An advocate for a growth mindset for ICT people

FRED TSHIDIMBA
EO and Founder
ictjob.ph       By Bernie Cahiles-Magkilat   The domestic ICT industry in the country, which is propelled by the huge IT-business process management sector, is a bustling one. It seems most of the country’s talent pool are converging into this work category as the world goes digital. This megatrend has pushed Belgian national FRED TSHIDIMBA to help put up a specialized job portal called ictjob.ph to help an efficient system not just for industry jobseekers but also for staffing purposes of ICT companies. The portal provides an easier and faster way to match the skills and qualifications of an applicant with the needs of a company. THE PORTAL ictjob started in Belgium in 2007 and was expanded to the Philippines as ictjob.ph in 2016 as a new venture of Fred and some of his Belgian friends, who have been working in the country. Fred himself has been in the Philippines for the past ten years. ictjob.ph is an innovative IT job board specializing in the Philippine IT jobs market. Used and recommended by IT experts, ictjob.ph is the international leader for IT recruitment. It has positioned itself as the window for IT job recruitment as it is affiliated with IT communities, IT web forums, IT blogs, social networks, search engines, aggregators, universities, colleges in the Philippines and worldwide. The portal has a unique system that is specifically developed for the IT sector, allows the employer to perform searches based on the availability of the candidate. As a human capital resource site, a company has a choice of over 200,000 candidates. It also generates over 150,000 applications and boasts of more than 6,000 happy clients. With its local and multinational clients, jobseekers have better chances of getting hired while giving employers a wide array of choices. “Our search engine allows you to increase the relevance of your results and decrease your search time. Our aim is to provide you with access to the IT candidates for your IT job requirements,” says Fred, who is also the founder and CEO of his other firm called eastvantage, a provider of bespoke, personalized offshoring and outsourcing solutions to SMEs in the area of customer care, business management, e-commerce and technology. Thus, the ictjob.ph is a related business to eastvantage. ictjob.ph also offers a regularly updated CV database to give companies prime access to the country’s top IT specialists. According to Fred, he intentionally did not create a mobile app for his portal. Instead, he makes the site very responsive to both clients and jobseekers. The site has become a tool for lots of deployment to workplaces and spaces for IT specialists. ictjob.ph is now the largest database for IT jobs in the country. “Other job portals are of the generalist type, but they sort of come and go,” he observes. “Employers come and bring their openings and for jobseekers to apply,” says Fred noting that posting a resume or applying for a job is totally free for jobseekers at his portal, but partner companies that source manpower from the list are charged on subscription basis. GROWTH “We received thousands of applications per month,” says Fred. From the beginning, they’ve managed between 5,000 to 7,000 applications on the portal. These applicants have found better employment. Initially, they only have 100 clients, but they kept on growing that they see hitting 30,000 companies very soon. They may be based in the Philippines, but Fred said they have the capability to expand in the whole region to Japan and the whole of the Asia Pacific up to New Zealand with Manila as its home base “because this is the right place and nice place to begin with.” They hope to open in Singapore this year and Malaysia by 2020 and most ASEAN countries by 2021. Fred said they would like to concentrate in ASEAN first because this is where the fastest growth is happening as world forces are converging in this region. But wherever the expansion goes, the Philippines will always remain its base where shared services and help support are concentrated. ictjob.ph still remains a lean organization, but together with the other BPO business of Fred they could reach 500 people. While there are some advantages of having a generalist kind of job portal, Fred also stressed that everyone needs a good specialist who can give the correct recommendation. “The world is going more and more specialized although there is still a need for the generalist job portal because of the humanity’s interest in a lot of things, but we need to specialize,” he says. “There was a time when we find everything on Yahoo, but for the specific information we go to the right site to find the right information,” adds Fred. At present, majority of IT jobseekers file their application online. He estimated that a small minority of job applicants are doing the traditional way of filing an application on paper based on announcements from newspapers. The non-ICT sector though still has a higher