DOLE to fix job mismatch

By Cheneen R. Capon
THE Department of Labor and Employment (DOLE) 11 is planning to update the region’s Human Resource Development (HRD) plan this year to address the looming issue on jobs mismatch.
DOLE 11 OIC regional director Atty. Jason P. Balais said they will be working with different higher education institutions like state colleges and universities here to work on updating the courses and curriculums.
“Based on DOLE 11’s skills mapping for the region, it turned out that our colleges and universities here are producing graduates that are not industry level,” Balais said in yesterday’s Kapehan sa Dabaw at SM City Annex.
“Graduates either lack organizational skills or technical skills needed by the specific industry,” he added.
Balais said the incidence of jobs mismatch in the region is not increasing but still needed to be solved.
“Mismatch happens either because of the student’s choice or because of the choice of the parents. This is the reason why it is important that there is a career orientation for student of Grade 9, 10, 11 and 12,” Balais said.
Job mismatch is either reflected in the region unemployment and underemployment rate, according to him.
He also said job mismatch is always present during job fairs because of low rate of hired on the spot applicants. Every job fair, DOLE is only targeting 15 percent. Last 2014 Labor Day job fair, only 1,005 of the 18,000 job applicants were hired on the spot.
Meanwhile, labor employment officer Loriele P. Arce said the department is conducting skills mapping to identify available skills in the region since the last quarter of 2014.
The initial result of their skills mapping, which will be finished by April 27 after the 14 industries are evaluated,  initially bared that graduate students both lack soft and hard skills necessary to be hired by a company.
Among the industries were wholesale and retail, banking and financing, hotel, restaurant and tourism, manufacturing, construction, agriculture, real estate, information and communication technology-business process outsourcing (ICT-BPO) and four other emerging industries: creative, power and utilities, renewable, and diversified fisheries and aquatic resources.
Arcena said DOLE is eyeing to produce industry-ready graduates and address job mismatch by 2020.