JobStreet.com, the leading job portal in the Philippines, is making it easier for jobseekers to look for and land a job in this time of crisis.
The online job platform will launch a five-day job fair on July 25 to July 30 to offer 73,000 job opportunities to interested jobseekers nationwide. This is double than the available jobs on the website in the early months of the pandemic.
“These are opportunities that we are trying to offer so that we can help stop the feeling of stagnation that arose from the crisis. When you find a new job, a new means to help your family and yourselves, you can step-up again and rise again to this occasion,” said JobStreet Philippines country manager Philip Gioca.
JobStreet’s “Job to Cart” event makes it a breeze for those looking for employment of their choice through various tools such as chatbots, live chat features and Facebook Love.
“Applying for a job will be as easy as online shopping. Jobseekers can look forward to thousands of jobs. All 73,000 jobs in our website will be available on each day. If there is live selling on Facebook, there will be live vacancies up for grabs on Facebook. This is the first time we’re doing this. Going live on Facebook for this 5-day job fair is like keeping up with the technology, trying to reach out to as many people as possible using the social media platform,” said JobStreet senior manager for SMEs and start-ups Ryan Tordesillas.
About 53,000 jobs can be found in Luzon and 15,000 in the Visayas and Mindanao. There are also 50,000 jobs suited to fresh graduates or early jobbers and some 2,500 overseas jobs in the website.
Data showed that as of April 2021, at least 4.14 million Filipinos were looking for jobs, one of the most dire impacts of the pandemic, said Gioca.
The most affected industries or sectors in the Philippines are construction. agriculture, wholesale, retail and trade, manufacturing and financial institutions.
In terms of region, the most affected was the National Capital Region with 14.4 percent unemployment rate, followed by CALABARZON with 13.4 percent.
“Even if we see that vaccines are starting to roll out, it will still take more than a year or 1.5 years to reach herd immunity, with the rate of how things are rolling. And therefore, even if we try to look for jobs, Filipinos are still hampered, because we cannot reopen our markets in the country to its full extent,” Gioca said.
JobStreet’s latest Decoding Global Talent Survey found out that to rise above the hardship, 77 percent of Filipino employees were willing to be retrained for a different job. This interest was particularly higher among blue collar workers at 82 percent.
The survey, which engaged 200,000 respondents from 190,000 countries, was a partnership between the Boston Consulting Group, the network and SEEK ASIA, which is JobStreet’s mother company.
“When we focused on this global survey in the Philippines, we found that upskilling and retraining is a key ingredient in finding success, and brings hope for the many Filipinos who were displayed and currently not working. You can see that on the job training is still a very relevant way of retraining, followed by self-study, and lastly, conferences and seminars,” Gioca said.
Based on the survey, Filipino workers’ learning preferences are still traditional with on-the-job training as the most preferred way of upskilling (70 percent), followed by self-study (63 percent) and conferences and seminars (56 percent).
Aside from the number of employees who are willing to learn additional skills, the survey also reported on higher-risk and lower-risk jobs in terms of resiliency due to automation.
JobStreet recommended that companies build plans to expand the skills of their workers especially those in customer service, service sector, administration and secretariat and arts and creative work, which are at higher risk.
Meanwhile, employees in lower-risk jobs such as management, engineering and technical, science and research, law, health and medicine, social care, IT and technology, and digitalization and automation are also recommended to upskill or be trained to stay relevant.
“We can see that automation has become a key factor in the workplace, so it is an advantage to learn digital skills regardless of your job role. Our landscape has changed, especially when looking for work. But it doesn't stop the Filipinos from rising again. Our mission is to bring hope and opportunity to as many jobseekers during this time,” Gioca said.