MANILA, May 4 — More than 11,000 job seekers found jobs during the simultaneously held job fairs in many parts of the country on Friday, Labor Day .
“These 11,154 job seekers were hired on the spot (HOTS) when they visited the job fairs,” said Secretary of Labor and Employment Rosalinda Dimapilis-Baldoz, after she received a report on the results of the job fairs from the Bureau of Local Employment.
“This number translates to 20.8 percent HOTS rate, which exceeded our target of 20 percent,” she added. Last year, the DOLE target for HOTS in all its job fairs was only 15 percent.
The hired-on-the-spot rate is arrived at by dividing the number of applicants hired by the number of qualified applicants.
The BLE report showed that there were 71,922 job applicants who registered for the 56 job fairs, 32,439 of whom were male and 39,483 were female.
Of the registered applicants, 53,751 were qualified and referred for outright interview. Also, 1,405 applicants were referred to the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) for further skills training, while 226 were referred to the appropriate DOLE region or bureau for livelihood assistance.
Region 3 has the most number of HOTS, with 2,475, followed by Region 4-A, which registered HOTS of 2,460; and Region 12, which tallied HOTS of 1,434.
In terms of percentages, however, Region 12 registered the highest HOTS with an astounding 52 percent.
Baldoz praised seven other regions that achieved the 20 percent HOTS target in the 1 May Labor Day job fairs. These regions are Region 11 (36.7 percent); Caraga 34.3 percent); Region 10 (32.1 percent); CAR (24.2 percent); Region 9 (24.1 percent); Region 3 (23.5 percent); and Region 1 (21 percent).
Baldoz also expressed satisfaction that nine out of ten HOTS were for local employment. “Based on the results, applicants were more easily accepted by local employers than by foreign employers,” she said.
The labor and employment chief emphasized that since the job fairs results were still preliminary, she expects that more applicants will be reported to have been hired this week.
“This optimism is borne out by the number of near-hires, which was a huge 45,225. Near-hires are job applicants who were almost instantly hired, but were not because they may have not brought with them a required document, or were told to come back for further interview or some tests, but basically after complying with the requirements, they will be hired,” she explained.
The BLE report showed that of the 45,225 near-hires, 40,189, or 89 percent, were for local positions, while 5,036, or 11 percent, were for overseas jobs.
“Similar to HOTS, near hires for local employment is more prominent for females (58 percent) than males (42 percent). The opposite was observed for overseas. There were more male (55.4 percent) near-hires than female (44.6 percent). Region 4-A recorded 14,686 near hires, or 32.5 percent, which is one for every three of the total near-hires recorded,” said the BLE Director Dominique R. Tutay. (dole.gov.ph)
