LOOKING for work nowadays has become easier as the government initiates measures on helping job seekers, especially fresh graduates, land employment that they desire or those that match their skills.
Lawyer Johnson Cañete, regional director of the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole)-Western Visayas, said Sunday, April 29, that there are many ways on how to find jobs and that seekers just have to be patient.
Cañete advised fresh graduates in Negros Occidental and other provinces in Western Visayas to go to their respective Public Employment Service Office (Peso) and encode their names at the Skills Registry System (SRS).
The SRS, the job matching portal of the government, provides a list of registered companies with employment vacancies.
“The SRS has been implemented by the Dole and Peso, which also complement to the agency’s JobsFit program,” he said, adding that “there are hard to fill positions, or those with few applicants, thus, we need to update the lists in every Peso.”
The Dole is also advising fresh graduates to be aware of the job fair schedules, where all employers with openings are brought together in one place making the application easier and faster.
Aside from the “Trabaho, Negosyo, Kabuhayan,” the region-wide job fair in Iloilo City in celebration of Labor Day tomorrow, Peso in every local government units (LGUs) in the region also have scheduled job fairs in their respective localities this year.
Fresh graduates can also go to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) and inquire about its Government Internship Program (GIP).
Cañete said through the GIP, applicants are allowed to work in government offices receiving 75 percent of the daily minimum wage.
They, however, need to coordinate with their LGUs and Congressional Districts which identify the recipients of the program.
Cañete said Tesda also has Training for Work Scholarship Program (TWSP) that offers short courses aimed at enabling graduates to acquire additional skills required by employers.
For Hotel and Restaurant Management (HRM) course, for instance, graduates may further enroll in housekeeping and bartending training, among others.
Moreover, job seekers may also look for job vacancies through PhilJobNet, the government’s online job portal.
“We advised them to open the site that shows current in-demand jobs,” Cañete said, adding that PhilJobNet is interconnected with the SRS of every LGUs. (EPN)