Codetoki team aids tomorrow’s IT graduates

By Angeli Sarmiento

In 2010, a fresh graduate from the University of the Philippines Cebu (UP Cebu) began to brave the waters of the Real World. Like a character from our favorite adventure films, he’s equipped with his own tools and skills to feign through rejection and find his place among the grown-ups.  He’s a BS Computer Science graduate surrounded by computers everywhere – after all, this is the technological age.

            Alas, our traveler finds that victory is not free from struggles. 

            “I really experienced it first-hand how challenging it is to get a job in the IT industry since every company require different technology skill sets,” said Ademar Tutor, co-founder behind Codetoki (codetoki.com).

            From this, Codetoki was born and shelved until 2012. As their ultimate mission states, it aims to make IT graduates employable in a world where only 8% (or 4,000) of the year’s 50,000 IT graduates are.

            “My partner (Honeylyn Balingcasag, UP Cebu BS Management graduate and co-founder of Codetoki) and I were just brainstorming ideas,” said Tutor. 

            The team at present is composed of Tutor, Balingcasag and developer, Gerda Decio, but the original team included three UP Cebu BS Computer Science interns. 

            “When Startup Weekend had its first event in Cebu, we grabbed the opportunity to pitch Codetoki.”

            Startup Weekend is an event that hosts developers, marketers, product managers, designers and startup enthusiasts to come together and build teams to launch startups. Codetoki’s original team won 3^rd Place and Best Social App Award.

            “We were very passionate about solving the problem of unemployment for IT graduates.”

            The process to raise Codetoki involved multiple iterations funded by their earnings from Microsoft, the Philippine Software Industry Association (PSIA), SPRING.PH and the couple’s first company, Bootyard Inc., which Tutor describes as a software-outsourcing firm focused on building startups.

            “The current version now offers coding challenges of three programming languages: PHP, JavaScript and Ruby,” said Tutor, “[and] going to work every day [still] feels like not working at all.”

            “And the students [of Codetoki] create portfolios that are monitored. Before they graduate, they are ready for employment,” said Jeffrey Montecillos, Marketing Specialist at CeBuinIT, where Codetoki is housed.

            “There are lots of problems we tackled. But the biggest challenge we have is finding the right business model for Codetoki,” Tutor admitted. “However, it’s very fulfilling to work every day on something you are very passionate about.”