There is no shortage of well-educated and academically intelligent Malaysians who graduate from top universities in the US, UK and Australia every year. And a surprising number of them do head back home to Malaysia where they will start their career paths.  And a larger majority of graduates, including those with engineering degrees, will look for jobs in a handful of industries, with their sights send on particular ‘brand name’ employers.

 

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out which ‘brand name’ employers fresh graduates gravitate to. Their ‘dream’ job in Malaysia would probably be as a high paying management consultant with a boutique company like McKinsey or the Boston Consulting Group (BCG) or Ethos Consulting here in Kuala Lumpur. Just a notch below in terms of pecking order would be to work for a multinational company such as Citibank or HSBC or P&G, most probably in a management trainee capacity or to work for other more ‘mass market’ consulting firms such as Accenture and PricewaterhouseCoopers (PwC). Other local companies such as Maxis and CIMB are also muscling into the recruitment market by offering management trainee programmes in the hope of attracting good talent who want to have a diversified initial ‘exposure’ to these large corporate entities.

 

There is of course nothing wrong with wanting to work for these very illustrious and successful companies. In fact, many employees of these companies, by virtue of their exposure to working in diversified and highly-competitive settings, go on to make excellent senior managers in these and other companies who value the type of experience and skills which an ex-Mckinsey consultant or an ex-Citibank management trainee can bring to the table.

 

But if I were to do it all over again or if I were to advise fresh graduates on their career options, I would ask the ‘hungriest’ and most enterprising and risk-taking among them to consider alternative career paths. The road less travelled, if you will, to use an oft quoted phrase. I would ask them to be intellectual ‘cowboys’.

 

Instead of being one out of 100 in a batch of fresh consultants at Accenture, why not be one out of perhaps just one in a setting where one’s skill sets would be recognised almost immediately and where one’s value added contribution to the company would be many multiples of that in a more traditional consulting-type setting?

 

I had a friend who joined an advertising agency after she graduated from the London School of Economics (LSE) with a degree in Economics and Government. To date, I think she’s still the only Malaysian LSE graduate I know who went into the advertising industry. But because she was the only person in her organisation who knew anything about economics and who could do quantitative analysis, she was quickly given the responsibility of preparing presentations which had anything to do with economics and numbers. With this advantage (as well as being a very quick learner and possessing a very creative brain), she quickly moved up the ranks and was soon occupying a senior position within that advertising company.

 

In other words, by looking beyond the traditional ‘red ocean’ industries of employment which was already teeming with fresh graduates of a similar profile, my friend was able to reap the benefits of swimming in a ‘blue ocean’ in a non-traditional industry of employment.

 

This does not mean that taking the path less travelled will be easier. Often the learning curve is steep and these fresh graduates have to operate in an environment that is unfamiliar and with little support from ‘like-minded’ or ‘similar’ cohort members.

 

Billy Crystal and his ‘City Slicker’ pals found the going tough when they were thrown into the deep-end of trying their hand at ‘cattle ranching’ during an off the beaten path type of vacation. If some fresh graduates were to take my advice and take this less travelled, riskier and hence more ‘cowboyish’ path, I would expect them to go through growing pains that would be more painful than their counterparts working as a management trainee for Citibank for example. But the potential rewards from a career enhancing perspective can be significant.

 

For example, I see a ‘blue ocean’ employment space with the sons and daughters of first-generation Chinese businessmen who have built up their companies, many of which are diversified conglomerates such as IOI, YTL and Sunway. These sons and daughters have mostly been educated overseas, with degrees in finance, economics and law and have been co-opted to join the family company.

 

Many of them would have fresh business ideas which they want to introduce and implement. But often, they face resistance from the founding figure (usually their father) as well as the directors who built the company up to what it is today together with the founding figure. These second-generation scions would hear, ad nausea, about how the other directors have ‘eaten more salt than they have had rice’ as a way to shoot down the ideas of the younger generation.

 

Many of these second-generation leaders are on the lookout for young talent as part of the process of building a new team to lead their respective companies into the 21st century. Those who join this team must navigate the path of being in a largely Chinese speaking, ‘Chinaman’ working environment which does not necessarily encourage creative or critical thinking and which often does not reward employees adequately based on performance.

 

There are no ‘latte-making’ machines in the offices of these companies. Work often involves ‘going down to the ground’, which, in this case, may mean factories or construction areas or plantations. Hard hats, overalls, sneakers or boots may be and probably will be required.

 

But the rewards and upside could be significant. The fresh graduates who join the team of these second-generation children would have a truly ‘hands-on’ experience in understanding and managing the many businesses in a diversified conglomerate. They would also have the ability to implement changes from a process, IT, HR and marketing (just to mention a few), an experience which cannot be replicated even if one were to work for a management consultant like McKinsey.

 

The value arising from these changes can often be immediate, especially given the ‘old-fashioned’ ways in which many of these businesses are run. The intellectual ‘cowboys’ who can show that they can add value would help build the credibility of these second-generation leaders among the older generation of directors and would thus cement their own positions in the eyes of the second-generation leaders. It would not be surprising if these intellectual ‘cowboys’ would end up being CEOs or managing directors way sooner than their contemporaries in the more ‘traditional’ jobs.

 

In reality, those who are academically inclined are usually the least likely to be risk takers from a career perspective. It is often those who are not necessarily academically inclined, often from local public universities, who are hungry and enterprising enough to want to take up these alternative career paths. Which only accentuates the need for intellectual ‘cowboys’ (which includes ‘cowgirls’, obviously) who can marry their academic brains with the penchant for risk taking and entrepreneurship.

 

Ong Kian Ming holds a PhD in political science from Duke University and is currently a lecturer at UCSI University, a regional consultant with the Blue Ocean Strategy Regional Center (BOSRC), and the director of OKM Consulting.