MANILA, Philippines — Filipino micro, small and medium enterprises are ready to expand their teams, but a stubborn talent mismatch is threatening to turn their growth ambitions into a hiring bottleneck.
JobStreet by SEEK is stepping up its push among Philippine MSMEs through free job advertisements, artificial intelligence-assisted recruitment tools, business workshops and partnerships with local governments—part of a wider effort to make professional hiring more accessible to businesses that may not have dedicated human resources teams.
But the numbers suggest that easier job posting addresses only one part of a much larger problem.
A 2024 Boston Consulting Group–Department of Trade and Industry survey involving 3,098 MSMEs found that 72% wanted to expand their workforce and 82% wanted to upskill existing employees. Yet only 54% agreed that enough talent was available in the market to meet their business needs—meaning roughly 46% were unconvinced that the talent they needed was readily available.
That distinction matters. Some recent reports describe the 46% figure as the share of MSMEs experiencing a “talent crisis.” The underlying BCG-DTI research more precisely shows that just over half believed the market offered enough talent for their needs.
For small businesses trying to expand, the difference between available workers and suitable workers can determine whether growth happens at all.
JobStreet brings hiring tools directly to small businesses
Under its “Building Better Teams. Growing Businesses” campaign, JobStreet has been conducting business talks, summits and capacity-building programs with MSME groups and local government units.
In Pasig and Quezon City, its BizTalk sessions provided entrepreneurs with information on recruitment, digital tools, entrepreneurship and government assistance. Pasig participants were also introduced to free JobStreet Lite job ads and AI-assisted job-ad creation.
JobStreet’s free-job-posting offer is not entirely new.
The company launched Free Lite Ads in 2024, allowing employers to post job vacancies without an upfront listing fee. Philstar reported at the time that the program was designed partly to give smaller employers greater access to the recruitment platform.
JobStreet’s current employer platform continues to offer free Lite advertisements while promoting Assist, an AI-powered hiring system designed to surface stronger applicants and improve matching.
In other words, JobStreet is trying to reduce two problems at once: the cost of reaching candidates and the difficulty of identifying the right ones.
Why this matters far beyond JobStreet
The hiring challenge becomes more significant when the sheer scale of Philippine MSMEs is considered.
Latest 2024 establishment statistics cited by the Philippine Information Agency show that the country had about 1.237 million MSMEs out of 1.241 million establishments, representing 99.63% of all businesses. They generated approximately 6.25 million jobs, or 66.58% of establishment employment.
That means a persistent hiring problem affecting small companies is not merely an HR issue.
It can become an economic-growth issue.
BusinessWorld, drawing from the broader BCG research, reported that MSME hiring still tends to be relatively informal. About 26% relied on walk-in applicants, while only 3% used university or school partnerships as a hiring channel. The report warned that limited recruitment networks can contribute to poor job matches and persistent skills gaps.
This is precisely where digital recruitment platforms see an opening.
For a business owner who previously depended primarily on referrals, walk-ins or social-media posts, wider access to searchable talent pools and matching technology can substantially expand the number of candidates within reach.
But finding more applicants does not automatically mean finding qualified ones.
The Philippines has workers—and employers still can’t find the right skills
That contradiction becomes particularly striking when viewed against the broader labor market.
The Philippine Statistics Authority estimated that 2.59 million Filipinos were unemployed in June 2026, while another 6.11 million employed people were underemployed and wanted additional work or longer hours.
Yet businesses continue reporting difficulty finding workers who match their requirements.
The two realities can exist simultaneously because the challenge is increasingly about skills, experience and job fit, not simply whether people are available for work.
An Asian Development Bank study reported by BusinessWorld this year found significant gaps among Filipino workers in areas including machinery operation, project management, computer or software skills, communication and foreign languages. The Philippines recorded an overall skills-match rate of 71.8% in the study.
And the requirements themselves are changing.
BusinessWorld reported in late 2025 that JobStreet was already seeing AI-related skills beginning to appear in MSME job requirements, with some employers treating familiarity with generative-AI tools as an emerging workplace competency.
That raises the stakes for both employers and workers.
Businesses increasingly want employees who can operate in a more digital economy, while workers must continually update their skills to remain competitive.
JobStreet’s MSME push now goes beyond recruitment
JobStreet’s latest program is also expanding into business concerns outside conventional hiring.
Through JobStreet Negosyo Forward: READY, SET, GROW, organized with PH Business Network, entrepreneurs gained access to one-on-one consultations covering areas including finance, labor compliance, workforce management, banking, intellectual property, digital transformation and business registration.
The company also joined Quezon City MSME Week 2026 and the Go Negosyo MSME Summit, putting its recruitment services in front of entrepreneurs already seeking assistance with business expansion.
JobStreet Philippines Managing Director Dannah Majarocon said the company’s approach is based on the idea that business growth depends on putting the right people behind an enterprise.
That may sound straightforward, but for a microbusiness operating with thin margins, hiring the wrong employee can carry a disproportionately high cost.
A large corporation may absorb a failed hire.
A five-person company may not.
Free hiring tools can help—but they won’t solve everything
JobStreet’s push can lower recruitment costs and give small businesses access to a larger candidate pool.
AI can help organize applications, draft job advertisements and identify potentially suitable candidates.
But neither technology nor free listings can manufacture skills that do not yet exist in sufficient numbers.
Nor can recruitment software by itself fix wage constraints, training deficiencies, employee retention problems or the gap between what businesses need and what workers have been trained to do.
That is why the BCG-DTI numbers deserve more attention than the launch of another digital hiring feature.
Seventy-two percent of MSMEs want to grow their teams. Eighty-two percent want better-trained workers. But only slightly more than half believe sufficient talent is already available.
For an economy where more than 99% of businesses are MSMEs, that is not a small-business problem.
It is a national competitiveness problem.
JobStreet may be making it easier for Filipino entrepreneurs to open the door to applicants.
The bigger question is whether enough workers will walk through that door with the skills businesses actually need.
WWC ONE MEDIA MJE
Leave a Reply