Across Southeast Asia, the demand for skilled tech talent continues to rise. According to a recent study, the increasing demand for tech talent has been fueled by startups, and even traditional sectors like banking, and retail, as more companies look to digitize their businesses. With more companies looking to onboard tech professionals, Shopee remains committed to supporting this growing demand by partnering with the University of the Philippines (UP) Industrial Engineering (IE) Department to upskill local tech talent.
The partnership consisted of an e-commerce elective and a capstone project for graduating industrial engineering students. As part of the elective, Shopee leaders educated students on the current e-commerce landscape and the roles of each business function in the industry for a semester, through classes on the foundations of e-commerce, logistics, and more. Meanwhile, the capstone project challenged students to improve real-life logistics processes through case studies based on actual business scenarios, with the goal of increasing overall productivity and efficiency.
Karen Perez, Head of HR – Center of Excellence at Shopee Philippines, shared “At Shopee, we work towards positively impacting our community by upskilling local talent so that they can benefit from the digital economy. Through this academic partnership with UP IE, we aim to hone their skills and equip them with the knowledge to succeed in e-commerce and continue driving the local digital economy forward.”
Raymond Freth Lagria, Assistant Professor and Department Chair at UP IE, shared “We are glad to be partnering with Shopee, as we look to provide our students with valuable exposure to the growing e-commerce industry. Through the capstone project and e-commerce elective, our students were able to learn about the supply chain in e-commerce and experience improving processes within it. These learning experiences have helped in equipping them with the necessary skills to succeed in the current global environment.”
Erickson Llaguno, Assistant Professor at UP IE, also shared “This partnership with Shopee was incredibly enlightening because our students were able to deepen their understanding of the e-commerce space, and which aspects of it could be further improved through industrial engineering. The e-commerce elective and capstone project enabled our students to take the industrial engineering concepts that they learned in the classroom and apply them in real life.”
This academic partnership with UP is just one of the many initiatives that Shopee has rolled out to upskill young local talent. The Shopee Apprentice Program is a flagship internship designed to accelerate and develop talents through high-impact projects. Meanwhile, Shopee also has a year-round internship program open to undergraduate students, which exposes students with a high interest in tech careers to the daily operations of the business.
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