While job opportunities are growing all over the Philippines, Metro Manila remains the largest source of jobs in the country. When you’re considering local jobs with the highest salaries, you’ll find that virtually all of them are in Manila. The area also boasts the country’s highest median quality of life and is the best place in the country for networking with professionals from all over the world.
If you have never lived in or around the National Capital Region, you’ll face a few hidden challenges when you start finding jobs in Manila. Here are a few tips for ensuring you don’t encounter the unexpected when you move here.
1.) Consider travel times over specific distances
If you’ve only lived in the provinces or smaller cities, you’ll find that Metro Manila is both deceptively big and deceptively small at the same time. Distances can be confusing because of the chaotic traffic situation.
A trip that may only take 10 minutes by car on a holiday can easily take an hour or more on a normal day. Likewise, if your home and workplace are situated near major transport infrastructure such as the LRT, it may only take a few minutes to cover a distance that takes hours by car or bus.
If that seems confusing, it can be. Metro Manila’s transport situation is a significant enough problem that it can be a major factor in your job satisfaction and performance. That makes it especially important to do your research and even make test commutes when trying out for different jobs.
2.) Be a bit more aggressive when you negotiate
Anyone who knows how much people in their organization are paid knows for a fact that salaries do not correlate with competence. Most of the time, people only get higher salaries because they negotiated more aggressively. Fortunately, negotiating for a higher salary is generally easier in Metro Manila than it is in the provinces because of the stiffer competition for qualified labor. With the job market being wider faster-paced than it is in the provinces, there are also fewer risks to negotiating for a higher salary as there are generally multiple job openings to fall back on.
3.) Use a better job listings site
Many popular job listings sites have poor geographic targeting, which often makes them impractical to use for any serious job search. For instance, a job in Fairview may be a three-hour commute from Las Piñas but might be deceptively presented as being in the same city. Mynimo.com features excellent geographic search functionality, making it a great choice for job searches in Metro Manila. With Mynimo, you can search for jobs within different component cities and not have to sift through all the thousands of listings available in Metro Manila — unless you want to.
4.) Look for work-from-home or telecommute listings
Manila’s unique traffic situation has resulted in many employers offering work-from-home arrangements on either a full-time or part-time basis. This can be a major advantage as you will not have to regularly experience the difficulties of Manila’s transport situation. This can allow you major cost savings and it may be worth more than a regular job with a higher salary. In the best-case scenario, you may even be able to work from your home province and only need periodically visit Manila.
Conclusion
Metro Manila offers thousands of unique opportunities for professional growth. If you’re coming from the provinces or one of the smaller Philippine cities, you may not be prepared for just how dynamic and expansive the area and its job opportunities are. This makes it especially important to research before taking the plunge into the Metro Manila job market.
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