Cebu’s job market continues to be vibrant with close to 6,000 new job openings for Cebuanos.
Majority of these jobs are from outsourcing companies now setting up delivery offices in the province’s two special economic zones – Cebu IT Park in Lahug and Mactan Newtown Center in Mactan, Cebu.
Cebu IT Park
In Cebu IT Park, about 750 jobs for nurses and doctors will be available this year after an American outsourcing company specializing in health care, insurance, banking and financial services has opened their first office in Cebu last week.
EXL Service, which is a publicly listed company since 2006 with market capitalization of $1 billion, has opened its first office in Cebu at The Link building in Cebu IT Park.
The Cebu office is its third branch in the country.
The firm had been growing robustly in the country since it opened its first office in Manila in 2008, Rohit Kapoor, EXL Service vice chairman and chief executive officer, said.
“As of now we already have 2,500 employees in our two offices in Manila and here we are looking at about 750 people to hire for our Cebu operations,” Kapoor said.
“Now we have opened the first floor of the two floors that we’ll be occupying in the building. For the first floor we are looking at 200 seats and we have now hired 212 people here,” said Kapoor.
Kapoor said one of the main reasons for the expansion here was the available manpower.
“We believe that Cebu is the best place for this expansion because in terms of infrastructure, Cebu has it. Cebu has the skilled manpower we need and accessibility is also there in terms of foreign direct flights,” said Kapoor.
In EXL Service, 70 percent of their clients are in the United States of America and 30 percent are in Europe.
Kapoor said that the Philippines is their fastest growing country in terms of number of employment and delivery centers.
“Here we are growing 30 percent to 40 percent each year. Here we do very specialized work which includes clinical analysis, utilization, disease management and care. Our clients also like the kind of service that Filipinos provide,” said Kapoor.
Globally, EXL Service have 21,000 employees in 7 countries.
Mactan Newtown
Ramping up their operations after their first office space building One World Center, Megaworld Corp. together with their partner Resorts World Manila and two locators in their Mactan Newtown Center property will hold a job fair for 5,000 jobs on June 1.
Jericho Go, said the job fair would support their locators’ operations which would go full swing by the second half of the year.
“About 3,000 of the jobs during the job fair will be coming from the outsourcing companies EnfraUSA and Results Manila. The remaining 2,000 will be from us, Resorts World Manila as well as McDonalds,” Go said.
Jobs available will be a mix of sales, hospitality, administrative, human resources and business process outsourcing jobs, he said.
For Resorts World Manila, Go said that they considered Cebu as a good place to source skilled and qualified talents to work for them and support their operations in Manila.
“Travelers International Hotels Group, Inc. who operates Resorts World will also be expanding their hotel base soon with new hotel brands coming in like Hilton, Sheraton and more so they will really need more manpower and they believe Cebu has a lot to offer for manpower,” said Harold Geronimo, Megaworld Corp. director for strategic marketing and communications.
Go said they were fast-tracking the construction works of the second office building, TwoWorld Center, which was scheduled to be completed by the first half of 2014, and would make available an additional space of 7,274 square meters for more locators interested to invest in Cebu.
“In our other properties in Manila, we have over a hundred BPO tenants and we are already talking to some of them for their expansions hopefully in Mactan Newtown Center. We are talking to Accenture, IBM and more companies,” Go said.
“We believe our property in Mactan is the best location for their expansion that will enable them to stay competitive as most of the companies in Manila are feeling a lot of pressure now with operations cost going higher because of rent and the best thing to do is to look for another area that can offer them lower,” he said.