You may have the knowledge and skills, but if the timing is not right, you will either face a company that is not hiring at the moment or worse, your prospective employer decided to hire someone else.
Due to that, some people are willing to go to any lengths to get what they want, including fake degrees.
According to a report by The Star, there is at least one in 20 job seekers in Malaysia who use fake qualifications to secure a job, while one in 10 come from unaccredited institutions.
These findings reportedly came from a corporate fraud investigation agency.
In fact, many of them with fake degrees are applying for positions in senior management across multiple industries, including banks, clinics and hospitals.
This could pose a problem for many businesses and companies operating in Malaysia today.
In the worst case scenarios, there are even fake doctors!
This information was extracted from a documentary by al-Jazeera that reported fake degree mills in Pakistan, which revealed a list of people who have allegedly bought fake qualifications from Axact, a Pakistani firm infamous for producing such services.
Among those in the list, there were possibly 80 Malaysians with local addresses.
The documentary also stated that the fake degree holders were working as doctors, nurses, teachers and engineers in Southeast Asia, including Malaysia, Singapore and Thailand.
According to Datuk Seri Akhbar Satar, the managing director of Akhbar & Associates, Malaysia was one of the worst when it came to people who purchase fake qualifications because many employers hardly do thorough background checks.
He added that most companies did not take legal action or make police reports against these employees.
"In the end, these fake degree holders have no record of their fraud and will get a job in another company. They will continue to work in the system," he said.
So, it is the responbility of all employers to run checks online based on the lists of accredited programmes offered by Malaysian higher education institutions through the Malaysian Qualifications Register (MQR) and other professional and regulatory bodies.
We can't let this continue to happen if we, as a nation, want to produce reliable, capable and quality talent and workforce to support national development.