percentage of traditional job applicants. “But even with the online application, there will still be interviews via Skype or video-based final interviews because nothing can replace the face to face meeting. Even if we work remotely, people still meet at least once a week just to keep the interaction,” he adds. MEGATREND “ICT is a mega trend and the largest market in terms of recruitment needs today,” he observes noting the growing need for IT people. In fact, ictjob.ph alone has between 50,000 to 70,000 openings, but during this month the demand has grown larger than supply as every aspect of a company’s operation is turning digital from hospitals to banks. Thus, the need for more educated workforce. As an engineer, who graduated from the Louvain School of Management in Brussels, Fred has deep knowledge about IT and can even code a bit. He likes this industry because it is very dynamic and everything now revolves around technology from edutech, biotech and now fintech and even tech news. “Everything goes tech and this is an interesting trend, very dynamic and creates lots of links. So, I find it interesting to process applications online,” he adds. Besides, online job applications contribute to a greener environment aside from providing jobs for people and moving things faster. It makes applying for work easier, faster and cheaper. He also sees opportunities for OFWs to come back and work in the country. “The ictjob.ph portal could be the best way to open the best careers for OFWs, who want to come home. People like those working in Singapore and Taiwan in the semiconductor or the software engineers can find the best career with us. We’re reaching out to them with meaningful jobs,” he adds. “We are trying to bring back the OFWs who left in the 90s when opportunities were not so many to help build the country because we have more startups now to deliver products and services,” he adds. To bring that ‘Pearl of the Orient’ tagline for the Philippines, Fred suggested “working on our own indigenous market because other countries are going gray, but there are so many things to build here.” Business is good, too. They hit breakeven in two years and that keep the company afloat, but they reinvest and reinject for growth. COLLABORATION With the huge demand for ICT graduates, the industry, the government and the academe are working together to bridge the supply gap. These three sectors are collaborating to come up with academic modules to produce ready to employ graduates. “This is what we’re working with them,” says Fred. He was chair of the Human Capital Committee of the EU-Philippines Business Network back in 2016. “We are trying to reduce this talent skills-industry needs gap by making students go through the apprenticeship program being organized by industries where students undergo internal training,” he adds. This is the reason the industry headed by the IT Business Process Association of the Philippines also continues to advocate for identifying gaps as against current needs. This collaboration is further defining the curriculum for ICT students. “Fortunately, we are seeing some action that we can reduce the pain and hassle of doing this because the mentality is changing,” says Fred adding there are specific modules that one has to learn and get certified to become more employable. Thus, there is no place for complacency as he urged for continuous learning. This collaboration started from the previous administration and is continuing up to now where lots of people are willing to bring further training into the provincial level so the young workforce can catch up. “Lots of people are just wanting to do good,” adds Fred as he noted best practices in Hong Kong, Singapore, Taiwan and Vietnam. With the democratic system in the Philippines, he said, there are also ways to further improve local talents. “These people are smart enough. They can go online because there are ways. I believe this is a very free country unlike others so everyone is free to get more education,” he adds. He warned that ICT jobs can easily be outsourced so there is a need to be always on guard to keep these jobs in the local shores and not fly out to more aggressive countries like Vietnam and Indonesia. Alredy, growth in the IT-BPM sector has slowed down in the otherwise very vibrant industry. He said that a growth of 2-5 percent in the IT-BPM industry, which accounts for the bigger share of the entire ICT industry, can be a bad indicator for an industry that had seen steady growth of 15 percent in a long while. “The moment it starts to decline or 2-5 percent from 15 percent that is an indicator to change, so change is coming. So, we are advocating to at least catch up on the academics,” urges Fred. He, however, said there are also other favorable factors for the Philippines to make up for the skills gap of ICT workers. For instance, foreign would also consider the English language proficiency of the local workforce, and the western culture. “I am the biggest advocate for the