CIB.O seeks industry support in bid to secure talent

Wilfredo Sa-a, Jr., Managing Director at the Cebu IT-BPM Organization (CIB.O), said they are looking for more industry partners to help in efforts to maximize the hiring of Senior High School (SHS) graduates by 2019. “It is very important that the industry continues to partner with the academe for talent preparation,” he said in an interview. To address the lack of college graduates two years from now, CIB.O has partnered with the Cebu City government, through the office of City Councilor Joy Young, Cebu City Department of Education, and the Department of Information and Communication Technology for a program called Learning English Application for Pinoys (LEAP). LEAP is a 40-hour self-paced training program, which was introduced to 27 senior high schools in Cebu City in August last year to help improve the oral communication skills of SHS students. It was piloted in Cebu in 2014 through a partnership between CIB.O, the Technical Education and Skills Development Authority (Tesda), and Qualfon. The Cebu City government projects to grow its BPO workforce to 200,000 in 2019 from the current 140,000.