VietNamNet Bridge - Software firms have urged training establishments to reconsider the training process and apply measures to improve the workforce for the software industry.

Lam Nguyen Hai Long, director of the Quang Trung Software Park (QTSC), said QTSC needs 20-25 percent more workers every year, but only 7-8 percent can be found. 

Ngo Duc Chi, CEO of Global CyberSoft, said he was looking for capable software engineers, willing to offer the salary of VND15-20 million a month. However, there are very few candidates who can meet the company’s requirements. 

The representative of a software firm in HCMC said in the past, the firm only recruited 10 workers a year on average. However, as demand has increased rapidly and more orders have come, the company needs about 50 workers more.

Regarding the pay, he said the company offers monthly salary of VND10-15 million for engineers with three-year experience, VND6-8 million for new graduates. Meanwhile, senior engineers can earn up to VND50 million.

Software firms have urged training establishments to reconsider the training process and apply measures to improve the workforce for the software industry.

“However, we have only found less than 10 high-ranking workers,” he complained.

Hoang Nam Tien, president of FPT Software, said the company needs 9,000 new workers every year by 2018. However, there would be 3,000-4,000 candidates with suitable professional knowledge and English skills to employ. Since domestic training establishments cannot provide enough capable candidates, FPT Software has to employ overseas workers.

An analyst commented that Vietnamese software firms now most want high-quality engineers with at least 3-years of experience and good foreign language (Japanese and English) skills. However, only a modest number of candidates can satisfy the requirements.

However, Long from QTSC commented that while software firms seriously lack workers, many university graduates still stay redundant. As the training quality is problematic, many university graduates cannot meet the requirements, which forces QTSC to spend money to retrain the engineers.

Long complained that a lot of schools had refused to cooperate with software firms to produce engineers for the software industry.

“I believe that it would be better to grant higher ‘quotas’ to prestigious schools, so that they can produce high-quality workers, and restrict the enrollment scale at less prestigious schools,” Long said.

A survey by FPT Soft showed that the workforce shortage in the information technology industry has become alarming. It is estimated that Vietnam would lack 400,000 engineers by 2020, or 80,000 workers a year. Meanwhile, training establishments can provide 32,000 graduates every year and not all of them can work.

Tien of FPT Soft called on the state to spend $12 million a year to train 1,000 engineers with good Japanese language skills.


NLD