GETTING employed amid the Covid-19 pandemic that forced several businesses to shut down is extra-challenging for new college graduates.
However, accepting a job not related to one’s degree can be of help for the meantime, said Elsa Angus, Public Employment Service Office manager and counselor for the University of San Jose-Recoletos’ (USJ-R) Student Development and Placement Center.
Angus said many jobs are unavailable, and it would help if one is not picky.
Most hirings, she said, are in the business process outsourcing industry.
Based on the data from the Commission on Higher Education 7, a total of 48,804 students graduated from college for the academic year 2019-2020. This is 3,241 more than the total college graduates of the academic year 2018-2019.
The five degree programs with the most number of college graduates in Cebu Province in academic year 2019-2020 were Bachelor of Secondary Education with 3,537 graduates; Bachelor of Elementary Education, 2,872 graduates; Bachelor of Science in Industrial Technology, 2,543 graduates; Bachelor of Science in Business Administration, 2,426 graduates; and Bachelor of Science in Hospitality Management, 1,224 graduates.
Webinars abound
Angus said most advertisements on job placement sites as of this time are more on webinars for the purpose of preparing the fresh graduates, and there are few postings for hirings.
“We have prepared our students already. They are ready for work. But I think the next question now is: Are there available jobs for them?” she said.
The annual jobs fair intended for the college graduates of USJ-R was supposed to happen last March, but it was cancelled because of the health crisis ignited by the coronavirus disease 2019.
Angus reached out to companies and tried to obtain job advertisement posters, but only a few responded.
For this semester of the academic year 2020-2021, Angus said they plan to come up with a virtual career guidance and job fair to create work opportunities for the incoming graduating students.
No data
SunStar Cebu tried to obtain from the Department of Labor and Employment (Dole) 7 the data on academic year 2019-2020 graduates who got employed and those who remain unemployed. But it has no available data.
The Dole 7, in its May 2020 labor market updates (LMU) reflecting the 2019 Central Visayas profile, said college graduates accounted for the largest number of registrants with 21,688 (29.66 percent) out of the 73,123 jobseekers for 55,393 vacancies in 459 establishments in the region last year.
The LMU regional profile is an annual publication of the Dole 7 that contains information on the supply and demand in the labor market derived from Public Employment Service Offices’ information system.
For its part, the Civil Service Commission will conduct a five-day job fair from Sept. 14 to 18 through Jobstreet.com.
The job fair will have around 730 job vacancies involving 76 government agencies.