I get a lot of email from Indian and Pakistani people asking me if I can help set them up with a job in Malaysia or Singapore or even Japan, or get them into a Malaysian college to study, or whatever. I wish I could help them out but truth be told, I don't have any more contacts or connections with Malaysia than the average Indian or Pakistani jobhunter does. I might have a little more knowledge, but that knowledge is born from research rather than personal experience. I was trained as a journalist, not a headhunter, and I see myself on this site as a middleman, providing the medium for job providers and job hunters to meet and hit it off. There are quite a few members of this site now, about 500 at last count, and many of them have provided their employment details and credentials in some form or another. I am hoping someday that Malaysian employers will stumble upon this database of skillsets and ambitions, and start looking/hooking people up. It might not happen overnight, but it will happen one day, I am sure of it. When that happens, this site will really begin to sing. All those jobhunters who have patiently posted their details will begin to see a payoff!

Job categories available in Malaysia include: Account Coordination, Accountancy, Acting, Advertising, Aquatic Science, Archeology, Architecture, Aviation Industry, Business Sales, Call Centers, Carpentry, Caregiving, Catering, Cooking and the Restaurant Industry, Clerical Work, Dairy Farming, Doctors, Electrical Work, Engineering, Entertainment, Entrepreneurship, Events and Event Planning, Fashion Photography, Financial Management, Franchising, Hedge Fund Accountancy, Hospitality, the Internet in all its various forms and potentialities, Islamic Finance, I.T., Journalism, Legal Profession, Manufacturing, Medical Transcription, the Media, Nursing, Panhandling, Pharmaceutical Industry, Physical Therapists, Police Jobs, Portfolio Management, Seafaring, Seasonal Work (for example, working on farms or plantations), Science, Social Work, Stockbroking, Supervising, Teaching, the Textile Industry, Web Design, and Zoology.

r e s u m e + d a t a b a s e

HELP US CREATE THE LARGEST DATABASE OF INDIAN RESUMES ON THE INTERNET. Even if you don't intend to work in Malaysia (or the United States, for that matter), you can still paste your resume here. This is a resource for job hunters and providers alike. If you are a job provider and you want to take advantage of my mailing lists, please email me at coderot@gmail.com.

Aftabfirstname (Bollywood actor, India): see resume here.
Chandresh Kumar Singh (web designer, Patna, India): see resume here.
Divakar Lal (journalist, Mughalsarai): see resume here.

j o b + r e s o u r c e s

SO, YOU HAVE MADE UP YOUR MIND -- YOU WANT TO LOOK FOR A JOB IN MALAYSIA. Well, here are some jobs for those looking for jobs in Malaysia, specifically the Kuala Lumpur area, and specifically in the IT trade. If you are interested in studying IT or another tech or other field in Malaysia, there is a special site for you -- click here:

Agilent Malaysia: http://www.jobs.agilent.com/students/malaysia.html.
Agilent Malaysia offers industrial/vacation training to Malaysian undergraduates from local and overseas universities and colleges. The company also provides opportunities (and sponsorships) for final year undergraduates who wish to do their final year projects at Agilent Technologies Malaysia.
Agilent Malaysia conducts yearly campus visits, recruitment drives and career exhibitions locally and overseas (Australia, Taiwan, Japan, UK and USA). On-line and print advertisements are placed on campus web-sites and on notice boards to inform students of upcoming Agilent events and invite applications. Agilent Malaysia's campus recruitment team, comprised of engineering and human resources managers, conducts on-campus interviews during their visits. Students are also encouraged to apply for jobs on the website listed above.

Best Jobs Malaysia: http://www.bestjobs.com.my/bt-job-ST004-1-Jobs_in_Kuala_Lumpur.htm.
This is a Malaysian job search board, kind of akin to Gaijin Pot over there in Japan, except there is no chatroom! People from all over the world are free to freely post their resumes, set up a "job alert", and browse through the hundreds of job offers regularly advertized there. Some of the workers currently sought (as of late March 2006) include those with IT/database programming skillsets, Flash/multimedia programmers, Oracle programmers, graphic designers, Java developers, and multimedia executives with skills in designing flyers, vouchers and banners and so forth. These jobs will probably be gone by the time you log in and look for them. It matters not -- there will be fresh job opportunities aplenty! And if your speciality is IT or graphic design, then it seems that Malaysia is the kind of place which needs you, and is looking for you!

