11,000 jobs up for grabs at Skills job fair

CEBU, Philippines - If you are one of the more than seven million Filipinos who are still clueless on what, when and how to take a shot at getting themselves employed, a jobs fair scheduled this Saturday, August 17 might just be the answer.

The School of Knowledge for Industrial Labor, Leadership and Skills (Skills), in cooperation with the Department of Manpower Development and Placement of the Cebu City government, announces the conduct of local and overseas jobs fair at the Primary Structures Educational Foundation, Inc. (PSEFI), Skills Campus, formerly the Sacred Heart School for Boys, along Gen. Maxilom Avenue, Cebu City.

Various recruitment agencies, led by the Primary Group of Companies, of which Primary Skills is an affiliate, will join the said undertaking.

Initial list has 35 local companies and about 15 overseas firms and agencies participating in the whole day-event to provide applicants access to nearly 11,000 vacant positions, 90 percent of which are job openings in foreign countries mostly in the Middle East.

Officials said most of the job openings will require applicants to have technical-vocational (tech-voc) skills such as call center agents, construction workers, drivers, welders, heavy equipment operators, service crews, delivery riders, household cleaners, engineers and production workers.

Industry-wise, the most in-demand jobs are from the construction, hotel, manufacturing and shipping sectors.

Organizers said the activity aims to uphold Skills advocacy in providing their graduates with placement assistance, as well as to give backing to the advisory of the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda) for the conduct of an institutionalized jobs bridging program to facilitate employment for all tech-voc graduates.

Ludy Marie Lawas, PSEFI executive director, said at a press briefing that aside from helping the community at large, they are hoping to address the jobs and skills mismatch experienced in the country which is deemed one of the factors leading to the nation’s high unemployment rate.

In an earlier report, the National Economic and Development Authority (Neda) said the country’s unemployment rate increased by 0.6 percent to settle for the 7.5 percent level in April 2013 from 6.8 percent a year ago.

Said report came amid the rosy economic growth the Philippines posted at the end of this year’s first quarter at 7.8 percent, a leader among all Asian economies.

Neda said majority of the unemployed were high school graduates (31.7 percent), college graduates (21.3 percent) and college undergraduates (14.6 percent). About half (48.2 percent) of the unemployed were aged 15-24 years old, 27.5 percent of which are male while 20.7 percent are female.

According to Neda deputy director-general Emmanuel Esguerra, there is a need to improve the employability of worker applicants, particularly those with secondary and tertiary education.

Esguerra said a more effective partnership among firms or establishments, academe and the government will provide useful inputs to the curriculum design.

To this Lawas agreed, citing that their institution is even currently operating under certain tie-ups with schools in Cebu in hopes to provide a complement to the theoretical requirements of students taking up their baccalaureate degrees.

“The educational reform is actually a good partner in increasing public awareness that what the current market needs are people who have tech-voc skills,” Lawas said, reinforcing the strength of the K+12 curriculum which now provides extra two years of senior high school for skills training.

Asked how students must cope with the jobs mismatch, Lawas said they must identify their passions or their interests.

“You can’t be hopping from one job to the next, you need a career. And if you have a certificate in any tech-voc course, that gives you an edge, a guarantee of a career, given how the current labor market works,” Lawas said.

Established in 2008, PSEFI has been managing Skills, which is a Tesda-certified tech-voc school that serves as a training and assessment center for all construction-related trades.

With Skills, technical training was said to have been revolutionalized by forming combo courses which bonded related trade courses into one single course, producing multi-skilled graduates with better employable skills. (FREEMAN)