FROM ENROLLMENT TO EMPLOYMENT

FROM ENROLLMENT TO EMPLOYMENT Dear Mr. President: I am writing you about the long journey that Filipino students must make from enrollment to employment, and how difficult it is for them to arrive at their destination, and that is a stable job, while having a good career or profession. As it is now, that journey is fragmented, and they are bound to encounter problems in every fragment, and there is no one to help them with those problems, more often than not. According to human resources expert Ms. Deanne Hernandez, it is possible to plan the entire journey of students from the time that they are enrolled in the schools, to the time that they are assigned to temporary engagements as part of “on the job” (OJT) programs. Ms. Hernandez was quick to clarify that these should be real OJT programs with actual work to do, and not the bogus “programs” where the students are just assigned to make coffee and to photocopy documents. When I was the Department Manager of the Information Technology Systems Department (ITSD) of the Philippine Charity Sweepstakes Office (PCSO), we implemented honest-to-goodness OJT programs for graduating Information and Communications (ICT) students. As a result, they were able to learn new skills that they were not able to acquire in school, such as software programming, systems analysis, database management, hardware repair and website development. According to Hernandez, what is important is to place these students as OJT program participants in the right prospective employers. Once they are working in these companies even as temporary “employees”, it is already up to them to show their bosses what they are capable of doing. It is up to them to impress upon them that they are really worth hiring. In this connection, I have heard of many actual cases wherein the students are immediately hired by the companies after graduation, even skipping the interview processes already. With the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI) software, it is now possible to design parameters for algorithms that would make it very easy to choose possible employers for graduating students and vice versa, to make it very easy for the possible employers to choose the right applicants. As a matter of fact, if we can get actual data about what skills and characteristics that the prospective employers are looking for, then it is possible to customize the training and the preparation of these students so that they would have better chances of getting hired. I am very sure that all prospective employers would want this organized OJT programs, because it would be very cost-efficient for them, considering that they will be able to save a lot of money that they usually spend for help wanted ads. Add to that the high cost of attrition, as they are forced to fire employees who fail to pass their standards after their temporary employment periods. Mr. President, it is often said that it is up to the graduating students to look for their own jobs after they get out of school. While that may be true, there are many ways that the government could help, especially with your intervention. With the right instructions coming from you, all the prospective employers will rally behind you to make it easy for graduating students to get matched to the right jobs, as soon as possible. IKE SENERES/09-22-2024