BACOLOD City – Negrenses were encouraged to find a career in the digital platform amid the industry’s workforce expansion.
Many of those with digital jobs work freelance, according to Jocelle Batapa-Sigue, executive director of the Bacolod-Negros Occidental Federation for Information and Communications Technology.
And freelancers are now becoming a big part of the digital workforce, she said.
Some of them are online teachers of English as a second language while others are content writers, virtual assistants and digital marketers.
“Freelancers before were seen as not legitimate,” Batapa-Sigue said. “But looking at the future of the workforce, it now includes joint ventures, business process outsourcing facilities, contractors, and the freelancers.”
She also encouraged students to learn the skills in working with machines.
“Human-machine interactions should be a part of skill-building,” Batapa-Sigue stressed, citing the possibility of robots joining the workforce.
Batapa-Sigue, also the vice president of the National Confederation of Information and Communications Technology, said there will be a freelancers’ caravan – dubbed the “Digital Careers Expo” – in Bacolod, Iligan and Tarlac cities in September.
The event aims to promote digital careers.
“The concept really [is] to reach out to young people and tell them that, four or six years from now, when they graduate from college, it is going to be a different world,” Batapa-Sigue said. (With a report from PNA/PN)
