In that context, the personnel task needs a breakthrough to help the country develop faster.

First of all, the Communist Party of Vietnam (CPV) must review and address the responsibilities of the Party committees and Party advisory agencies at all levels in the selection of officials. Personnel must be selected through the actual jobs, in other words finding people to assign jobs. If a selected official fails to do their job, the responsibility belongs to the person who chooses and appoints that official. 

Tightly binding the responsibilities of those who nominate candidates for key positions in order to find qualified officials in the Party and State apparatus. 

Gradually shifting from a Party-nominated to election-leading Party mechanism

Yen Bai Provincial Party Committee's delegation to the 13th National Party Congress

Vietnam is entering the era of 4.0 industry revolution, which requires constant innovation and creativity. Personnel work also follows this trend.

It is time for the Party to consider and take a reasonable step to gradually change the mechanism under which the Party nominates candidates for key positions to the mechanism that the Party leads to examinations and elections to choose the right talents to serve the country.

When changing to this mechanism, the Party needs to provide enough information for the party members and people to vote, choose the people with enough virtue and talent who the country really needs.

The transition to the exam mechanism, running for key positions has many advantages, which can help better screen personnel because the candidates themselves have screened themselves with the two most important criteria: 1 – having real capacity, 2 - having a healthy life to dare to run election. This is the most important screening step for each individual.

After the list of candidates is available, the Party continues to monitor the election process, orient the content of the debate among the candidates to choose the candidates who are more excellent in terms of intellect, methods and skills. The most typical candidates are then presented to the people to vote. Talents need a transparent mechanism to show off because they cannot do the things that the less talented people do.

Challenging the talent through practice

The talented people still need to be challenged through practice. For example, anyone can carry 30kg of paddy but if giving them more and more paddy, fewer people will be able to carry it in the end.

China’s experience shows that personnel rotation is a good way to challenge officials to choose the best and worthiest people. In China, they can choose at a time many vice ministers to be appointed as chairs and party secretaries for at least five years in poor provinces. After being tested and proven to be good leaders in poor provinces, these officials are transferred to rich provinces where they are tested again. From there, the most successful people are appointed to key positions in the Party and state agencies.

Choosing talent needs a new vision

In Vietnam, it is a tradition to choose cadres mainly from Party members and those who are public employees. That is good but not enough because it is easy to miss talents in many fields, of which two fields are most obvious: Firstly, the private sector where there are many excellent people. We have not used them yet, and they cannot enter the State. Vietnam has many famous brands thanks to good entrepreneurs. Those people, if used by the Government and the State to lead the economy, will definitely do very well.

Secondly, we need to take advantage of the talents who are overseas Vietnamese. When President Ho Chi Minh became President of the provisional Democratic Republic of Vietnam, Vietnam had only about 20,000 overseas Vietnamese at that time, mainly in France. President Ho Chi Minh invited dozens of overseas Vietnamese to become Ministers and Deputy Ministers. These people were chosen by President Ho Chi Minh based only three criteria: virtuous, talented and patriotic. Today, we have more than 4 million overseas Vietnamese, many of whom are virtuous and talented but they do not have the opportunity to return home to serve the country and the people.

Selecting, training, and employing talents need a new vision. Talent in the era of industrial revolution 4.0 requires a new thinking and a new way of doing. Today, talents must think of things that are not in books or in life to do, to break through and speed up.

Casting votes to elect the Party Steering Committee of Kon Tum Province.

If we used to only explain and reform the world, now we need to elevate to a new level - changing the world. If we used to go forward sequentially, but now we must find a way to leapfrog. If we used to require that the gains of next year must be higher than the previous year, now the requirement must be both higher and different from the previous year.

To do this, it is necessary to gather talents. The young generation is now very intelligent. If we find talent among Party members and public employees only, talent is easy to miss. If organizing examinations to choose talents, more talented people will appear, meeting all wishes of the Party, State and people. Talented people never give up their honor to do things that are not pure and transparent.

Make use of global human resources

In the era of Industry Revolution 4.0, there are 5 globalization factors: global market, global citizens, global human resources, global language and global enterprises. In human resources, we should consider leveraging global human resources.

In Vietnam, in any field that lacks qualified Vietnamese people, we should hire foreigners to do it and assign potential staff to follow foreign experts closely to learn from them and be ready to replace them when necessary. This approach is both immediate resolution and long-term response.

Why does Vietnam Airlines rise to the international level? Because many pilots of Vietnam Airlines are foreigners. Another example, Vinfast had 365 days to create a modern car line with Vietnamese brand and they are successful. It is because they hired foreigners to design and organize production under the leadership and autonomy of the Vietnamese.

Vietnam has three issues that need to be addressed to attract and appreciate talents: the private economy; patriotic overseas Vietnamese and global human resources ... If we have foresight and globalization, we will have a chance to break through and succeed, bringing our country to shoulder with powers in five continents as desired by President Ho Chi Minh.

Dr. Le Doan Hop (Former Minister of Information and Communications)

How to attract talent

VietNamNet introduces an article by National Assembly Deputy Le Thanh Van on the draft national strategy to attract and use talents, which can be seen as comments to the draft documents of the 13th National Party Congress.