Doctor Jobs: http://www.doctorjob.com.my/.
This is a resource for students and jobseekers in Malaysia. You can search for courses or colleges, find out entry requirements, apply for scholarships, and read national education news. And oh -- you can also look for jobs!

Elance: http://www.elance.com?rid=1SNHQ.
Based in California is this popular freelancing service which has already poured millions of dollars into the subcontinent. India is in fact the top earning country on Elance currently, with the United States at second place and Pakistan coming in third. Basic membership is free if you are looking for jobs, although the entrance process is rather thorough (you have to pass a test and have your phone number verified, for example). Once you get through, you can bid for the thousands of freelance jobs which are posted everyday. The five most demanded skills at the moment are PHP programming, HTML, article writing, graphic design and MySQL. In the article writing department, to take an example, more than US$1.5 million has been paid out to 17,000 active "article writing experts" over the past six months.

Expatriates -- Malaysia: http://expat3.securesites.net/classifieds/mly/.
Classifieds for jobs wanted and offered, housing, personals, language exchange and childcare.

Gulliver Resort Jobs: http://www.mygulliver.com/malaysia/.
At last count, search 437 jobs from 233 employers, on this job search site dedicated to hospitality jobs worldwide.

Intel Malaysia: http://www.intel.com/jobs/malaysia/.
Of course, as everybody knows, one of the jewels of the Malaysian job crowns is Intel -- or more specifically, IntelMalaysia, which now comprises three campuses and employs more than 8500 people. Read up here, and if you are interested, you could be one of those 8500 Intel souls! Over the past 30 years, in fact, Intel Malaysia has grown into the largest, most mature Intel manufacturing facility outside of the United States. Intel Penang is a key assembly and testing site, Intel Kulim assembles processor packaging and is an important operations center for mobile modules, and Intel Kuala Lumpur includes a multimedia super-corridor development center as well as a sales and marketing office. But whichever of these three Intel hubs that you end up, one thing is certain: you will be in a country which is a tropical paradise and a true melting pot, a land rich with a great deal of cultural diversity. Thus you have been informed!
Career streams at Intel Malaysia are divided into the following categories: integrated circuit engineering, integrated circuit manufacturing, hardware engineering, software engineering, hardware manufacturing, facilities and site services, Information Technology (IT), Finance, sales and marketing, ebusiness, supply network, materials, legal, human resources, research and development (r&d) and quality and reliability. If any of these job descriptions fit your bill, you should hit the Intel Malaysia site listed above, to search for positions.

Jobs in Dubai: Dubai's Largest e-Recruitment Service.
Find jobs in accounting, advertising, finance, construction, customer service, engineering, hotels and hospitality, Internet and the media, nursing and even teeaching languages like English.
Gold member Mishkath Misbah writes: "Being in Sri Lanka, I looking for a good and a reliable source to find jobs in UAE. Not only jobs, but career guidance and resume preparation as well. JID had all of it. Not only it my RESUME reached many top firms in the Middle East, but also trained JID staff advised on how to better present my profile to match the job category I was applying, I got all in one service. Being a Gold Member, I am enjoying individual attention to my profile."

JobsDB: http://www.jobsdb.com/MY/EN/V6HTML/JobSeeker/jobalert/jobalert_e.htm.
Subscribe to Job Alert and JobsDB will do the job matching for you. This free service notifies you of new job vacancies based on position, monthly salary, qualifications, location, and so on. New job openings will be sent to your email account every day.

Job Street: http://my.jobstreet.com/default.htm.
A wide range of services offered here, most obviously job search and job alert. Also plenty of up-to-date info about job fairs and career seminars in Malaysia, top job categories, classifieds, jobs for disabled folk, and so on. Worth a click or two.

