More jobseekers have sought the refuge of online job portals to land into jobs that they desire either for local or overseas placements as more companies rely their supply of human resources from online applications.
Yoda Buyco, JobStreet.com marketing director, told reporters at the launch of the career fair series via JobStreet.com Career Fair in Manila to be held on April 1 and 2 at SMX Convention Center there are 70,000 jobs available at any given time at its portal alone.
Based on the JobStreet.com’s job statistics, there are 170,000 unique jobs available, which is equivalent to 511,500 job vacancies. This number should be able to absorb the expected 500,000 new graduates who would be joining the labor force this year. Majority of these new entrants into the labor are from the medical field, business administration and related courses, and IT-related disciplines.
JobStreet.com Philippines, the country’s oldest online jobs portal, is a joint venture of the publicly-listed JobStreet Malaysia and the Gokongwei-owned JG Summit. The portal serves only as a data base for job seekers and for which companies can tap for recruitment for their manpower supply. After the applicant has clicked on the icon “apply” for a specific job, it will go straight to the hiring company. JobStreet.com does not handle any recruitment processes.
Every month, the company receives over 250,000 people who applied for jobs. JobStreet.com has a hiring rate or fill rate of as low as 40 percent to as high as 80 percent. It has over 22,000 companies using its platform for recruitment as the portal boasts of having 4.4 million jobseekers in its database.
Buyco said that more applicants are turning to online because it is more efficient and convenient unlike the traditional face to face before when internet was not yet invented. Companies also find it more effective and efficient in weeding out non-qualifed making its job more efficient and cost efficiency.
Those that are registered with JobStreet.com are companies from various industries like BPOs that are eager to get talents; headhunters or those commissioned by companies to hire managers; recruitment agencies licensed by the Philippine Overseas Employment Administration (POEA) for local and domestic deployment.
Applicants can post their resumes on its portal for free, but companies that avail of its platform have to pay P5,000 per job posting, Buyco said.
Based on the job postings of 2012 and 2013, the top three specializations that will be required this year are related to the customer service, IT, and Healthcare (nurse / medical support and assistant) industries.
Although it is true that the business process outsourcing is a big industry in the country and remains the key job provider hiring and will hire the most number of fresh graduates, but JobStreet.com said the retail/merchandise industry and sales executives are on the rise. In a recent survey conducted by JobStreet.com, almost half of the responding employers started the year with a high requirement for sales jobs. Their workforce is expected to increase partly because of the rapid expansion of manufacturing companies, and it seems that they will not be slowing down any time soon.
For its Job Fair next month, Grace Colet, JobStreet.com’s country manager, said the company expects 30,000 walk-in applicants an improvement from 24,000 in the previous fair.