JOBSTREET.COM, an online job search portal, said postings by employers advertising new job opportunities started to pick up in May after having fallen 30-50% year on year during the first full month of the Luzon lockdown in April. It said the April downturn in job postings was significantly larger than the 30% decline for Asia.
Jobstreet Country Manager Philip Gioca said, “In the Philippines, we saw a significant drop between 30-50%… in number of placements, and worse during the first week of April. But now that we are in May we are seeing very good traction. Now, people are starting to post again.” Pre-lockdown, the website averaged around 100,000 Philippine job postings per day.
In response to the downturn in postings, Jobstreet.com launched a new program to connect employees to urgent hiring opportunities during the pandemic. Jobstreet’s program for job seekers during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic includes a COVID-19 microsite offering job reports for employers. It introduced a new feature called #WorkNow to flag immediate hiring opportunities and availability. “Some companies have paused accepting applications, but many of them remain actively recruiting, so we’d like to encourage jobseekers that there’s a way for them to signal hirers that they are up for urgent hiring,” Mr. Gioca said.
Jobstreet also allows small and medium-sized enterprises offering work-from-home jobs for fresh graduates or jobseekers with no work experience to post on their website for free up to June 30. Mr. Gioca said manufacturing, construction, and real estate job postings slumped in the March 15-April 30 period, while the top postings were received from the outsourcing industry (41%), government (15%), education (9%), banking and financial services (4%), and computer or information technology as well as software (4%). Top job postings were for call center agents (10%), teachers (7%), nurses (5%), engineers (4%), and customer service representatives (4%).
