Why Indonesian Graduates Can Spend Nearly 2 Years Looking for Their First Job
Indonesian graduates take around 19.8 months on average to find work after finishing their studies. Here's what makes the school-to-work transition difficult — and why practical experience can help.
A May 2026 Labor Market Brief from LPEM FEB UI, using Sakernas August 2025 data, puts the average job-search duration for Indonesian graduates at 19.8 months.
That number is striking, but the issue is bigger than simply "not enough jobs."
The brief points to a changing labour market shaped by skills mismatch, digital transformation, regional differences in access to work, and other structural barriers. A degree still matters — but moving from university into work increasingly requires graduates to show that they can apply what they know in a real working environment.
Why the transition is difficult
University teaches knowledge. Work asks you to apply it.
That gap can show up in simple ways:
- Coursework does not always mirror how problems are solved inside a business
- Students may graduate with limited exposure to real projects, stakeholders, or workplace tools
- Internships and competitions can be useful, but the quality and structure of those experiences vary widely
- Graduates often need to translate academic and organisational experience into evidence an employer can understand
The challenge is not that a degree has no value. It's that employers often need additional evidence of what someone can actually do.
Why practical experience matters
Research on work-integrated learning and internships consistently treats practical exposure as an important part of graduate employability.
A 2024 systematic review in Cogent Business & Management examined 23 studies on internship experience and employability published between 2009 and 2023.
Separately, a study published online in 2024 in Studies in Higher Education analysed Australian Graduate Outcomes Survey data from 2020–2023 and examined how different forms of work-integrated learning related to perceived employability and short-term employment outcomes among humanities, arts, and social sciences graduates.
The takeaway is not that any internship automatically leads to a job.
What matters is the opportunity to apply knowledge, produce real work, receive feedback, and build evidence of capability.
Grades tell one part of the story.
A transcript can show what you studied. A project, internship, case competition, or portfolio can show how you approached a problem, what you produced, and how you made decisions along the way.
Start building proof before you graduate
You don't need to wait until your final semester to begin.
A few things can make early experience more useful:
- Look for opportunities where you will own an actual output, not just observe
- Ask whether someone will review your work and give you feedback
- Keep records of the problems you worked on, your contribution, and the result
- Turn strong academic, internship, competition, or organisational projects into portfolio pieces you can discuss in an interview
- If you do not have access to an internship yet, build practical projects that let you demonstrate the same underlying skills
Paid internships and live business competitions are one route. YOUR Venture runs both through YVI and YV-BCC, with a focus on project ownership and structured evaluation.
For students who want to start building practical HR experience before securing an internship, YOUR Venture Academy offers another route.
Build proof, not just credentials.
YOUR Venture Academy is a self-paced HR bootcamp covering the employee lifecycle across 10 modules and 8 portfolio projects. It's open to learners from any major and designed to help aspiring HR professionals practise the kind of work they may encounter early in their careers — leaving with portfolio evidence they can actually show. Strong finishers may also receive priority access to selected internship and job opportunities. Cohort 1 is planned to open in November 2026.
Illustration by Storyset
Start building proof before you graduate.
YOUR Venture Academy's first cohort is planned to begin in February 2027 — 8 portfolio projects, a certificate, and priority access to selected opportunities for strong finishers.