PBEd says skills more important than degrees when hiring
By Revin Mikhael D. Ochave, Reporter
COMPANIES should focus on job competencies instead of college degrees during the recruitment process, advocacy group Philippine Business for Education (PBEd) said.
The Trade Chief recently recommended hiring more graduates of the Kindergarten to Grade 12 (K-12) program.
Justine B. Raagas, PBEd program director for workforce development, said that companies must look at the required job duties during the hiring process.
“[Companies] need to think of competencies. This means that they should think of the actual job and what the tasks entail so that when they hire or put out job advertisements, they don’t check for a paper qualification first but the actual competencies,” Ms. Raagas said in an interview last week.
For her part, PBEd Executive Director Lovelaine B. Basillote said that companies should review their recruitment process to meet the competencies needed for the job.
“It’s more of an overall review of the recruitment process so that you really hire a person fit for the job with the right competencies, making sure that you just hire for the job and the skills required of the job,” Ms. Basillote said.
Trade Secretary Alfredo E. Pascual recently urged companies to hire more K-12 graduates.
“When you check the job descriptions nowadays, almost all require college degrees. This should change because we already have the K-12 program,” he said.
“But it’s still not enough to say that having the program is enough. We need to prove that the K-12 program is able to produce holistically developed individuals,” he added.
“The mindset of people is that you cannot fully prepare for work when you don’t have a college degree, which is totally an erroneous mindset,” he pointed out.
Mr. Pascual also said that employers should invest in improving the skills of the country’s workforce, which according to Ms. Basillote, is the government’s responsibility.
“We think it is the responsibility of government to actually invest in human capital and continuously invest in its people,” she said.
