New jobs titles for the 21st century

New job descriptions are appearing with increasing frequency. A cursory scan of company openings being advertised in JobStreet Phils, an online recruitment center, gives a sense of what’s happening. Of the more than 700 positions listed on the site, 30 involve job titles that have appeared only in the last five years.

Some of these new titles are chat/board coordinator, configuration managers, device driver engineers, network administrator, network engineer, page publisher, web developer and web publisher.

IT Age

Rapid advances in computer and telecommunications technology are the main drivers behind the emergence of new job titles.

It’s what’s turning a seemingly boring job title such as "auditor" into something more exciting like "e-commerce accountant", which incidentally is one of the hottest future jobs listed by the US News and World Report.

e-commerce accountants are those who advice companies on whether it makes financial sense to sell goods and services online. The job requires the traditional accounting training and license. To kept abreast with the times, they also need to be familiar with software and internet technologies.

In the Philippines, the emergence of new, infotech-related job titles will depend on how fast internet usage spreads among the various segments of the population. So far, there are only 500,000 internet connections in the country.

A number of major private and government agencies in the country employ web designers, content producers and other internet professionals. Most of these are, however, done in-house.

Multi-skill, multi-task

The rise in new internet-related job titles is not the only change sweeping the local job market.

Maragtas Amante, dean of the UP School of Labor and Industrial Relations, has identified globalization and tougher competition as two other factors that have changed the nature of work and of jobs in a number of manufacturing industries.

With the entry of the Philippines in the World Trade Organization, protectionist barriers for local industries have been lowered. Many companies have downsized and have rationalized their workforce to improve productivity and efficiency.

Helped along by computers and information technology, employees are now performing not just one but several tasks at a time. It is no longer enough for a secretary to know how to type; she must now be familiar with computers and several other software programs and must be able to plan and coordinate activities as well.

Tough on college grads

If the future is going to be more demanding for those who are already employed, it will be tougher on new job seekers.

Two factors will work against future college graduates. One, most of the incremental employment to be created in the coming years will be for production and service workers rather than for professionals. Of the 759,000 new jobs created yearly from 1993 to 1999, only 7% were for professionals and for executive positions. Two, jobs in professional positions will require such high levels of skills and knowledge that are not yet being taught in the schools.

As a result of the mismatch between supply and demand in the college-level job market as well as their inadequate training, future college graduates will continue to be forced to work for positions and pay levels below their expectations.

Unfortunately, there is no easy-to-follow formula that students can follow to maximize their employment prospects in high-paying jobs when they graduate four or five years from now. Employment prospects and career advancement are affected by the choice of course and school as well as by academic achievement and individual aptitude.

Both education officials and industry leaders are unanimous in emphasizing the primacy of engineering and technical fields, including information technology, if one wishes to be ahead in the race for jobs years from now.

But clearly, that’s not enough.

A study for first-time jobs conducted by the Personnel Management Association of the Philippines showed that analytical, mathematical and communications abilities carry more weight than technical competence and computer literacy in the hiring decisions of companies.

This goes to show that, even in the computer age, it still pays not to forget the basics.