Vaccinated applicants may have the edge in getting hired, according to Philip Gioca, country manager of JobStreet Philippines.
In yesterday’s press conference announcing its Job to Cart event next week, Gioca urged Filipinos in customer service, secretarial and administrative work and even in human resource and engineering to build plans when their jobs are taken over by artificial intelligence (AI).
Gioca said workers need to retool and reskill themselves and take on new roles.
He did not give estimates on how much jobs will be eaten away by AI, but said based on the experience of banking and finance, workers were transposed to different roles when technology was introduced.
Gioca said while employers cannot discriminate between a vaccinated and a non-vaccinated applicant, that protection gives added value for the candidate to get a job faster.
That value, he said, gives the hirer more confidence to pick out a vaccinated applicant for face-to-face or flexible working arrangement especially for companies which cannot do full work-from-home setups.
JobStreet has yet to go back to the pre-pandemic level of 100,000 job postings per day and is now doing about 73,000 of which 53,000 in Luzon and the rest in Visayas and Mindanao.
Of the total , 58,000 are for early jobbers and 2,500 are for overseas placement.
“This is a good picture considering we dropped to 35,000 job postings per day at the height of the pandemic. We now see large companies beginning to hire while small and medium enterprises are trying to accept people. We expect this to be aided and sustained by vaccinations esp in NCR (National Capital Region),” Gioca said.
Results of the recent JobStreet’s Decoding Global Talent Survey in the Philippines showed 77 percent of Filipino employees are willing to be retrained for a different job as needed.
The same survey reveals that Filipino workers’ learning preferences are still traditional with on-the-job training at 70 percent shown as the most preferred way of upskilling, followed by self-study at 63%, and conferences and seminars at 56%.
JobStreet recommends for companies to build plans to expand the skills of their workers especially those in customer service, service sector, administration and secretariat, and arts and creative work, which are at higher risk.
Meanwhile, employees in lower-risk jobs such as management, engineering and technical, science and research, law, health and medicine, social care, information technology and digitalization and automation are also recommended to upskill or be trained to stay relevant.
JobStreet’s “Job To Cart” online event on July 26 to 30 will be done through easy-to-use chatbots and live chat features with participating employers.
