Job Mismatch within the College Graduates in the Philippines

Success is often deliberated on how well you do in class through your academic

performace (education) and this educational attainment will greatly reflect on the career

you wish to pursue in the future. And with that said, it is evident that there is a

correlation between the distribution of income in an economy and the amount of

education people have accumulated in time (Corpuz, Jasa & Jasa, 2013). However, the

lack of coherence between the taken educational degree and the job taken are not

adequate for the demand of the current economy thus, what we call job mismatch and

this is something we can observe in some of the graduates in the Philippines. Job

mismatch can exists in the labor market in a form of educational or job mismatches. The

point is that, although higher education (CHED) raises productivity, the actual level of

productivity manifested is also determined by the match between educational and job

level. According to Allen & van der Velden (2001), it created a disruption of wheel to

the economy and generated serious effects on wages associated with negative labor

market outcomes.

One of the reasons why job mismatch is happening in the Philippines is because

of the lack of job opportunities available for fresh graduates. From the latest survey of

Social Weather Stations (SWS), 9.1 million Filipinos remain unemployed even though

the country’s economic growth is progressing. Job slots are slowly decreasing,

especially in-demand job occupations, because of the sudden growth of the population

in the country. Eventhough DOLE (Department of Labor and Employment) keeps on

creating jobs to cater Filipinos and job creation is their number one (1) priority,

graduates who are seeking and applying for jobs are increasing every year that is why

there are still no slots enough for them. Also, employers in the Philippines tend to

complicate things such as seeking highly competitive standards that job applicants

don’t have and education in our country is not yet enough to possess those skills.

Lack of job slots or opportunities in the Philippines pushes the job seekers to

apply for other jobs. For example, a nursing graduate finds it hard to find a job

matching his course but he found a job as a call center agent, he or she doesn’t have any

choice but to accept the job. Filipinos only option is to grab any opportunity in getting

employment with average income as long they bring food to the table. Even if that job

doesn’t involve or match their skills and attributes they possess or they lack in training

in that specific job. As a result, a lot of Filipinos go abroad to work because of plenty of

jobs opportunities in other countries and they offer above average income and

compensation packages. They do this to survive and to have money to pay for their bills

and daily expenses.

Moreover, lots of Filipinos aren’t happy with their jobs because their job doesn’t

match with the skills and attributes they possess. These jobs make them tired and they

don’t enjoy it. Job mismatch affects the worker’s productivity. It may be pleasing to hear

that there is an enormous amount of jobs that are available, but then we still cannot

deny the rising number of both underemployment and unemployment. One wonders

why we have a persistent problem with high unemployment and underemployment,

and yet have so many jobs persistently waiting to be filled. The usual answer is that we

face a jobs-skills mismatch wherein the training of our jobseekers simply does not

match the requirements of the companies looking for people to fill their vacancies. This

mismatch problem appears to span job categories ranging from the relatively low

skilled to highly specialized ones. It is also a problem seen in both the private and

public sectors. There are good jobs out there for people who have skills. But employers

are having a hard time on hiring qualified applicants because first of, high school

students are now failing as well as college students aren’t focusing and majoring on

hard subjects in which job is present. The economy right now, as what they say, is

facing a skills gap.

Furthermore, the real issue here is the employer’s expectations for the skills of

new graduates, for what they must invest in training, and for how much they need to

pay their employees. Their expectations have grown increasingly out of step with

reality. The problem with skills gap disputation is that employer are about overall

hiring rather than jobs filled by recent graduates. In other words, companies are having

trouble on finding applicants at all career levels with the right work history, rather than

hiring recent graduates that doesn’t have enough experience on the field but has the

skills to be hired. Since most by far of employment searchers have been out of school for

quite a long time, the objections are highly irrelevant as to what schools are doing now.

For example, most schools tend to base their choice of course offerings on what they see
students and parents want, thereby reinforcing the possible error in perception of job

market demands.

In the ideal world, schools (universities, colleges or technical/vocational training

institutions) would be in regular contact and close coordination with the potential

employers of their graduates, well-guided on the nature and content of their course

offerings in order to be most responsive to the needs of the firms. The most common

way this contact currently happens is through on-the-job training (OJT) programs that

college seniors must go through. But nowadays we’ve seen firms that don’t take OJTs

seriously, even seeing them as a burden. These complaints reveal unsettling truths that

employers really want are workers they don’t have to train. By that, there is a

opposition for deal of linkages among industry and academic institution to cultivate

more innovative course and educational modules outline, grant programs like

scholarship, and other modes for helping the schools address the persistent job-skills

mismatch.

Another thing is that when employers are asked about recent graduates,

apparently their complaints have nothing to do with their academic skills. They

frequently express the same concerns that the older generations have when it comes to

the young people like they are not industrious enough, they don’t listen, and they

expect too much. Although we don’t really hear this on the news, but recent reports

states that achievement among students in this generation is far better over the past

generation. Drop-out rates are significantly low; there is also an improvement on the
scores on the standardized National Achievement Test or National Assessment of

Education Progress. Therefore, companies simply haven’t invested much in training

their workers. The problem here is more companies are hiring from the outside rather

than growing and improving their own talent from within. The real challenge we face is

that if everyone is hiring for the ability to do a job, rather than for the potential to do it

well, how does anyone get that initial experience? Unfortunately, many policymakers

concluded that schools must be more responsible on training job applicants. But schools

are not good at providing what employers want, which is work-based skills and

experience. Instead, employers need to be much more involved, not just in telling

schools what they want but in providing opportunities for new graduates to get work

experience and learn the relevant proficiency. We need a different approach: one where

employers are not just consumers of skills, but are part of the system for producing

them.

