Marketing trainers to coach 10,000 marketing majors on job hunting

MANILA, Philippines—Alarmed by the difficulty experienced by college graduates in landing jobs, marketing experts will give some 10,000 students in colleges outside Metro Manila some coaching to prepare them for the job market.

The job Internet search engine, jobsDB and the Association of Marketing Educators (AME), the academic arm of the Philippine Marketing Association, have entered into a partnership to help prepare students for the “real world.”

From September this year to February next year, jobsDB and members of the AME will bring prospective employers and human resource managers to select schools to coach third-year and fourth-year marketing students.

Sheryll Tiburcio, country manager of jobsDB Philippines, said a recent study conducted by the Asian Development Bank showed even college graduates have been taking at least two to three years before finding a “stable job.”

She said actual HR managers and employers would conduct mock interviews to assess and guide students where they need to improve on their “soft skills” such as communication, creativity, problem-solving.

Employers will explain what qualities and skills they look for while the students will be coached on the skills they need to work on and taught how they should write their resumes and face job interviews.

“It will give a reality check. We’ll tell them what the gaps (in skills and competencies) are so AME can guide their students,” Tiburcio said.

According to AME president Daniel Hebron, who teaches at the New Era University, they will gather about 500 students from each of the 20 schools they will visit between September and February next year.

He said they would not be limited to the big schools in Metro Manila but extend their services to those schools in other key urban cities.

As a marketing professor for 16 years, Hebron said he has been focusing on teaching “soft skills” and giving lots of exposure in the marketing world.

“Our students like hand-on training instead of the typical classroom setup. They want to explore their potentials so we have to help them become competitive,” Hebron said. –Dona Z. Pazzibugan, Philippine Daily Inquirer