The demand for IT human resources is escalating in Vietnam as the economy is reviving and a favourable business environment is attracting more foreign investors. However, the professional qualifications and skills of IT human resources fail to meet the growing demand.
Weak in both quantity and quality
According to statistics by the Vietnam Software Association (Vinasa), the Vietnam IT industry has about 250,000 workers, including some 50,000 working in software and digital content fields. However, this workforce is reportedly much smaller than the real demand, especially for high-level engineers. Socio-economic development currently requires more and more IT applications to improve living conditions, while international cooperation and foreign investment are the main causes for the constantly high demand for IT human resources. In recent years, the Vietnamese IT industry workforce has been expanding, especially in Ho Chi Minh City, but demand for qualified workers remains greater than supply.
The quality shortfall is typical of Vietnamese IT human resources. According to IT companies, the quality of human resources is too low, from professional skills to foreign languages, failing to catch up with the development level of regional developed countries. For example, Intel Corp, the world’s largest chip manufacturer, considered building a chip plant in Hanoi but it had to relocate to the south to access a more qualified workforce. According to Intel, the quality of human resources there is sufficient to undertake part of the work.
According to statistics by the Ministry of Education and Training, by 2010, Vietnam has 10 institutions, 123 universities, 153 colleges and over 350 high schools offering ICT training, but training quality is still poor.
Indeed, training programmes at Vietnamese IT training establishments are based on the limited framework of the Ministry of Education and Training, while the IT industry continually develops. Hence, how to build an international standard IT training programme within the Vietnamese system has become a chief challenge for programme builders. Regarding infrastructure, as the IT industry characteristically develops very fast, laboratory machines and equipment are outdated after one or two years and cannot work with newer technologies.
In addition to these reasons, Mr Quach Tuan Ngoc, Director of Information Technology Department under the Ministry of Education and Training, said poor training efficiency as well as low human resource quality is partially rooted in the enrolment process. The Ministry has not renewed the entrance exam for IT schools. Currently, students compete in three subjects of maths, physics and chemistry for seats in IT schools, but the chemistry requirement seems unrelated to the IT industry.
Besides, according to Information and Communications Deputy Minister Tran Duc Lai, IT human resources training faces many challenges because of the lack of close cooperation between IT companies and training schools in Vietnam. Meanwhile, in foreign nations, the linkage between schools (source of supply) and businesses (source of demand) is very close. If companies and schools do not establish cooperative ties, training and human resource quality improvements will remain on paper only.
Strengthening linkage between companies and schools
The government-backed "Converting Vietnam into an IT power soon” project has set the target that Vietnam will have one million IT workers by 2020 and will export IT professionals, but the stepping stone for that ambition is to bring the university training to ASEAN level by 2015. The target of one million IT workers by 2020 is the key factor to make Vietnam an IT power and change the position of Vietnam on the world IT map. Nonetheless, according to Dr Huynh Quyet Thang, Director of the Institute of Information Communication Technology under the Hanoi University of Technology, to achieve that goal, Vietnam must ride out many difficulties and challenges.
Based on statistical reports from the Ministry of Information and Communications and the Ministry of Education and Training, Vietnam can train one million IT workers by 2020. Nevertheless, the quality of human resources is more decisive than the quantity. Indeed, IT training in Vietnam has placed more focus on quantity than on quality in past years.
Together with focusing on linking companies with training schools, the State should build up a mechanism for appraising the quality of training establishments based on the number of graduates finding employment, and consider applying advanced, globally accepted IT training programmes. The demand for IT human resources in Vietnam is beyond the capacity of the current training system; thus, adopting international standards and training programmes to meet the demand needs to be taken into consideration. At the same time, training units must apply the same quality appraisal method.
Thien Tan
Vietnamese
