Now is the best time to go job hunting in the Philippines because most local companies are planning to expand their businesses this year, according to JobStreet.com.
In a survey covering 440 companies, the Internet job site revealed that 52 percent of the country’s firms plan to expand as early as this quarter.
Survey results showed that the bulk of job vacancies were for sales executives, but every segment would benefit from the companies’ expansion, said JobStreet.com.
For example, it explained, a surge in new hires for sales departments will have to be balanced by a similar strengthening of marketing departments.
“There are also manufacturing firms that have transferred back from China, and foreign investors coming to the Philippines,” JobStreet.com said. “With this, job search should be easier in the first quarter of 2013.”
The company said engineers and accountants should also be more optimistic of landing jobs this year.
Also, junior professionals would find it easy to look for work as JobStreet.com said 57 percent of survey respondents said they would be hiring people with less than four years of work experience, while 24 percent said they were looking for supervisors and specialists.
“Competition remains high for top management positions, such as president and chief executive, since only a small sliver—1.6 percent—opened their hiring doors for this quarter,” JobStreet.com added.
Based on the total number of postings at JobStreet.com in 2012, the most in-demand workers are those for customer services—in particular, those for business process outsourcing firms.
Yolanda R. Buyco, JobStreet.com marketing director, said yesterday that the other top nine jobs available these days are those related to finance-general cost accounting; IT/computer software; technical and help desk support; IT/computer hardware; human resources; marketing and business development; sales (telesales and telemarketing); IT/computer network, system or database administration; and banking and financial services.
Buyco announced the results of the survey during the launch of JobStreet.com’s Career Fair Manila 2013, which will be held on April 1 and 2 at the SMX Convention Center in Pasay City.
She also said that there are jobs waiting for fresh graduates, apart from positions for nursing or medical support assistance; hotel management and tourism services; and clerical or administrative support.
Citing data from the Commission on Higher Education, JobStreet.com noted that there are 500,000 fresh graduates from colleges each year.
Based on the company’s data, there are 170,500 unique jobs available for local job seekers.
At an average of three vacancies for every such job, this means there are about 511,500 job vacancies in JobStreet.com partner-companies alone.
“With these numbers at hand, the graduating batch should not be scared that there’s no place for them in the corporate world,” the company said in a statement.

Source: Philippine Daily Inquirer - March 8, 2013