By Dr. Rex Casiple
Thousands of college graduates will be added to the roster of unemployed/under-employed graduates in the Region this year 2021. Business Education courses still are the most popular courses in school with a lot of graduates followed by Teacher Education and Information Technology (IT) programs.
The study of the Bureau of Local Employment revealed that the highest paying jobs in the country include jobs from creative industries, computer services, banking and finance, business process outsourcing and manufacturing. Salary is a major factor in the career path of fresh graduates looking for greener pastures. The job that requires expertise in development, planning, knowledge management and creativity for successful business planning was identified as the highest paying job. IT sector is enjoying good-paying jobs both in the fresh graduates and senior management levels. IT-related jobs include software developer, web developer, and systems administrator.
Actuarial Science was also included in the list of good-paying jobs. This includes banking jobs, jobs in insurance companies and investment firms. Financial analyst, certified public accountants (CPAs), loan officers and bank tellers are also on the list of good-paying jobs. Law graduates are enjoying a rewarding career in legal services jobs. Legal services include legal assistant, contract management administrator, or a junior lawyer. School teachers, call center agents, engineers, customer service representatives, sales associates, data analysts, media and advertising, nurse, physicians and other healthcare sectors are also on the list of high-paying jobs for fresh graduates.
Lately, the most in-demand jobs in the Philippines include data scientist, application development analyst, marketing specialist/analyst, manager, IT consultants, accountants, among others. Data scientist specializes in the capture, interpretation and utilization of information from data. They are tasked to collect and analyze data in order to gain insight useful to the company’s business. They possess skills that include statistical analysis, data mining and processing, programming skills, etc.
An application development analyst deals with the design, development, testing and troubleshooting of computer-based applications. The marketing specialist job involves creating, implementing, tracking, improving and modifying marketing campaigns across various markets to produce the best and marketable products. The managers handle the company operations and manage or supervise the company staff and workers. The IT consultants are contracted to handle all sorts of IT needs and problems of the company. Their task is to install the IT systems and infrastructure of the company and train employees in the application of IT-related technologies. The accountant manages the company’s financial tasks.
On the other hand according to the online jobs site, JobStreet.com, there are numbers of work from home (WFH) jobs available in the Region in this time of pandemic that can be applied online. Some of these temporary WFH jobs are home-based typing jobs, data entry jobs, home based call center, sales associate, operation supervisor, client service specialist, training officer, call center agent, customer service representative, online home-based tutor, mortgage underwriter, graphic designer, proposal writer, website designer, among others.
Jobstreet.com also reported that IT-related specializations provide high monthly salaries. Jobs in this level are web developer, software developer and systems administrator. The call center/IT-enabled services/BPO industry is the most in-demand industry with more jobs posted on the online jobs site. Aside from the IT profession, other high paying specializations for fresh graduates are engineering jobs that are growing across all positions and levels. The engineering fields that are gaining popularity are mechanical engineering, civil engineering, electrical engineering and electronics engineering.
On job hiring, the online jobs site survey revealed that employers prefer fresh graduates who are open to being trained, have good communication skills, and are sufficiently equipped with analytical and problem-solving skills as well as technological know-how. Some of our graduates were not properly trained/educated of some jobs in demand abroad.
Hence, we are urging our higher education institutions (HEIs) preferably those offering information technology programs to regularly update their curricula to match with the IT skills in demand in the local and global market. State colleges and universities (SUCs) and autonomous private HEIs shall adapt their program offerings to the demands in the industry.
