Job generation should not be relied on jobs fairs

By Myrah Acuzar

Davao Today intern

DAVAO CITY – As government set up wider and coordinated jobs fairs in this year’s commemoration of Labor Day, job seekers cautioned against pinning too much hope that they turn panacea to the troubling trend in unemployment.

A throng of job-seekers formed snake-like queues in the shopping malls here hosting the fairs, and hoping to corner them into their department stores and tenements of tenants, as the Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) solicited 29,816 job vacancies from 134 participating agencies.

Of the 5,130 job seekers who filed application forms in the designated malls, almost half just graduated this year. The rest are undergraduates and high school graduates, including some whose age are near the mandated age of retirement, that would help explain why a small percentage of job-seekers get to land a job.

Al John Rendon, who just recently passed the Electronics and Communications Engineering Board Examination, clutched excitedly under his arm the brown envelope that contained his credentials.

Near him is Lloyd Lalaguna, a Communication and Media Studies graduate who listed down three preferred qualities sought by call center agencies.

“Unemployment is a problem government has to pull by the roots” – job applicants

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Hyangelo Hao, a computer science graduate a few years back, remembered getting his first job through the university’s jobs fair, packing his bag for Hongkong on a public sector contracting agency. Prior to getting hired, he and his batchmates went through stringent tests in which only two of them passed.

“Only about five of us out of pretty much the entire ComSci and IT batch passed the first part, which was basically writing and debugging programs,” Hao recalled. “The second part was on the next day. They had us in a meeting room sa Apo View and it was basically a group interview where we had to write code to solve a problem sa whiteboard. Only two of us got job offers but I was the only one who accepted the job.”

Hao said the company put him through a two-month bootcamp with other applicants from other regions before sending him real projects.

“After the bootcamp, only half of the new hires were left. The other half was let go. I’ve learned more in those two months than I did in entire semesters in AdDU. That first job was one of the best decisions I’ve made.” he said.

Hao left the company later after one of his classmates referred him to a software company in Florida.

Janee Villegas, who finished her BS Management Accounting last year, said she had taken two job fairs but never got the opportunity to land a job.

“I applied in a February jobs fair at school last year, and also another one during Labor Day at a shoping mall. I submitted my resume and got interviewed. The companies had exams and interviews, and later said they would call. Some did, but I didn’t get hired,” she said.

Villegas is now undergoing a ten-month training for a company in Manila which she applied outside of the jobs fair, and hopes she could finally land her first work.

She said that most of her batchmates went to job fairs but end up empty handed.

She said job fairs could help find opportunities for new graduates, but it’s not all the case. “There are those who are choosy even if the opportunity is right in front of them. Some would be chill, and say it’s okay to take whatever is given to them for experience,” she added.

She said that unemployment in the country is a big problem that government has to pull by the roots. “No matter how much you trim the statistics, if you don’t grab the problem by its roots, it will still sprout,” she said.

“The only thing that really solves unemployment is job creation. I think unemployment is just half of the problem. Underemployment is also rampant, such as nurses ending up in call centers. Half of my highschool friends who took up nursing are now out of the country because of the ridiculous pay in hospitals. I’m a bit luckier,” Hao said.

Rendon would like to think that his training in college has an edge over the other job-seekers but he was beginning to be realistic over the uncertain that his engineering diploma could land him a job. He wished he would have been wearing a hard hat by now. “Dili man gyud assurance na pasar ko kay makatrabaho na dayon ko (It’s not an assurance that If I already passed the board exam i could land a job immediately,” he said.

Lalaguna, like those who are familiar with the profession, said he preferred a call center job saying it would practically give him good wage than other jobs offered.

Manuel Ravanes, a computer student, also shares Lalaguna’s view and disclosed that he did not apply for summer jobs because he planned to skip college to work as a call center agent.

“Magtigom sa ko’g kwarta ayha magpadayon ug eskwela (I would save before i;l proceed to college),” he said when asked about the intervention.

Call centers as business most attractive to fresh graduates continued to top other jobs on the fair.

Rogelio Tripoli, in his experienced age of 54 did not despair as he asserts that he is far more practiced than the fresh graduates.

He said he hoped to get hired by any overseas agency with his mechanical engineering diploma.

He is working as a mechanical supervisor in a light equipment business that imports surplus products from Japan.

He finds his current job insufficient to finance the education of his four children, with his eldest going to college. “It’s really difficult these times,” he said.

But Marco Adnesan, 31, said he was seeking a chance for the first time at the jobs fair, a far cry from being a business operator before where he worked. His father was the president of a mining company in Compostela Valley.

“It did not sustain and so it was sold to a big foreign company. I was drawn into mining,” he said, despite the criminology degree he finished.

Now he had to brush shoulders with people he is alike – underemployed.

Statistics from IBON show that 7.3 million people are going through unemployment. This is due to lack of jobs available for every educational program/course colleges and universities offer, he said.

It said that 553,706 graduated college in March and April this year, with a lot of them expressing fear that they would end up being part of the unemployed.

Adahbi Conejos, 26, from Kapalong, Davao del Norte was in her second attempt at the fair. She did not qualify for the age limit of her desired job last year.

“Dili pa man unta ko ana katigulang para dili dawaton (I am not not that old yet to be turned down),” she said as she remembered the strict screening she went through last jobs fair.

Government has been trying to diminish the weight of the unemployed in the country, endorsing all job generation efforts, including jobs fair. Its Technical Education and Skills Training (TESDA) has provided trainings and qualtification standards, especially for aspirants for jobs that need skills training.

Critics has doubted the government’s efficiency to provide jobs, as they criticized certain labor policies that exposed regular workers to the brink of becoming contract workers or working on job orders..

“Cover up yan ng gobyerno para sa pagsulbad sa mga problema sa atong mga manggagawa kay ang mga trabaho di na kailangan na atangan or i-offer (It’s a cover-up to hide the problems of workers),” said Emma V, Ricaforte, executive director of Nonoy Librado Development Foundation, Inc. (NLDF)

“Ginabuhat na nila para i-divert ang attention sa mga pakigbisog sa grupo. Dapat unta iwagtang nang contractualization ug ang uban pa nga mga department orders nga wala nakatabang sa atong grupo (They do it to divert attention from demands of militant workers. Government should remove that policy of contractualizaion and other DOLE orders that bear down on workers),” said general secretary Romualdo Basilio of Kilusan Mayo Uno Southern Mindanao. (davaotoday.com)