytical tools for vibrant data analysis.

"We foresee a rise in SMEs, corporate organisations and multinational companies (MNCs) adopting automation, Artificial intelligence (AI) and digitalisation in their business processes in 2019, hence, we will see a rise in demand for talents with a good mix of soft skills and technical know-how.

"The marketplace is getting more competitive, pushing companies to embark on aggressive digital transformation initiative to stay relevant and improve business processes, hence, companies are expected to increase investment in new systems and talent development to create greater presence online," Lu added, quoting the survey.

Legal Sector In Demand

The legal and compliance sector is going to become a “hot sector” for 2018/2019 as hiring activity will pick up for legal, corporate secretarial and compliance professionals following implementation of policies by the new government.

"Candidates with specialised skills in Anti-Money Laundering (AML), Combating the Financing of Terrorism (CFT) in senior positions will remain high in demand. With re-introduction of sales and service tax (SST) strong demand for tax lawyers can also be expected moving forward.

"Hiring managers will continue to seek in-house legal counsels who are equipped with mergers and acquisitions or corporate commercial experience and company secretaries with strong communication skills to act as liaison to both internal and external stakeholders. The salary hikes to remain within the region of 20-25% as reference for candidates looking for a career change," the survey shows.

Strong Demands In Other Sectors

In the banking and insurance sectors, there will be a strong demand for skills in business such as AI and machine learning, data analytics, risk management, statistics or mathematics.

Engineering and manufacturing sector will also see strong demand for engineering professionals with international experience and especially working experience with MNCs. Candidates with leadership, people development and learning agility skills will be in high demand as well. Job movers are expected to garner salary rise of 20% to 25%.

Technology and digital transformation is another hot sector for 2019 as the study shows that the IT talent pool remains minimal. Hiring managers will be searching for candidates with multiple skill sets, such as DevOps and full-stack development.

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