In addition, there are times that we need to really think what path to take in

order to have a right choice of a college course but others cannot get a right choice

because one of the reasons are either parental influence or poor decision-making.

Making a right choice of college course is somehow hard, they got to think deeply and

it’s much better if they already have a dream or goals in life or a person what you want

to be as you see in the future; however, some students are undecided and there’s no

problem with that it’s just that in the future it may be having a course you don’t like

and getting on shifting to another course and that’s a tiring situation we’ve got there.
 Decisions are the hardest thing to make, especially when it is a choice between

where you should be and where you want to be. Well, it is true that having a good-

decision making is an essential skill for career success generally. For an individual to be

successful, the person itself must possess good-decision making because making a big

life change is scary but making regrets is much scarier. Every single day we make

decisions, whether big or small these decisions can make a huge impact in our daily

lives it also affects itself and in surroundings. As the person progresses and bit by bit

improving it allows the individual to make a better and wiser decision in life. It always

often leads to downfall when failure got in your life especially by making decision you

need to thoroughly think and reflect. One day the graduating students will have to face

one of the crucial decisions in their lives and that is future career decision. It requires

mature and serious discussion in making a good decision that can lead to a right choice

of a college course. However, during this crucial part the students may also resulted to

have confusion and could lead to make a mistake.

One, we get a wrong choice of college course because of parental influence,

parent’s suggestions to their children are better in what course to pursue, yet they tend

to ignore what the children desired. And because of these reasons, some students

graduate in courses they do not really like. On the other side, others pursue what they

really desire on their courses, and were able to graduate with high spirits. parents are

parents we follow their words and do their words but parents are influencers especially

when it comes to their children they want them to have a good career and have a better
life even though some parents want their child to be someone they don’t like for

example the parents want their child to be a doctor because it can save many people

and it’s a good choice since, there’s a lot of money and can buy a big house but the

parents of the child didn’t want to follow their words because it is not the child’s want

to be a doctor someday but the child wants to be different because it already has the

plan or dreams to build its own café or in short to be a businesswoman since, the child

is obsessed with cafés whereas loving with the atmosphere, comfortable and happy to

serve people. In here, both parents and the child has opposite likes and there is a

tendency that some children really do what the parents say for the sake of them even

though the child didn’t want that career but there is no other choice but to obey what

the parents wants. Here the child went to a path in a wrong choice of college course and

it goes down with regrets and not doing well. Likely with strict parents the child will

have no other choice but to obey or follow what they want and follow their footsteps

even you want to be free you got influenced with the parents and got a wrong choice

while finishing up the course without hesitation just to please the parents’ wishes.

Nevertheless, poor-decision making can be a problem especially to the students

who will graduate and think of a college course and get a job. Students who struggle

with having a poor-decision making are usually students who are undecided with their

selves with what college course or path to take in the future. Like job seekers are also go

through with poor-decision making because they just try and try to apply companies to

have a better job somehow they are not qualified because of mismatch or simply it’s not
a job for them whereas their course is different or only graduated two (2) years course

and resulted as not matched to the qualifications of the companies they get in. Poor-

decision is not good and it will affect to the students life until they grow up in order to

not have this decision making again, it must be thinking deeply or finding your passion

on the course and do a well-off decision making that will lead it to a nice job or course

that makes it happy and awesome.

It cannot deny the fact that people or students will go through with wrong choice

of college course either parental influence and poor-decision making with this we learn

some of our mistakes and got to rise up again wherein hope gives in. Parental influence

which the child obeys the parent’s words and poor-decision making which yourself is

having a hard time to choose.

With all the points stated, the job mismatch happening with college graduate in

the Philippines created a deep impact in the current economy that can be reflected

through the occurrence of low quality jobs that hinders the existence of good job

opportunities, workers are not able to earn appropriate income that compensates their

rendered skill. Reasons stated that the job slots in the Philippines are not enough to

cater graduates , training of our jobseekers simply does not match the requirements of

the companies looking for people to fill their vacancies because they require a level of

competencies that fresh college graduates doesn’t have and sometimes it can be an

individual person wrong choice of college course because of either parental influence or

poor decision-making.
 Such that, they should the strengthen the coordination of the three

training and education institutions – Department of Education(DepEd), Commission on

Higher Education (CHED) and Technical Education and Skills Development Authority

(TESDA) so as to have a harmonized education and human resource development

program. Also, the government to provide enough job opportunities (labor demand)

that would cater the unemployed individuals (labor supply) through the enhancement

of the labor supply side through development of human resources, labor productivity,

and technological advancement as well as the improvement of the labor demand side.

Lastly, the government to help in the improvement of the Education, Social

Sciences, Business and Law & Services fields of study as well as the occupations related

to these fields of study so as to attain matched individuals earning higher wages.

Moreover, we urge the senior high school students to take these fields of study and

pursue jobs related to these after college graduation for them to attain higher wages at

the same time applying the skills they have learned in college.