IT training: technology firms want to ‘hunt’, not ‘cultivate’, talent

Businesses and training establishments are blaming each other for the problems in IT human resources development. But the lack of cooperation between them is contributing to the problem.

VietNamNet Bridge - Businesses and training establishments are blaming each other for the problems in IT human resources development. But the lack of cooperation between them is contributing to the problem.

Vietnam is seriously lacking IT engineers

Navigos, the leading job website in Vietnam, in reports released in 2018, put emphasis on the lack of IT engineers, saying that technology firms cannot find enough qualified workers though they offer attractive pay, VND40-60 million a month, to medium-level workers, the same as pay to foreigners.

Finding it difficult to employ Vietnamese IT engineers, foreign invested technology firms have to recruit specialists from overseas, with candidates mostly from Russia, Ukraine and the US.

Finding it difficult to employ Vietnamese IT engineers, foreign invested technology firms have to recruit specialists from overseas, with candidates mostly from Russia, Ukraine and the US.

Meanwhile, Vietnamese technology firms complain that they can hardly find qualified workers, despite the high number of new university graduates every year, emphasizing that the problem lies in the training quality.

Meanwhile, training establishments say businesses are uncooperative.

Vo Dinh Bay, IT Faculty Dean of the HCMC University of Technology, said the association between businesses and universities plays a very important role that determines training quality.

In developed countries, the cooperation is especially important as it can bring benefits to both businesses, schools, society and students.

Meanwhile, the cooperation and connection between trainers and employers remains very lax.

“Most businesses just focus on hunting, not on cultivating,” he said.

In other words, they only want a ready-made labor force, and don’t want to spend money and time to work together.

Bay said that businesses should get involved in building up curricula, funding academic competitions, and giving scholarships to encourage talented students to intern at their company.

Meanwhile, schools have to fulfill their functions in giving training, consulting and transferring technologies and research results.

“Only when this problem is fixed, businesses will have more plentiful intellectual resources,” he said.

To Hong Nam, deputy head of the IT Agency under the Ministry of Education & Training, also thinks that businesses and training firms need to “find a common voice” and a “cooperation base” to improve IT training.

“IT students now have high quality, and the training quality has improved, but productivity remains low. The problem is that university graduates have limited soft skills, foreign language skills and practice,” he commented.

The number of universities (4-5 year training) and junior colleges (3-year training) account for 37.5 percent of total schools.

A report from the World Economic Forum released recently shows that Vietnam is among the countries still not ready for the 4.0 industry revolution, ranking 70th out of 100 countries in human resources and 81st in highly qualified workers. In Southeast Asia, Vietnam is below Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines in human resources.