Education graduates are expected to have the
competence to become competent and professional
teachers. Therefore, it is necessary to conduct a
search of UNIMED Economic Education graduates,
to find out the competencies of graduates which are
produced as well as an effort to evaluate the
performance of study programs, one of them is by
measuring the waiting period and the relevance of
work.
The waiting period is defined as the length of time
a person gets the first job after graduating from the
last completed education. The waiting period or long
time to find a job is usually expressed in months or
years. Waiting period is closely related to
unemployment. Unemployment is a period in which
a person continues to be unemployed or the average
unemployment period of a worker.
In relation to the waiting period, someone will try
to find work to get a job that is considered feasible.
For this reason, a theory is needed to explain how
someone looks for work. Search theory or the theory
of looking for work according to Sutomo and
Prihatini (1999) is a model that explains the problem
of unemployment from the point of supply (Susanti,
2014). Search theory arises from economic
uncertainty where there is imperfect labor market
information. The unemployed do not know the
qualifications of the labor needed and the level of
wages offered by job seekers. they will maximize
expected net income and wage reservation or
reservation wages as criteria for accepting or rejecting
a job. Job seekers will stop looking for work when
additional costs or marginal costs from an additional
one job offer are equal to the marginal return of the
job offer.
There are several factors that can influence the
waiting period, including age, education, experience,
marital status, and wages (Astuti, 2013). In addition,
information in the imperfect labor market will make
a person unemployed at a certain time and will
continue to find the best job (Kaufman, 1999).
Meanwhile, according to Sutomo (2001), several
other factors that cause long time a person gets a job,
especially for educated labor, are caused by structural
inequalities between supply and employment, too
strong the influence of human capital theory on
people's thinking, and educational programs seen
from high school graduates and Bachelor who gets
the fastest job (Mariska, 2016). Then, based on
research conducted (Setiawan, 2010) on educated
workers in the city of Magelang, that age, education,
income and work experience have a positive
influence on the length of seeking employment.
While gender does not have an effect on the length of
time seeking work, there are differences between the
length of time seeking work for men and women.
Unlike the study (Putranto and Mashuri, 2012) for
graduates of the Department of Statistics, Sepuluh
Nopember Institute of Technology, work waiting
time can be influenced by factors of family members,
high school status, type of work chosen, and
motivation in finding work where chosen to be a
factor that further determines the waiting time for
work among other factors. Graduates who choose the
type of entrepreneurial work will work much faster,
so in this case it is important for the relevant
educational institutions to provide entrepreneurship
education to students.
Relevance according to the Big Indonesian
Dictionary means relationships, suitability, relation to
objectives, useful directly with what is needed
(Muhson et al, 2012). When producing graduates who
are unemployed, it means that a unit, type, or level of
education can be said to be less relevant to
community needs and social development (Suryadi,
2014: 11). An institution of higher education is said
to be relevant to its existence if all or most of its
graduates can be quickly absorbed by employment in
accordance with their fields and strategic rank
(Muhson et al., 2012). The level of absorption of
graduates in employment also depends on the quality
of graduates, namely the skills, knowledge, and
abilities possessed. Whether or not the competency of
graduates can be seen from the job profile includes
the type of work, number of hours worked, position,
and salary earned (Muhson et al, 2012).
The relevance of work can be influenced by
several factors, including unemployment, education
and training, labor market information, and changes
in economic structure. In relation to the long
unemployed factors, long-unemployed graduates
tend to have no choice to capture any employment
opportunities. For them, getting the first job is very
important to get experience (Saputra, 2014). While
the education and training factors concern the
competencies possessed by job seekers. According to
Alwi (2010) education is related to the relevance of
the curriculum where it also leads to the suitability of
courses, material in teaching books, and even
reference books used (Asnawi et al, 2015). Higher
education will provide knowledge in accordance with
work requirements. For this reason, certain types of
work require educational qualifications from majors
and certain GPAs that are charged to job applicants.
As for developing practical skills, educational
institutions will provide internship opportunities. For
this reason, some types of work require qualifications
in the form of work experience so that learning
through internships is very important. In addition, the
company has also anticipated by providing training in
the initial period of work (Saputra, 2014). In addition,
the information factors available in the labor market
also affect the relevance of work. Usually this
involves information about the skills needed by the