VietNamNet Bridge – IT workers are in high demand with the industry developing fast, said Tran Anh Tuan, deputy director of the Centre of Forecasting Manpower Needs and Labor Market Information in HCM City.

Engineers work at Viet Nam National University's Integrated Circuit Design Research and Education Centre. Workers are in high demand in the information and technology industry as the industry is developing fast with a lot of potential, said labour experts.

He said that within the IT industry there is a growing demand for human resources in the sub-sectors of digital technology, e-commerce and video games.

Positions such as programmer, hardware engineer, network engineer, web designer and internet security officer are being widely advertised.

According to Vietnamworks, an online job placement website, IT is currently among the industries with the greatest demand for workers.

Notably, the job growth in software development in Da Nang has tripled during the first quarter of the year.

Decreasing college majors in IT, however, have meant that the country is facing a challenge meeting the market demand, according to experts.

Le Truong Tung, head of the FPT University in HCM City, said that following strong growth in IT training from 2006-08, the number of students applying to study IT as a major has dropped 10-15 per cent each year.

"This is due to the increasing attraction of other fields related to economics and banking," he said, adding that an increasing quota of admissions offered by universities has not managed to stem the tide.

Tung predicted that such decreases would lead to a reduced labour supply for the IT industry by 2014, when the current students graduate.

The inadequate quality of IT majors was also said to add to the problem of the industry's labour shortage, as companies often expect more from applicants than they can offer.

Vuong Bao Long, human resources director of LogiGear Vietnam, a US-led software testing company, told the media that only about 20 per cent of his company's fresh employees met with the company's demand for required skills and expertise. He added that it is difficult for fresh employees to adapt to new jobs because they did not sharpen their soft skills while at college.

Most graduates are also lacking in English skills and unable to work in an international environment, he added.

Target

According to the 2011 plan for development of human resources in information and technology until 2015 with a vision towards 2020, Viet Nam will become strong in information and technology, with one million people working in the industry.

The plan has a budget of about VND900 billion (nearly US$43.3 million). The Viet Nam Software and IT Services Association revealed that there are currently a total of about 250,000 people working in the sector. Of this figure, approximately 50,000 people are working in software and digital technologies.

Tuan said that as the average yearly increase in demand for human resources in IT stands at 13 per cent (according to the Ministry of Information and Communication), in five years enterprises will need 411,000 people specialising in the field.

In addition, State agencies and organisations also require about 15,000 college graduates with a major in IT for its projects.

Such a large demand is difficult to fulfil as each year the country is only producing 60,000 workers in the field, Tuan pointed out.

According to statistics released by the Ministry of Information and Communications, there are about 290 universities and colleges offering training in IT in Viet Nam and the admissions quota has been increasing steadily over recent years.

Source: VNS