SOME companies these days are offering extreme perks to keep workers under 35 happy and loyal.

People Management Association of the Philippines (PMAP) Cebu president Michael Godinez said that employers are going the extra mile to attract younger employees to join the corporate world, such as offering them high pay.

Godinez said the minimum wage no longer appeals to young employees, the reason they needed to introduce more perks and exciting benefits such as travel incentives.

Minimum wage in Cebu currently stands at P366 a day. But employers in Cebu, based on PMAP’s survey, are offering an average of P14,000 as entry-level salary, excluding perks.

The PMAP Cebu official noted that it is a different recruitment landscape now as employees are becoming pickier when it comes finding jobs, making it challenging for employers to catch their attention to hire and retain them.

“Employers are outdoing each other in offering attractive employment packages” on top of addressing the ongoing war on talent, said Godinez.

About 11,000 jobs will be available for jobseekers in Cebu, both for local and overseas employment, during the one-day Happy Jobs Fair of Mynimo.com on May 26.

As of Wednesday, 91 employers from across many industries have signed up for this career event happening in SM City Cebu Trade Hall.

Among the companies joining the job fair are Amazon.com, which targets to recruit 1,000 employees for their Cebu site by the end of the year, said Mynimo.com president Wesley Chiongbian.

Other companies joining are Aboitiz Construction Group, Bluewater Resorts, Hi-Precision, and Virginia Food.

Some 6,500 applicants have already registered to join the career event. Chiongbian said they expect more jobseekers to register as the event day approaches.

Job vacancies in Cebu went up by 8.2 percent from January to April this year compared to the same period last year.

In a survey among the event’s participating employers and applicants, Mynimo has identified the education sector as having the highest talent shortage in Cebu, with a ratio of 11 job opportunities per education applicant; followed by the BPM sector with nine jobs for every applicant; and the sales sector with five jobs for each sales applicant.

“The talent shortage is a significant lost opportunity for Cebu. Counting the unfilled vacancies in the BPM and education sector alone, our conservative estimates indicate that the local economy will potentially lose at least P80 million in circulation every month,” said Chiongbian.

As for sectors with a surplus in talent, the survey identified that professionals in the hotel industry top the list with 71 candidates competing for one hotel job vacancy, followed by legal professionals with 17 applicants for every legal job, and seven applicants for every manufacturing job in Cebu.