LinkedIn: http://www.linkedin.com/nhome/.
One of the superpowers of the career networking sites, LinkedIn extends the principle that jobs are best found through people you know to the n^th degree. It has been said that everyone on the planet knows everyone else on the planet through seven degrees of separation. You have your friends, then your friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends, and friends of friends of friends of friends, and so on. We all naturally have these connections, but in the offline world it is difficult to optimise them efficiently. Things are different on LinkedIn. With the three connections I have accumulated in the few weeks since becoming a member in August 2010, I now have access to a network of 63,400 professionals, through an introduction. Beyond that, I can communicate with all LinkedIn members (a total of 75 million souls) through the internal email service.

Learn 4 Good: http://www.learn4good.com/jobs/language/english/list/country/malaysia/.
This is a resource bank for people who want to live, study or travel abroad. There are listings of jobs, schools, places of accommodation, translators, hostels, discussion forums and information about travel and visas. You can search jobs by location, and category. Naturally, Information Technology (IT) gets a high priority on the Malaysian page, and the last time I checked, there were jobs available at such places as SK InfoTech, Adance Marine Services (database developer), Vantronic Industries, Technexel (Java developers), NTi Systems & Solutions in Subang Jaya (IT technician), Northern VIT in Penang (web developer), Applied Business Systems in Kuala Lumpur (Oracle consultant), and so on, and on. The service is available in English, French, German and Spanish.

Monster India: http://www.monsterindia.com/.
Tonnes of jobs available here all over India and the outside world, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand. Jobs are available in such fields as IT, sales, call center work, engineering, finance, marketing and so on.

Naukri: http://www.naukri.com/.
This is billed as India's top jobs site, and while focussing on jobs inside India, there are plenty of Malaysian jobs advertised in any field you could think of -- from cooking to software design, geotechnical engineering to marketing and management. Jobseekers can open an account and post their resume online. If you need help developing your resume, Naukri offers services for this. Naukri has also introduced what it calls The Job Show. which allows foreign firms to interview Indians by television. Tune in every Saturday at 8.30pm on CNBC.

Simply Hired: http://www.simplyhired.com/.
Job search made simple is the motto of this popular and famous portal.

Solo Gig: http://www.sologig.com/.
This is billed as the place where freelancers and employers meet! If you like the idea of working from home (it certainly appeals to me!) then Solo Gig could offer you some hopeful leads. Jobs are available in such fields as web design, writing, editing and translation, database development and networking, architecture and telemarketing. In conjunction with CareerBuilder.com, Sologig has three times more projects than the other leading freelance websites. Don't get lost in the shuffle! Employers outnumber Freelancers five to one, which create good odds for the jobseeker willing to take a punt on the freelance side.

Tip Top Jobs: http://my.tiptopjob.com/.
A Malaysian online recruitment resource offering a service to both jobseekers and job providers. The jobs are sorted according to industry sector -- there is everything from accountancy and advertising, at the lower reaches of the alphabet, to travel and tourism at the other end. Shouldn't there be a category for zoology? isn't that an important field? No, they don't have any jobs for zoologists at the moment at tip Top Jobs, but they do have plenty of IT offerings. This site is also good for Malaysians looking for josb in other parts of the world.

m a l a y s i a n + d i s c r i m i n a t i o n

IN SPITE OF ALL THE BRIGHT NEWS ABOVE, IT HAS TO BE SAID, THAT ALL IS NOT ROSY FOR PEOPLE OF INDIAN DESCENT IN MALAYSIA. At times (or at least at one time) Indian workers have been rounded up by the police, and faced appalling treatment from the law. In the year 2003 an incident took place which still sours Indo-Malaysian relations. This is how the new was reported on Rediff.com (the story was published on March 9 2003):

"The Malaysian police on Sunday rounded up around 270 Indians, including many IT professionals, and allegedly defaced their passports, slapped and kicked several of them before releasing all but five later.

