Employment website JobStreet saw a 20%-30% increase or shift to digital services that required talents with digital skills in the last 10 months or at the height of COVID-19. It doesn’t follow, though, that there are more available jobs than before lockdowns forced many companies to retrench employees.
“Pre-pandemic, we used to have 100,000 jobs, and 30% of which are coming from digital services,” said Philip Gioca, country manager, JobStreet, Philippines. “Now, we see only 55,000 but within that numbers, you could see an increase, month-on-month on those kinds of services. You have to have the context first.”
Job applicants with e-commerce and digital marketing specializations are part of the top 5 fastest growing specializations in JobStreet last quarter (October-December, 2020), with 6-10% growth vs other candidate profiles.
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For employers, digital services have taken a hit for 2020 vs 2019. Especially with companies cutting marketing budgets and the decrease in consumer demand with creative or graphic design jobs experienced a 43% decrease and digital marketing also decreased at only 16%.
But e-commerce grew by 10% this year, showing a change in consumer platforms. Aside from this job specialization, biomedical (42%), social or counseling (68%), security (24%), and education (21%) grew this year vs 2019 pre-pandemic.
News of businesses shutting down due to the pandemic also meant more employees losing jobs. However, many organizations were quick to pivot adopting digital means while others found innovative ways to stay afloat — if not thrive — wherein new jobs, that require new skills, emerged.
Gioca also noted there are companies that prioritize retrenched employees. There are also jobs that give chance to fresh graduates as well as candidates that already have employment experience.
“Fresh graduates are actually of equal footing with those who have been employed before in terms of accessibility,” Gioca said.
He noted that one of trends last year is a minimum requirement of being able to work remotely with access to digital tools and reliable internet connection. Those candidates who have these essentials “have higher chances of being accepted to a job” because many companies have opted to either hybrid work or full-time telecommuting.
Virtual recruitment
To fill in those jobs and other available vacancies, JobStreet is holding a virtual Virtual Career Fair for 2021 scheduled on Feb. 17-21. Adapting to the times, the recruitment process will be fully interactive, from filling out or sending resumes to initial interviews.
Hiring companies will have their respective virtual booths where they can showcase multimedia content for jobseekers to explore and navigate.
Applicants with internet access can join the job fair which will feature chatbots for prescreening, a live-chat feature for real-time engagement between candidates and recruitment officers (Live Chat Control Platform), and JobStreet Facebook Live events.
The live events are meant to address one of the pressing issues during the pandemic, aside from the high unemployment rate, and that is mental health. Financial and mental health experts will be discussing relevant labor matters.
Some of the job roles available are IT software specialist, digital marketer, sales executive, system analyst, customer service representative, financial consultant, ESL teacher, accountant, engineer, IT developer, HR staff, and HR manager. Candidates can also apply for office administrator, dispatcher, merchandiser, warehouse staff, quality assurance staff, and more.
The Virtual Career Fair is now open for pre-registration through the JobStreet microsite.