Gov’t job search portal made more user-friendly

Manila, Philippines — The government’s web-based job matching facility and labor market information portal, the Phil-JobNet, has been enhanced to make it more user-friendly to jobseekers.

Labor and Employment Secretary Rosalinda Baldoz said the portal will transition from its old Internet address (www.phil-job.net) to the enhanced “www.phil-jobnet.dole.gov.ph” by the end of March.

“That is a few days from now, when the enhanced Phil-JobNet, complete with features that will enable jobseekers to efficiently look for the right job on a 24/7 basis, will debut for public use,” she said in a statement.

The Phil-JobNet is part of the DOLE’s strategy to facilitate job matching and placement of workers which seeks to enhance the employability of workers and competitiveness of enterprises.

Through the Phil-JobNet, the DOLE works to make it easy and fast for jobseekers to find jobs that fit their qualifications, interests, and career inclinations.

In a report to Baldoz, the Bureau of Local Employment’s Director Dominique Rubia-Tutay said that despite the termination of the old Phil-JobNet’s website, its registered profiles are already being migrated to the new site.

“Jobseekers’ and establishments’ profiles are now being transferred to the new website. But this may take a while due to the large volume of registrants under the old system. To this date, we have migrated at least 50 percent of the data, or those profiles registered in years 1998 to 2011,” she said.

Tutay advised the public to create new, or update, their profiles in the new Phil-JobNet website to access their accounts immediately. She said the new Phil-JobNet eliminates record duplicity by requiring establishments posting their vacancies to submit their Taxpayer Identification Numbers (TINs) and jobseekers to submit birthday information to identify whether or not the account has already been migrated.

While there have been some changes, Tutay said the Phil-JobNet retains some of its first-rate features, such as the Skills-for-Hire button, which is similar to a yellow page, or bulletin board, where skilled persons and own-account workers can advertise their services.

According to Tutay, the Phil-JobNet has functioned continuously for more than a decade since it was first launched in 1998.

“In 2012, the BLE started to enhance the system to make it more user-friendly, functional, utilitarian, and inter-active. The Phil-JobNet is now the leading job search and job and skills matching portal in the Philippines, with its private sector partners closely trailing behind,” she said.

As of March 28, the Phil-JobNet, both the old and new, has a combined list of vacancies reaching 95,935. The old Phil-JobNet has also 74,642 job applicants registered and 8,820 skills-for-hire posted, while the new website has 18,579 active applicants, 1,276,388 registered applicants, and 188 skills-for-hire posted.

On the other hand, JobsDB.com has 40,856 and JobStreet.com.ph has 107,253 job vacancies. Both online portals are linked with the old Phil-JobNet website.

The BLE, as well as DOLE’s regional offices, continue to campaign hard for employers to register their vacancies in the Phil-JobNet. –Manila Bulletin