Here’s what ABS-CBN reported:

Jayjay Viray, country manager of online job search engine JobsDB, said electoral candidates now prefer hiring employees instead of recruiting volunteers. Although these will cost them more, he said politicians find hired workers more efficient and reliable.

To make the most of the election fever, Viray said jobseekers can make the most of the following employment opportunities:

• bloggers or writers for press releases about electoral candidates, since most politicians now have their own websites
• managers of Facebook, Twitter, and other social networking accounts of electoral candidates
• generators of campaign infocasts through text messages
• event organizers
• designers of tarpaulins and other campaign visuals
• image stylists for electoral candidates

Viray warned that campaign-related jobs are only temporary since these will no longer be needed once the election season is over. Still, he said jobseekers can look for opportunities in the business process outsourcing, health, and information technology sectors.

Arranged in alphabetical order, according the candidates’ last names, here are those four websites:

Noynoy Aquno

Presenting Noynoy in all his panot glory (we share the same hairline actually), all I see on Noynoy.ph is a pretty big “Volunteer” link near the top, and another prominent “Volunteer” link under “Main Menu”. An acquaintance working for the campaign claims Team Noynoy isn’t really looking to pay employees anyway.

Erap Estrada

If Team Erap is actively looking to hire people, then he’s probably not doing it online. As far as I know, he has no official website. Why should he, when many of those who plan to vote for him this year probably can’t afford an internet connection anyway—much less a decent home?

Dick Gordon

A quick search on Google leads me to dickgordon.com:

Ok, so now I know there’s a former American astronaut named “Dick Gordon”. Seriously though, the real website of the Filipino Dick Gordon (dickgordon2010.com) also has a prominent Volunteer link—nothing saying “Jobs”, “Openings”, or the like.

Gibo Teodoro

The administration standard-bearer also features a “Volunteer” link near the top. Again, no advertisements calling for employees. In any case, has anyone successfully grabbed Gibo’s dongle?

Manny Villar

For some reason, mannyvillar.com.ph was down when I tried accessing it this morning. But Google’s cache of the site reveals no link to apply as an employee on the main page. Only the vague yet still volunteer-ish “Join Team Villar” link caught my attention.

So what was Mr. Viray talking about? True, maybe he was only talking about candidates running for lower offices? Searches on JobDB Philippines returned nothing related to what the country manager was talking about.

In any case, it would be interesting to see a link from ABS-CBN or Viray pointing to where candidates are looking for employees. Perhaps candidates are looking for full-time employees through below-the-line channels?

And, dear readers, if you’ve encountered a candidate actively calling out for employees for their campaigns, feel free to share what you’ve seen below.

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The data, publicly available through Compete and Google Insights, tries to compare the online presence of the following presumed presidential candidates:

• Noynoy Aquino
• Manny Villar
• Chiz Escudero
• Erap Estrada
• Gibo Teodoro

Clearly, from the Google Insight data, Noynoy’s presence on the web is consistently growing; both Chiz and Erap have experienced spikes corresponding to announcements (or non-announcements) of their respective candidacies. Villar remains a consistent second, while Gibo places last. The current “interest” numbers as reported by Google, which attempts to estimate how much people are using the search engine to find information about the candidates, are:

• Noynoy – 40
• Villar- 29
• Erap- 23
• Chiz- 18
• Gibo- 0

These figures are current as of yesterday; definitely they will change over time.
The data from Compete.com, which attempts to estimate how many people visit the candidates’ official websites, is less comprehensive. The volunteer reports that “Gibo.ph still doesn’t get enough [visits] for compete.com to take a statistical sample”, and Erap currently has no official website to track. According to the analytics tool, the official sites of the other candidates have dropped sharply from August highs, though the Noynoy volunteer assumes “[Noynoy's] stats will change when the election season formally starts”—an assumption I think applies to all front-running candidates. The estimates for “unique visitors” for Noynoy, Chiz, and Villar for September 2009 are:

• Noynoy – 2117
• Chiz – 374
• Villar – 17

Are the above figures definite? Hardly. Only 22% of Filipinos are online (as of last March), meaning regular pinoy surfers are still a minority of the Philippine population. It definitely doesn’t measure whatever appeal Erap has offline, as the volunteer reports:

Erap’s figures are going to be a bit tough to analyze. His web presence is at most middling, with most of his online hits coming from news sources. What worries me is that a large part of his support base aren’t really the type to be active online. There might be something there that we are not seeing, and this deserves some due diligence.

However, the volunteer also surmises that Noynoy’s apparent visibility has scared “the other candidates enough for them to break out their demolition teams this early in the game.” Whether or not that’s true, it’s clear that it’s still quite difficult—if not impossible—to determine a candidate’s “buzz” only from online sources, especially when the tools used tend to work better when estimating web traffic in the US, not in the Philippines.

Related posts:

1. Get Paid to Blog and Tweet for Election Candidates Where? Are election candidates actually looking for employees—not volunteers—to spread the word online? A quick look at the websites of four...
2. Team Noynoy Aquino: “NoyBook.com is a Fraud” Update: Noybook has been taken down Sighted on the official Noynoy Aquino Facebook page: “Please DO NOT join or vote...
3. Noynoy Aquino Now Officially Online Where is the official website of Noynoy Aquino? noynoy.ph. Check it out as soon as you can! ...

If the above image is indeed a fake, whoever made it should have their ability to use Photoshop revoked.

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