Employable skills

The latest numbers gathered in the job fairs held in the cities of Cebu and Dumaguete last Tuesday, Labor Day, merely confirmed a long held public perception. There’s a serious mismatch between the type of graduates being churned out by  universities and  actual job openings in the market.

Of  more than 5,000 job openings offered in one Cebu City venue, a mere 1,000 plus were hired on the spot, for overseas jobs that are more or less “unglamorous” to those who graduated in a four-year course: welding, electronics, care-giving and so on.

Never mind if welders make as much, if not more money than their white-collar domestic counterparts, excluding perhaps the call center agents and others employed in the booming business process outsourcing (BPO) industry.

Not that we’re discouraging Cebu’s youth from taking these courses, especially if their hearts are already set on it. It’s not as if the job market is  drying up for these graduates.

Technical expertise is becoming a more valuable commodity and gives job applicants a foot in the door for immediate hiring.

In contrast, graduates of commerce and communications courses find themselves having to rely on connections or taking their chances in call centers, whose work demands usually involve a  graveyard shift.

The dearth of graduates in technical and vocational courses that result in fewer  people being hired on the spot in job fairs also comes amid a report from the National Statistics Coordination Board that there’s a slow rise in the number of graduates of critical, knowledge-based courses.

Knowledge-based courses include engineering, science research and medicine. Graduates of these courses are finding better work abroad, caring for American and European patients, building roads and bridges in another country and finding better treatments for a host of diseases.

The country is  doing a  better job preparing  graduates for work abroad than here in the country. By encouraging more students to enroll in vocational and technical courses even during high school or summertime, the country can develop a rich, skill-based labor force that can gain ready employment even while studying in college.

This emphasis on technical and vocational courses gains more leverage in light of the additional school years in the country’s curriculum.

Middle class families that can spare a few more pesos can encourage their children to learn a vocational or technical skill during summer which can give them more employment chances once the next job fair comes along.

In an increasingly competitive market, it’s best for Filipinos to diversify.