OJTcareers.com: Education at work

Burdened by the difficulty of accessing opportunities for on-the-job-training (OJT), a requirement for graduation of a majority of college students, a group of enterprising undergrads banded themselves together and created what can be hailed as the country’s first (and, so far, only) website dedicated to OJT search – OJTcareers.com

I caught wind of this website from an email I received from one of the site’s founders, Ina R. She shared with me the difficulties students experience when they search for OJTs to complete their requirements for education, training, and graduation. No thanks to the dearth of information and resources on where to apply, students at times get stuck in uninteresting OJT posts in companies which do not maximize their potential or further their know-how, as manifest by their drone-like stapling of documents or making liters of coffee, just to fulfill their “requirements.”

On the other hand, smaller companies which can provide nurturing environments for undergrads’ hands-on training are drowned by mega-companies in posting openings in online jobs sites like JobStreet or JobsDB where OJT positions are not really the priority offerings. I tried searching for “on the job training” in either website. My search yielded 38 jobs in JobsDB and about 209 jobs in JobStreet. But as I ran through both lists, not all were OJT posts- some required years of experience! It doesn’t help that either site is not the easiest of places to navigate.

Thus, the time has come for a free website dedicated solely for making OJT opportunities accessible to both employers and undergrad students.

So if you are a college undergrad looking for a company to train with or if you are part of the human resources management office of your company on the look out for promising interns, have a meeting of minds via OJTcareers.com. Numerous OJT opportunities are being added almost daily from established corporations as well as from up and coming companies. Students with backgrounds like engineering, health, education, IT, and business would find more than a handful of opportunities to learn real-world experience from here. There are also interesting sidebar articles on topics like enhancing your resume. OJTcareers.com began no more than three, four months ago so I’m sure the site will become even better with time and experience.

I’m looking forward to reading about testimonials from those helped by OJTcareers.com. Likewise, additional articles on “making it” in the workplace would be of help. Topics like power dressing, handling office gossip, savings and investments for students, tips for making oral or PowerPoint presentations, office netiquette, etc would be of interest and help to on-the-job trainees. Insights on these topics and more from human resource managers and HR practitioners can likewise boost the usefulness of this website.

Kudos to the OJTcareers.com team for giving birth to this innovative site. It’s refreshing that the internet- much maligned and vilified- is fast becoming a tool for helping more Pinoy youth bridge the education and technology divide. May this usher in a bigger cohort of Filipinos more ready and capable to thrive in whatever workplace environment they choose to plant themselves in.

Nope, this is not among those paid sponsored reviews which I surreptitiously weave into my blog every so often. OJTcareers.com is a site that is worth whatever teensy-weensy boost I can muster to give it (pro bono of course).