"This was the outcome of a dawn swoop in search of illegal immigrants on one high-rise apartment in the ethnic Indian dominated Brickfields neighbourhood in central Kuala Lumpur.

"'There were around 270 of us, and we have already got the signatures of 178, and we'll get the rest by Monday,' said Dilip, an IT professional, who presented a petition to the Indian High Commission on behalf of all those detained after being released on Sunday night."

g e t t i n g + t h e r e

ONE OF THE COOL THINGS ABOUT LIVING IN MALAYSIA IS THAT IT IS HOME TO PROBABLY THE BEST BUDGET AIRLINE IN THE WORLD, AIR ASIA. In my opinion it is worth living in Malaysia just to be able to take advantage of Air Asia'a cheap flights. Not only are the flights often free, but the taxes are ridiculously miniscule... and in the case of the oft resented fuel surcharge, non-existent. It is a wonder how the company makes any money at all (although they do have ads plastered over the back of the passenger seats! Whatever... I don't mind staring at ads when the flights are this cheap.) And cheap they are indeed... you could fly from Kuala Lumpur to Bangkok for under US$10 earlier this summer, as part of a Thailand assistance campaign. From Bangkok you can currently snatch a one-way flight to Rangoon (Burma) for 3403 Rupees. From the subcontinent, meanwhile, one-way flights to Kuala Lumpur seem to range from about 4500 Rupees (departing Chennai) to 6500 Rupees (departing Mumbai). Please note that there are always promotions happening at Air Asia, and even cheaper flights can usually be found. One of my Irish colleagues told me recently of how, during the Irish Boom, Polish workers could find a job in the Republic over the Internet on a Sunday, then book a cheap ticket on Ryanair, and be in Dublin ready for work on a Monday morning. There is no reason why Indians successful in finding work in Malaysia could not exploit Air Asia for instant, low-cost, one-way flights to deliver them to their new jobs. It is worth looking into.

If you do manage to start working in Malaysia, you will probably want to send money back to India at some time. There are numerous options available for this, one of the latest a service called Moneybookers. I have been using Moneybookers for a while and have been impressed with its ease of use, strict security, and low fees. As Moneybookers India reports, "Around half of Moneybookers account holders use the money transfer service to make payments back to their homeland. While the top recipient country is Poland, followed by India and Russia, in terms of the amount sent per head the French are in the lead with 550 pounds per month compared to 330 pounds per month by Indian migrants and 290 pounds by Polish migrants..." "'We were handcuffed and made to kneel or sit in the police station car park, some of us were slapped and kicked,' said Nagaraju Cheekoti, an IT professional working for WWI Malaysia.

"Some said they were ordered to do sit-ups, while others said they were stripped to their underwear, slapped and kicked inside the station..."

How is life like for the resident Indians of Malaysia:

"The overwhelming majority of migrants from India were Tamil speakers from the south of the sub continent. In 1947 they represented approximately 77 per cent of the total Indian population in Malaya and Singapore. Other South Indians, mainly Malayalee and Telegus, formed a further 14 per cent in 1947, and the remainder of the Indian community was accounted for by North Indians, principally Punjabis, Bengalis, Gujeratis, and Sindhis.

"These ethnic divisions corresponded closely to occupational specialisation. For example the South Indian Tamils were predominantly labourers, the majority being employed on rubber estates, though a significant minority worked in Government public works departments. The Telegus were also mainly labourers on the estates, whilst the Malayalee community was divided into those who occupied relatively more skilled labouring positions on the estates and those who were white collar workers or professionals. The North Indians, with the exception of the Sikhs, were mainly merchants and businessmen..."

