Millions of Filipinos looking for better or new employment have been offered a piece of advice by LinkedIn: Skills matter.
In a statement, LinkedIn said 77 percent of hiring managers and recruiters in the Asia and the Pacific region made skills and competencies the focus of job descriptions at least once in the last year.
Due to this, LinkedIn said it was estimated that people worldwide devoted 43 million hours to acquiring a new skill last year.
“More and more, we are seeing skills becoming the new currency in our world of work. We’ve seen people worldwide express a desire to learn and build their skills. Organizations, too, are hiring based on skills instead of traditional qualifications,” Olivier Legrand, LinkedIn Managing Director and Vice-President, Asia Pacific and China, said.
Responding to this challenge in the Philippines should include efforts to improve the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (TESDA) Technical and Vocational Education and Training (TVET).
In a study, Philippine Institute and Development Studies Fellow Aniceto C. Orbeta, Jr. and Supervising Research Specialist John Paul P. Corpus said the government needs to review the content of the TVET curricula such as the inclusion of communication skills and workplace discipline.
The training extended by TESDA should also become more flexible and should adopt online delivery and asynchronous modalities. This requires investing in both infrastructure and trainers who are adept in teaching using these modalities.
Orbeta and Corpus said this revamp in the curricula and adoption of new teaching modalities should be accompanied by the recruitment of industry practitioners to become trainers and assessors. This will expose TVET students to industry practices.
“There is a perception that trainers and assessors tend to not be updated with current industry practices. It would be advisable to tap industry practitioners as trainers and assessors (i.e., to become National TVET Trainer Certificate holders) and promote continuous exposure of current trainers and assessors to industry practices,” they said.
For their part, Microsoft and LinkedIn committed to help 25 million people build digital skills for in-demand jobs through various initiatives and helped over 30 million people globally get reskilled for these jobs.
The two companies will also be offering courses and low-cost certifications that align with 10 of the most in-demand jobs through December 31.
They will also provide new resources from LinkedIn, GitHub, and Microsoft to help everyone—students, jobseekers, members, employers—move to a skills-based future.
“LinkedIn, together with Microsoft, is committed to helping everyone shift towards a skills-based economy. In 2021, we will continue our efforts to equip job seekers with the right resources to pick up new skills and connect them to opportunities, as well as aim to help 250,000 organizations make a skills-first hire,” Legrand said.
LinkedIn: Skills are the new currency in the world of work
