Life and soft skills training 107. New graduates tend to lack soft skills. New graduates experience culture shock upon entering the workplace because their expectations differ from what they were taught at school, and some fail to adjust to their work and decide to resign but have a hard time being hired again. This is reflected by the high attrition rate among newly graduates, as noted by an employer participant. Moreover, as one employer participant shares, based on the data gathered by an online job platform, the top issues observed among the first two years of K to 12 graduates are related to communication skills, working as a team, and critical thinking. Another employer participant comments that their company is particular on the soft skills of fresh graduates during their recruitment process, making them undergo a behavioral exam conducted by registered psychometricians from which they also based their interview questions because they have observed that technical skills are easier taught than soft skills or those related to empathy, creativity, resilience, and communication skills. These issues are heightened and even augmented by the circumstances brought by the COVID-19 pandemic, such as working from home or losing one’s job and finding another one only when the market re-opens. However, as another employee participant explains, the majority of those from the generation today, Gen Y or those born roughly from 1980 to the mid1990s,165 and Gen Z or those born in the late 1990s and early 2000s,166 who will constitute around 55 to 60% of the country’s workforce in the next three to five years, which is close to NEDA’s population projection of 64% from 2019 to 2025,167 will have an increased or better resiliency as enhanced by their experiences during the pandemic than those from older generations like Gen X, who will be the ones to hire the younger generation in the future. 108. New graduates are highly vulnerable to scams and fake job postings. As noted by one employer participant, since most companies or hiring agencies have turned almost every part of their recruitment process digital and will most likely remain digital, more online job posting platforms and websites have emerged. However, no one, including the government and its agencies, monitors and checks these online job platforms, making job seekers, especially first-time applicants and new graduates, vulnerable to being scammed and led by fake job postings. Job readiness 109. New graduates lack job readiness. While readiness for work varies from employers, it generally entails “preparedness to learn and perform on the job, the ability to continue to learn, and the personal characteristics that contribute to the successful accomplishment of work.”168 One concern of 165 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Definition of Generation Y, available at https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/Generation%20Y (last accessed July 9, 2022). 166 Merriam-Webster Dictionary, Definition of Generation Z, available at https://www.merriamwebster.com/dictionary/Generation%20Z (last accessed July 9, 2022). 167 NEDA, PDP 2017-2022, Chapter 13: Reaching for the Demographic Dividend, at 1, available at https://pdp.neda.gov.ph/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Draft-Write-Up-PDP-Chapter-13.pdf (last accessed June 21, 2022). 168 Employment: Employer’s Perceptions of Employment Readiness, available at https://education.stateuniversity.com/pages/1953/Employment-EMPLOYERS-PERCEPTIONS-EMPLOYMENTREADINESS.html (last accessed July 9, 2022). 44