PETALING JAYA, Jan 17 — Despite a surplus of information technology graduates, a staggering 96 per cent of employers in Malaysia surveyed by online recruitment firm Jobstreet complain of a shortage of applicants.

The reason for this is due to the lack of jobseekers with suitable skills to meet the requirements of a changing landscape where companies are going digital, Jobstreet said in its 2019 jobs outlook released today.

Jobstreet Malaysia country Malaysia Gan Bock Herm told a press briefing that IT and digitalisation may not necessarily entail the same skills.

"IT is broad... It’s not the same,” he said.

The top five "digital skills” sought by employers are for digital marketing, software and application development, e-commerce, big data analytics, and database.

The survey did not state how many of these jobs are available or data that would provide a more accurate picture of the demand for workers with digital skills.

Just last month, Khazanah Research Institute (KRI) released its findings from a key survey that found the job market skewed by a skills and employment mismatch, which was among the chief reason pulling salaries down.

An an example, KRI’s study of testimonies gathered from thousands of young employers who hired graduates in IT-related fields showed a fifth of recruits working in unrelated sectors holding lowly-paid jobs.

But Jobstreet’s Gan is confident that the digital economy has a promising future, touting areas like cybersecurity and e-commerce where the prospects for employment is high — provided that graduates have the right skills.

"It’s real...it will be big,” he said.

Digital and automation technologies is expected to create more jobs for the year ahead as hiring prospects seem positive with nearly half of employers surveyed said they would increase headcount in 2019.

Inversely, 18 per cent said they plan to lay off workers this year while the remaining 39 per cent saw no changes to happen.

The majority of the hiring activity is set to happen in the first half of the year, with January until March expected to register a 90 per cent recruitment followed by a second drive from April to June, at 76 per cent.