THE ascension of Benigno “Noynoy” Aquino III in the presidency last June sent mixed signals to the country’s job market, from renewed optimism to a more discriminating recruitment process.
Online recruitment firm JobsDB.com said post-election stability brought by the successful automated elections and the peaceful transition of power prompted investors and companies to post more job openings and hire individuals for their growing businesses.
“We had a peaceful transition of power and the investors had a positive response on it. Before the elections, the investors adopt the usual wait-and-see attitude but now we have seen that hiring trend is picking up again. In fact, we have 6,600 unique job openings posted everyday in the site as compared in the past months,” Jayjay Viray, JobsDB.com managing director, said in an interview.
Based on the site’s in-house research, the jobs that will stay “in-demand” regardless of the economic status are in sales, marketing, human resource and administration, finance and accounting and information technology.
Despite the unexpected 7.3 percent economic expansion reported in the first quarter, the government said the number of unemployed Filipinos stood at 3.1 million last April.
According to Viray, the US-led global economic slowdown has also affected the preferences of both the candidates and employers, in terms of manpower selection and job offers, respectively.
She related that employers are basically looking these qualities in an applicant: sense of ownership; ability to make sacrifices by accepting low compensation package; ability and willingness to multitask; strategic thinking; communication, networking and above average computer skills.; and can deliver results in spite of meager resources.
“It is understandable that employers sometimes took a lot of time of deciding who to hire because we are talking about investment here. Some candidates have to go through more exams to avoid skill mismatch,” said JobsDB trainer Cookie Manabat.
Candidates, on the other hand, want their prospective companies to offer above average compensation especially among young job seekers, stability of the company, good relocation package, location and foreign training.
“Younger candidates also prefer strategic locations like Ortigas and Makati basically for bragging rights to their peers,” said Viray.
Meantime, to address the occurring preferential mismatch, JobsDB introduced its retooled Recruitment Management System (RMS) dashboard that would help both the employers and the candidates scour the recruitment pool more easily.
The new dashboard allows recruiters to review up to 100 resumes in one click alongside features such as auto-opened attachments without download, import resumes, private applicant database, “customizable” folders and display format, among others.
“We believe in making both the candidate and job search experience easier and more convenient, while yielding very productive results,” Viray pointed out.
Meanwhile, jobseekers can use the built-in maps to check the location of a prospective company.
“It is relatively expensive for us to perfect this technology. It’s two years in the making. However, we assure our clients and the job seekers of no additional cost in availing of the service. The RMS dashboard is integrated in the system,” said Viray.
JobsDB, the leading online recruitment network in Asia Pacific, operates in countries such as Australia, China, India, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines.
The 12-year-old firm has 14.6 million job hopefuls, of which two million are from the Philippines. The country also comprises 12,000 of the 220,000 corporate clients in the Asia-Pacific rim. (Virgil Lopez/Sunnex)