Philippines, we can stretch that a little bit but not much also because we are part of a bigger game that is affected by poor infrastructure and traffic,” he adds. LOVE NOT A FIRST SIGHT Fred’s flight to the Philippines was not accidental. He himself was looking for a job after having reached a certain level at Nestle Belgium. Armed with a master’s degree in IT and digital proficiency, he wondered what could be next for him. At that time, he had only two kids and burnout was setting in. “I was scared that the higher you climb, the higher political the position can get and it is difficult,” says Fred. After weighing the pros and cons, Fred had decided to opt out. He asked his wife, a teacher, to scout for opportunities abroad and discovered a teaching post in the Philippines. She was accepted at the British International School in BGC. That brought Fred here as well. They gave themselves two years max to stay in the Philippines, but ten years later they’re still here. His wife is still teaching at the British school and they have already four kids. “Philippines is a country that is not love at first sight. It does not reveal itself in the first moment, but I eventually developed deeper bonds,” adds Fred, whose parents and siblings come to visit and him gladly serving as their tour guide. In the next five years, Fred sees the ictjob.ph cementing its dominance as the premier portal in the ICT job market. He likewise believes that the generalist job portals will stay because there will always be need for other professions like nurses. But ictjob.ph could expand its coverage to attract more professionals in the communication sector to include the telco sector. Fred himself loves it here. He has been around the country and visited most tourist destinations, particularly the dive spots in the islands. “Pretty much that is what we’ve done for the last ten years traveling to the regions because this is home. Despite the traffic, the culture is friendlier,” says Fred, who is also board adviser of the Belgian-Filipino Business Club, which exists to reinforce the ties between the Philippines and Belgium through business initiatives, cultural events and advocacy campaigns. He described Filipinos as resilient and driven as shown by his own team, who by now used to his management by objective kind of leadership. Unlike the order and command kind of leadership, he gives the big picture in looking at things, and models a company culture to help them achieve the vision. He is the kind of boss, who would like to tackle the “how” rather than the “what”. “I like it better here since my team can work very independently than being guided every single step. They are also very accommodating and can work in a French environment and even if there are problems, they always wear a smile,” says Fred, who loves local dishes like Kare-kare but not too much bagoong, adobo, kinilaw, sisig with lots of beer, and banana salad with coconut milk. Fred makes sure that working at ictjob.ph is also fun. They work hard, but they also enjoy over KTV sessions. At times after work when he is alone working, he lends an ear to his people’s personal problems. Listening to their stories, he would put himself into their shoes and feel how these people are able to report for work, walking on streets without sidewalks in areas where safety nets are not really common. “So, I get to wear more hats, but it’s very fulfilling. That is why, there is no dull moment at ictjob.ph,” adds Fred, whose empathy could be one reason for their very low attrition rate. Unlike most businessmen, who look up to successful business leaders, Fred’s heroes are the likes of Socrates and Marcus Aurelius. He adores emperors and philosophers with great minds for humanities. He also looks at disruptive businesses like Airbnb because they provide happiness to people. Along this line, ictjob.ph also does its share of giving back by working with a foundation to provide for orphans. They also give second chances for abused people or abusers to rejoin society by becoming part of their organization. Most of all, this foreign national is passionate about bringing ICT jobs and bridging the skills gap. “We are in this journey together to address the talent gap. It feels good knowing we have partners because the workforce is caught in the middle and relying on us for opportunities. If we are able to bring this to the minds of students then that is fantastic and the pearl of the orient brand is reached as planned. So, we have to work together because the results and benefits are even bigger,” adds Fred, who feels at ease here because of a higher concentration of Belgians, who are unpretentious but are achievers in their own right without saying too much. “We should invest in our youth and grow and build the country for the future. To do that, the youth must have a growth mindset by learning more to accomplish more because gone are the days for multiple choices and points A and B, but having the right growth mindset will help them get there.”