Hi-tech labor force in higher demand as companies expand business

Many hi-tech enterprises are planning to expand their business in 2011 and recruit a large number of workers. However, while the demand for hi-tech labor force is on the rise, the supply does not increase accordingly.

According to Nguyen Thuong Hai, Intel Vietnam’s Education Director, the number of workers at Intel’s factory in Vietnam would reach 885 by the end of the year, an increase of 385 workers over 2010. Especially, the number would be 4000 workers when the factory operates at full capacity.

Developing the staff of Vietnamese engineers to replace foreign experts is now the top priority of Intel’s training strategy.

Meanwhile, FPT Soft, a software company, plans to recruit about 1000 workers, who are new graduates, this year. Phan Phuong Dat, Deputy General Director of FPT Soft, said that the labor demand of the company increases by 30-40 percent every year.

However, the major problem for both Intel and FPT Soft is that the quality of new university graduates is not high enough to meet the requirements of enterprises.

According to Hai, there is still a big gap between the requirements set by Intel and the actual qualification of new graduates. 100 percent of workers employed by Intel have to take training courses that last 3-6 months before officially taking their jobs.

Hai said that it is even more difficult to recruit experienced engineers in Vietnam, because the engineers Intel needs are very scarce.

He went on to say that Vietnam will not be able to develop high technologies if it does not have a healthy and perfect education system. He has urged schools to improve the quality of the students they train. New graduates need to have deep professional knowledge, have good English skills and have soft skills, such as being able to work in teams.

Like Intel, FPT Soft also has to retrain new school graduates for three months before putting them into works at projects.

Deputy Minister of Science and the Environment Nguyen Van Lang also complains that Vietnam is seriously lacking hi-tech labor force. The universities nationwide every year can provide 110,000 information technology engineers a year. The universities and junior colleges in HCM City alone produce 15,000 IT workers a year. However, only 10 percent of the graduated students can serve well in the industry.

Dat from FPT Soft has suggested that schools should change the time when students to graduate. At present, all students finish their training courses in summer. This has led to a problem in which enterprises lack laborers at other times of the year.

While hi-tech enterprises complain about the quality of new graduates, universities believe that enterprises also should take responsibility for the problem.

Phi Dac Hai, President of the Korea-Vietnam Friendship Information Technology College, said that the main reason behind the problem is the lack of the cooperation between enterprises and schools. “The training curriculums are not reasonable because there is no cooperation between production and training,” he said. “Though enterprises get benefits from training, they do not give support to the training”.

Hai said that in many other countries in the world, the government imposes the education tax on enterprises based on the number of workers the enterprises use.

Sharing the same view, Nguyen Ngoc Binh, Rector of the University of Technology under the Hanoi National University, said that enterprises should cooperate with schools in training by offering an environment for students to practice and train skills for students.

On March 22, the University of Technology under the Hanoi National University and IBM Vietnam signed a memorandum of understanding on the establishment of the first Centre of Excellent IBM-UET in Vietnam. The center will be setup to train laborers with high qualifications and skills in the IT sector, especially in the mainframe. – Vietnamnet

Tags: Vietnam human resource