A Business Idea for Burmese Diaspora

 

_ by AKS

While most of us in overseas are making a living and building careers, most of Burmese graduates are missing that opportunities. Off course most of us just began developing our careers and we ourselves are deep in debts, commitments and academic and work pressures to survive before thriving. But it does not necessarily mean that we should totally ignore their plight.

Most of job and school seekers are subject to con men, cheating agents. A typical job seeker in Burma is a graduate; speak passable English, with a tunnelled vision to business environment in real world (overseas), with local working experience and not too much real world skills. They are not well informed by the substandard local government mouthpiece newspapers.

I would like to share an idea for business and entrepreneurship in Burma. Burmese who have experience in overseas could set up a human resources related business with solid footings in Yangon or Singapore and beyond, finishing raw Burmese human resources to real talent before exporting to job markets with migrant labour friendly countries, Singapore, UK, etc.

I mean we can negotiate with training centers in Yangon, find those graduates (who are not slackers or softies) who want to get a job in overseas and let them pay themselves for training until they meet the marketable profile. Sell those candidates to potential employers in overseas and then let them start as permanent employees, contract based consultants, paid interns/apprentices etc.

That agency can turn raw Burmese talent (there are some) into human resources and then can help them to get a job (possibly for a career) in Singapore, Brunei, Middle East, Australia (they want trained technicians with ITE trade certificates from Singapore), etc. With a fee at stages and transparency in all phases.

I mean if a Burmese fresh graduate can take TOEIC (basic English language proficiency test from ETS that basically proves that the person is able to communicate in workplace of English medium, it is easier than TOEFL), for engineering jobs that is enough, for nurses, they may ask TSE, TWE, IELTS etc.. This ETS tests are only for language skills.

To convince employers that Burmese labour have technical skills, one could negotiate with real world skills training schools in Yangon like KMD, Informatics, Thames, MCC or CHRD (Center for Human Resources Development, under the ministry of education), etc.. The job seekers will pay for education themselves. And all those both language and tech training (finishing period) can last in the period of 6 months. That is still less than average time, they are waiting in long queues in agencies. And paying education for themselves and charging them when they secure jobs may be less than big lumped sums those agencies are exploiting to desperate job seekers.

Since there are alternative qualifications and tests like NCC (NCC higher is treated as HND diploma in UK, CIMA is as good as MBA from a third tiered MBA school in UK and Asia), City & Guild trade certificates prove that a graduate also has some real world skills, there are numerous IT and business certificates. So if job seekers are armed with those certificates in addition to their formal education (qualification), language proficiency tests (like TOEIC), and some practical project works, with some cultural adaptation trainings then it might be a walk in the park to sell those guys to employers. 

That could be a viable, sustainable and profitable business model for entrepreneur and win-win situation for job seekers.

I hope someone who has more entrepreneurial spirit than employee minded folks can do something out of it. I think Burma needs a lot of those opportunities creation centres. I saw a lot of Indian fresh graduate engineers who come to Singapore for paid internships and eventually landed to jobs there. I learnt that some Chinese professionals went to the United States as low paid contractors just to get the experience.

Just to give some idea for entrepreneurship minded Burmese Diasporas in overseas. I think we should help our brethren Burmese professionals so that their tunnelled vision will be widened, suffer less from exploitation and inferiority complex. With this rate of job creation, there will be less decent jobs for local graduates in Burma. If we let them sink and suffer, we will suffer the image problem too. So let me humbly suggest our Burmese professionals overseas to do something for those unfortunates as much as we can so that we will be doing favours for ourselves from positive spirit and good image of country and our people.