Jobseekers should have the ability to learn and the willingness to acquire new skills to stay competitive on the job market, as technologies will usher in drastic changes and pose huge challenges to them, heard a workshop in Hanoi City on November 14.

Organizers of France-Vietnam Job Bazaar speak to reporters on the event earlier this year in this file photo. Jobseekers are facing new challenges due in the advent of new technologies 

ManpowerGroup Vietnam joined hands with the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs and the Vietnam Military Telecommunications Group (Viettel) to organize a workshop called “Preparation of Human Resources and Technology for Digital Era in Vietnam” to discuss manpower demand and challenges in the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

The revolution can break the labor market structure, as automation replaces manual labor in the economy or robots replace people in industries. As a result, millions of workers around the world may fall into unemployment, according to ManpowerGroup.

A report of ManpowerGroup called “Skills Revolution” shows up to 45% of human work could be automated. Sectors that can be affected by technology and automation are information technology (26%), human resources (20%) and customer services (15%).

Notably, the retail sector is the most affected, as 47% of the activities that salesman perform on a daily basis could be automated with current technology, and the rate soars to 86% for the sector’s accountants, bookkeepers and other data processing tasks.

Not only jobseekers but also enterprises are also feeling the impact of the revolution.

Simon Matthews, country manager of Manpower Group for Vietnam, Thailand, and Middle East, said a staggering 90% of enterprises fret over the trend of automation, robot, artificial intelligence, and digitalization will affect their business performance in the next two years.

As this revolution evolves, the world will have a new face in the next 15 years, and businesses have to change in order to meet the new requirements.

ManpowerGroup’s statistics in Talent Shortage Survey 2016/2017 indicates nearly half of the corporate respondents (46%) in Southeast Asia are having difficulty recruiting staff due to a talent shortage.

In Vietnam, the recruitment for senior-level staff is in a serious shortage, partly due to the “brain drain” as the number of Vietnamese employees working overseas in 2015 increased by 8% versus that of 2014.

Most companies are ready to deal with the talent shortage in many ways. In particular, up to 53% of enterprises offer training and development for their existing staff. This is regarded as the most effective method in which employees need to be able to learn and adapt to changes, and ready to acquire new skills.

Besides, around 36% of them recruit manpower outside the talent pool while about 28% adopt new recruiting strategies instead of using traditional ones through social media tools and online job boards in a bid to increase their recruitment ratios.

Simon Matthews noted companies have the tendency to employ candidates who have the ability to offer three to five solutions to a problem. Besides, they expect their potential employees to be good at learning.

ManpowerGroup  stresses human potential, not technology or product development, would become the key differentiator of economic growth in the digital era.

SGT