TIPS FOR FINDING JOBS: As Be Your Own Headhunter's Kevin Donlin points out, some 70 to 80 per cent of jobs are unadvertized. Many employees do not advertize for fear of being deluged with hundreds of resumes from people who are often not even qualified for the job to begin with. If you focus on the 20 to 30 per cent of jobs that are advertized, you are forced to compete with the herd, and your email will be just another item in your employee's in-box. Personal contacts are everything when it comes to winning the job game, as the old expression goes, and word of mouth beats a resume in the mail everytime. That should be common sense to all jobseekers, but how do you make personal contacts in a foreign country such as Malaysia (especially when you have never been there)? It is a tricky question, and finding the answer is one ambition of this website. Over at Be Your Own Headhunter, Donlin suggests contacting the hiring managers at companies you want to work at. Ideally, you should contact the manager two levels higher than the position you are applying for, and make yourselves known to them. Going two levels up will enable you to avoid alienating your potential boss, who may otherwise feel threatened by your iniative and gun-ho. Thankfully your future boss's boss will probably see more of the "big picture" than your boss ever will, and you should have more luck convincing him or her that their company needs your talent and skills. To find the names of these gatekeepers, you need only turn to Google or some other search engine, or visit the company website. Once you have their names, you can follow them on Twitter, Facebook, Google Alerts, or whatever. If you ever make it to an interview, you will be fully versed in their personal details, likes and dislikes, company politics... the works.

All this might sound a little like stalking, and perhaps maybe it is. But today's job market is a jungle, and in the jungle the guerilla is king. So goes the reasoning at Guerilla Job Hunting, another site which Kevin Donlin seems to have a hand in. Guerilla Job Hunting has all manner of innovative strategies for getting the job; for example, sending your resume attached to a pizza with an accompanying note that reads: "The only piece missing is me." Cheesy, but it could work. Even better, don't bother writing a resume at all... put together a brochure pimping your services, and distribute it directly to the public. Which I note would be difficult if you are an Indian living in India, and are looking for a job in Malaysia. But where there's will there is a way, as my mother used to say, and imagination is our greatest friend. Guerilla Job Hunting can give plenty of ideas.

i n d i a n + s h o p p i n g

IF YOU ARE INDIAN AND HAVE ALREADY MADE THE MOVE TO KUALA LUMPUR, YOU WILL MOST DEFINITELY WANT TO KNOW ABOUT WHERE YOU CAN BUY INDIAN FOOD PRODUCTS AND SPICES AND STUFF. You will also want to know al the best places to dine and hang out. With the huge Indian native population, there are of course countless Indian supermarkets and restaurants and street markets where you can find all the things you enjoyed back in India. Here is a list -- incomplete I must confess!! - of some of the Indian shopping solutions in Kuala Lumpur:

Citra Spice Mart (M) Sdn Bhd: website: http://www.citras.com.my.
At the time of writing (March 2006) this website was not quite ready for general use, although it should be ready soon. The company behind this website is reported to be Malaysia's premier online shopping site for fresh pure spices, pulses and herbs. They also sell such Indian necessities as lentils, nuts, vathals, snack food and so on. In fact, whatever you need for home cooking, you can find at Citra Spice Mart. The company sells to individuals and households as well as caterers, hotels, restaurants and supermarkets. As well as this, the website lists Indian restaurants and boasts a forum where members can chat online. It is no doubt a good place to make Indian (and other nationality) friends in Malaysia, find out the best places to eat, and so on. Join up today -- you might see me online sometimes! (under the name CodeRot!)

"One of the best reasons to come here would be to savour the various Indian snacks, such as vadai, stringhoppers and appum, all freshly made on the spot. There's even a Punjabi food stall with authentic, freshly made chappati, prata and sweetmeats. Not everything at this night market is Indian, though. You can still get your Malay and Chinese food fix with delicious char kueh teow, yong tau foo, tau foo far, lol-lok and nasi lemak."

Karuna's Vegetarian Restaurant: Grand Paradise Hotel, 62, Jalan Masjid India, Brickfields. Phone: 03/2273 0100.
Opened in 2003. According to the promotional material sent out at the time of opening: "Karuna's Vegetarian Restaurant specializing in authentic vegetarian cuisine, Karuna's have captivated the industry with its simple yet appealing concept in providing reasonably priced quality cuisine, impeccable service coupled with its attractive authentic decorations. Our chefs are trained to offer an irresistible array of vegetarian cuisine ranging from Chinese, Indian, Malay, Western and even Thai.