Present tense or Past tense?

Hi, I came across a sentence while reading an article with the title reading 'English proficiency a must'. The sentence is as follows.

From the survey, the top five skills that employers place importance on when it comes to newly-hired graduates were oral and written communication, critical thinking, English proficiency, interpersonal skills and flexibility or adaptability skills.

I can't understand why the author initially used present tense but changed it to past tense right after that. For example, Can I simply change it to

From the survey, the top five skills that employers placed importance on when it came to newly-hired graduates were oral and written communication, critical thinking, English proficiency, interpersonal skills and flexibility or adaptability skills.

Is it still grammatically correct?