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registered, four of which are among the at least eight unicorn start-ups across Southeast Asia, Indonesia will inevitably need more tech-savvy human resources. The dualism of state and private universities continues to be a major issue in the workplace. However, the “digital boom” phenomenon in the country has started to change the equilibrium, with university status starting to become irrelevant and a larger portion of private university graduates enjoying greater employment opportunities in start-up companies.
According to a survey by Jakarta-based recruitment consultant Kalibrr Indonesia, there is more appetite from start-up employers in hiring graduates from private universities than state ones. The survey, which was conducted between January and June 2019, questioned 400 employers — 200 start-ups and 200 big enterprises — in the technology and banking fields in Greater Jakarta.
“Based on the number of candidates who were shortlisted at either start-ups or enterprises, private university graduates had a bigger chance to be invited [for interview] at start-up companies compared to state university graduates [2 percent vs 1 percent],” Andrew Nugraha Patty, Kalibrr Indonesia’s marketing consultant and head of data, told The Jakarta Post recently.
“For IT-related jobs at start-ups, graduates from universities such as Binus University [24 percent], Gunadarma University [22 percent] and Telkom University [10 percent] had a bigger chance to be invited for interview compared to graduates from UI [the University of Indonesia] [17 percent], IPB [Bogor Agricultural University] [12 percent] or ITS [10 November Institute of Technology, Surabaya] [8 percent],” he said. Andrew was of the opinion that employers tended to look at references or recommendations in the recruitment process, instead of candidates’ university background. Some 43 percent of employers consider references to be the determinant factor, followed by cover letter (41 percent), work experience (41 percent), grade point average (31 percent), organizational activities (24 percent) and university background (21 percent).
Andrew added that the interview phase was also an important process that employers paid attention to, regardless of a candidate’s university background.
“[From the interview] employers can measure candidates’ soft skills based on their previous experience, such as communication, time management and so on,” he said. A Jakarta-based power bank sharing start-up, ReCharge, also said the interview was one of the main processes in recruitment, instead of looking at university background as the main consideration.
“[We] do not look at the [university] status. The most important things are experience and skills,” ReCharge Indonesia human resources and general affairs executive, Hendro Suryantoro, told the Post.
In Jakarta, private universities have been preparing graduates with soft skills and experience before graduation through several policies. Some have even opened cutting-edge study programs which are rarely found at state universities.
At Esa Unggul University (UEU) in West Jakarta, it is a prerequisite for students to have a minimum of 24 certificates of achievement upon graduation.
“It motivates me to be a high achieving student,” said 19-year-old Octa Ridwan of