Decent Work and Warming Strategy for Labor Market

In November 2021, Cho Tot, a subsidiary of Carousell Group, the leading online C2C classified marketplace, launched a job search and recruitment platform (vieclamtot.com). The launch of this official recruitment platform not only helps ease the "thirst" for employees at the moment, but also aims to solve the supply and demand for unskilled workers in the long term. This is also a new strategy of Cho Tot for activating and "warming up" the Vietnamese labor market in the post-lockdown period. Ms. Tran Minh Ngoc, Director of Viec Lam Tot, has an interview about this content.

Strong investment in technology, efficient and reputable labor supply-demand match

What does the launch of Viec Lam Tot and its vision and mission mean for the labor market in Vietnam?

To realize the goal of having rich people and a strong country, Resolution 23-NQ/TW dated March 22, 2018 of the Politburo aimed for industrial development, expected to contribute to 40% of the nation’s GDP by 2030. The labor structure will also witness a corresponding shift from agriculture - forestry - fishery to industry - service, especially in the next five years. The group of unskilled workers, the main human resource of industry, is forecast to account for 43% of the population, equivalent to 43 million people and account for 80% of the labor structure of Vietnam in 2025. Besides that huge potential, there are still challenges of this market such as quality of human resources, truthful and reliable information for workers’ job search and enterprises’ recruitment effect that need to be addressed in a comprehensive way.

We see this as a major years-long challenge in the unskilled job market in Vietnam and wish to join hands in solving these problems for businesses and workers, thus helping build resilience for the economy in the new normal period and boost the country's economic growth for many years to come. In November 2021, the job search and recruitment website, Viet Lam Tot (vieclamtot.com) was launched by the online classifieds platform, Cho Tot, to develop in-depth unskilled labor recruitment, with the mission of bringing better opportunities to millions of Vietnamese people. By 2025, Viec Lam Tot (decent work) will become an industry-leading recruitment website for businesses and a reliable address for jobseekers by connecting jobs for 43 million unskilled workers in Vietnam.

What are the outstanding strengths of Viec Lam Tot among current human resource recruitment platforms to help solve the existing "thirst" for human resources in the wake of the pandemic and assist job market development in Vietnam in the future?

Viec Lam Tot is not only the first unskilled job site in Vietnam to focus on the user experience of employees and employers, but also promotes the strengths of a smart technology platform with outstanding features to optimize the job search and recruitment process and address human resource matters in the job market in Vietnam:

(1) The interface is designed to highlight 24 main industry groups for unskilled workers, such as salespeople, delivery workers, factory workers and drivers, to help jobseekers easily search for suitable jobs.

(2) Diversifying application forms helps jobseekers easily apply for jobs in less than 2 minutes via a direct call with employers without any intermediary or use the brief Application Profile function with only five pieces of information to reduce the waiting time for a response.

(3) Based on a large user base from the parent site, Cho Tot - an online classifieds platform, with up to 55 million visits per month. Viec Lam Tot site is currently used by more than 100,000 businesses and business households for recruitment, with more than 12 million different jobs posted.

(4) The big data analysis system and professional market research process offers insights about workers’ job search needs as well as enterprises’ recruitment needs. By utilizing the expertise and strengths of big data from the user base, Viec Lam Tot will continuously offer practical solutions and recommendations for employers to not only solve post-pandemic recruitment concerns but also to better develop the job market in Vietnam.

In the next 5-year strategic approach, Viec Lam Tot will continue to invest heavily in technology, digital data and multilateral cooperation to improve user experience, become an effective recruitment platform for employers and a reliable job search choice for jobseekers by connecting jobs for 43 million unskilled workers in Vietnam and helping solve human resources for the Vietnamese economy in the future.

Labor market recovery: Many existing challenges

How does Viec Lam Tot evaluate the impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on the Vietnamese labor market in general and the recruitment needs of employers in particular?

The COVID-19 pandemic has had a severe impact on the economy and society. Data from the General Statistics Office shows that 21,194 enterprises went bankrupt and the GDP shrank 6.17% year on year in the third quarter of 2021. As many as 28.2 million workers were affected by job loss, redundancy and salary cut. Unemployment rose to 3.98%, the highest in 10 years. Most notably, more than 1.3 million people have already left big cities to return to their hometowns to avoid the pandemic contagion. Given the complicated development of the pandemic in different provinces, this repatriated workforce tends to switch to local job opportunities and wait for more stability before planning any return to key economic regions. This context posed recruitment difficulties to employers in the short term in late 2021 when the labor supply was short and workers were anxious of the raging pandemic.

Viec Lam Tot data showed that the demand for job searches and recruitment plummeted by 80% during the time of social distancing imposed by Directive 16+ from the pre-pandemic level. The market was almost "frozen" in both supply and demand in all economic sectors. After this period, supply and demand recovered unevenly. Job search demands tended to recover earlier from August to October 2021 but slowed down after that, mainly because the Lunar New Year or Tet was near and many workers were returning home for Tet. Meanwhile, recruitment demand revived slowly in the August-October period but accelerated rapidly from October to December in the wake of adaptation policy to the pandemic.

Viec Lam Tot recognized an uneven recovery of supply-demand balance and local labor shortages changed recruitment at this stage as follows:

● The massive growth of recruitment demand in a short time for a certain group of occupations (in October and November 2021, the worker recruitment demand increased by 194% compared to April)

● The need to promote and diversify recruitment forms and areas in addition to traditional recruitments to diversify the source of candidates

● Recruitment and operating costs rise due to changes in welfare packages to attract workers and operating costs rise for returned workers.

What is the trend and speed of recovery in the post-lockdown period? And how is this trend for unskilled workers? What is the biggest challenge in this segment for both employees and employers?

In January 2022, the National Assembly approved the economic recovery package of VND350 trillion. In addition, over 77% of the population was fully double-vaccinated. These positive moves of the Government will boost economic recovery in 2022. Accordingly, businesses will grasp this opportunity to expand production and business and recruitment demand will increase to meet their operations, especially in manufacturing, processing and tourism industries which will need specific jobs such as workers, service staff, salesmen, and freight forwarders.

The large dataset of Viec Lam Tot showed that demand for worker, driver/deliverer recruitment recovered very strongly right after the lockdown period. Specifically, in October and November 2021, the demand jumped 194% as compared to April and remained stable after the Lunar New Year of 2022. The demand for driver/deliverer recruitments kept rising over 10% monthly on average from September 2021 to the Tet. Meanwhile, the slow recovery of service and tourism sectors will cause unskilled job seekers to shift to manufacturing and freight forwarding industries. And the service and tourism sectors will have a hard time re-engaging workers when they start to recover after Tet.

Viec Lam Tot forecast that unskilled workers will account for 80% of Vietnam's labor force by 2025. There are 2 big challenges in this segment:

(1) The low quality of labor resources affects labor productivity. In 2020, Vietnam had only 24.1% of trained, qualified or certified workers. This figure is only 13% in the group of unskilled workers.

(2) Unskilled job seekers lack information when they look for jobs online. So, they miss out on many good opportunities. They also lack knowledge about benefits other than salary and career orientation and promotion path, which has a negative effect on engagement and commitment of unskilled workers to their employers as compared to white-collar workers. This leads to higher recruitment costs while the efficiency is low.

Thank you very much!

By Vietnam Business Forum