Many banks throughout the country need to recruit more employees for their newly opened branches this year or to replace staff members who quit their jobs before the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday.

A bank officer in Hanoi

On the website of Nam A Bank, for instance, the bank is seeking to recruit 1,000 employees for many different positions, such as directors, deputy directors, managers and others because it wants to expand its operations this year and next.

It also provides many internship programmes for students of majors including economics, finance, and business administration.

Nguyen Luong Hieu, head of the Nam A Bank’s Human Resources and Training Division, said that the bank is focusing on recruiting more human resources for lending and telephone sales.

IT engineers also are needed for the bank’s digital banking this year, Hieu said.

Others banks, including Indovina Bank Ltd and Tien Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank, have published their recruitment needs on an online recruitment portal, VietnamWorks, with more than 680 jobs on March 2.

According to experts in the banking sector, its positive results last year and strong forecast for this year have fostered the heavy recruitment.

VnEconomy cited a statistic of the State Bank of Vietnam released in the beginning of this year showing that 25.3 percent of credit organisations nationwide are facing a shortage of employees.

A bank’s employee in HCM City said that many of her colleagues have quit their jobs because of heavy workloads and pressure to reach high sales targets.

They also thought that the industry had many legal risks.

More than 52 percent of these organisations plan to increase their staff in the first quarter and 68.7 percent will recruit more employees for the whole year, the SBV statistics say.

A banking workforce report on February 26 released by Navigos Group, a recruitment company in Vietnam, shows that 56 percent of 15 surveyed banks could enhance their policies to attract employees although they already had basic and reasonable policies for employees.

According to the report, up to 89 percent of the surveyed banks have an average salary ranging from 10 million VND to 30 million VND (440-1,321 USD) per month.

Twenty six percent of employers said that uncompetitive wages and remuneration are the biggest recruitment obstacle.

Thirty seven percent of employers also said that in order to increase the efficiency of recruitment, banks should consider offering financial incentives to attract candidates.

According to the survey, 62 percent of 237 candidates received a bonus of one to three months of salary on average; 18 percent received 3 to 5 months of salary; 7 percent received 5 to 7 months of salary and 5 percent received over 7 months of salary.

Moreover, the average annual salary increase of the surveyed candidates is quite high. Forty percent of them have an annual salary increase of over 10 percent.

According to the report, 50 percent of candidates said they would like to work at a foreign bank or branch of a foreign bank in Vietnam; 31 percent of them want to work for joint stock commercial banks; 11 percent select state-owned commercial banks and 3 percent select joint venture commercial banks.

The candidates said that some main reasons why they want to work in foreign banks including expecting to be treated fairly and work in a healthy environment; expecting high salaries and more promotion opportunities; expecting to use English and work with expat colleagues and managers and expecting to have training opportunities.-VNA