JOB SEEKERS were less confident about their prospects for finding work in 2018 due to stiffer competition and as employers seek new types of technical skills for the looming wave of automation, according to a study conducted by JobStreet.com.
JobStreet country Manager Cielo J. Sonza told reporters during the 2018 Job Outlook Report launch on Tuesday that this year’s graduates constitute the first intake of students under the K-12 system, making the pool of candidates significantly larger.
“[There’s also] high demand for STEM (science and technology, engineering, and math) skills, [and with] Artificial Intelligence coming in, this would mean that there’s a whole new generation of skills that will be required and the candidates are starting to feel that,” she added.
Participants in the 2018 study scored 4.68 out of 7 on how easily they expect find a job, down from 4.87 a year earlier. The 1-7 scale ranges from 1, in which the study participant believes job prospects are “much worse,” to 7, which means “much better.”
“They also see that there are more job opportunities in the industry. They know it will grow, they know there will be more jobs but they feel that it will be hard to get a job because there is stiffer competition in the market and there will be new roles required of them.”
On the employer side, the large candidate pool aligns with their plans to hire more this year.
“The good news is, 95% of our hirers said that for 2018, they are expanding or maintaining their head count for this year, there are fewer companies who have frozen hiring. They’re going to be hiring within the first half of the year,” Ms. Sonza said.
The industry with the most positive hiring outlook is manufacturing, scoring 5.1 on a scale of 1-7, where 1 means a “much worse outlook” and 7 means “much better.”
Retail and Business Process Outsourcing industries followed closely with scores of 4.9 and 4.8, respectively.
The results were collated from a survey on 293 company representatives and 575 candidates conducted in January. — Anna Gabriela A. Mogato
