Finding jobs at home and abroad is easy; getting them is the hard part

FOR the millions of college graduates and recent entrants to the Philippine labor force, welcome to the post- campus, post- academia real world: the playground where you must become birds instead of kites.

Contrary to popular belief, finding a job is easy, especially with today’s job- hunting tools unavailable to those who left the college, high school or elementary portals decades ago.

During our high school days at the Philippine College of Commerce’s two apartment- like campuses at Lepanto, Sampaloc Manila, the brainy ones were in section one. The not- so- promising students were relegated to the lower sections.

Regardless of section, we all took stenography and typing lessons – on typewriters, the Royal, Underwood varieties.

Knowledge of stenography and proficiency in typing made us work-ready even before graduating from high school during our on-the-job-training (OJT) periods.

Finding a job was easy. Getting one was easy as well since entry- level jobs as office clerk, typist, stenographer or secretary were plentiful.

The same skills would still be useful today – particularly the typing part, not necessarily the steno skills since voice recorders industry and services sector. Those in the services sector employed the most – 55 percent of the total labor force.

The types of jobs in the services sector were for those engaged in the wholesale and retail trade; repair of motor vehicles and motorcycles (accounting for the largest percentage - 35.4 percent.

Agriculture was a close second job- provider at 26 percent. Workers in the industry sector made up the smallest group at 18.1 percent. The trend was a carry- over from past years.

What role does education play in getting a job?

College education important

How to find jobs

Classified ads.

Job fairs.

Local employment job sites.

Do not forget the alumni association of your school. There is the Alumni. net where you can register and go through the list of available jobs posted by alumni locally, by region or even overseas.

A random check with Indeed. com through alumni. net resulted in hundreds of jobs but a significant number such as a cashier opening for Baguio Crown Legacy Hotel prefers applicants with “at least college level.”

Now if you could only get a job that pays well where you can use your college knowledge, so you would not have to join the 6,000 plus Filipinos leaving for overseas jobs every day.