Owing to the rising volume of investment to Vietnam in the last few years, Japanese firms in the country are looking to hire more personnel, especially for the managerial positions.
Latest data from the Ministry of Planning and Investment’s Foreign Investment Agency showed that Japan topped the list of the biggest investor for Vietnam last year. It rank first in total investment among 115 countries and territories globally, with 9.11 billion USD, accounting for 25.4 percent of the country’s foreign investment capital.
This hiring trend could be seen from rising demand for professional and skilled workers in several job sites. For example, the website japan.vietnamworks.com now has nearly 300 job openings that range from assistant director, translators, front-end developers, to ICT sale managers at Japanese companies operating in the country. The salaries for the positions offered start from 300 USD to 4,000 USD a month. Meanwhile, the CareerLink website has nearly 600 job openings for Japanese companies nationwide.
Recent report released by the Navigos Group revealed that recruitment demand for both mid- and high level positions for Japanese enterprises in 2017 was mostly in manufacturing and information technology sectors. According to Navigos Search, Japanese companies are facing competition from other foreign companies in attracting and retaining the best talents for their organisation.
See: Changing Hiring Tactics to Overcome Current Talent Crunch
The report also forecasts that Japanese companies running in the manufacturing sector will continue to have demand for mid- and high-level personnel, owing to the emergence of new industrial parks along with large investments from Japanese manufacturing companies in the country’s northern region in 2018. Meanwhile, the country’s southern region is expected to see growing demand for for the IT industry and services industry, said the report.
In the retail sector, mergers and acquisitions is projected to continue to occur, especially among large corporations from Japan and Thailand as they have invested in Vietnamese businesses and possessed well-known brands. Such deals have opened up new careers for Vietnamese in the area of business development and have created new opportunities for local employees to approach a more professional working style and management.
However, the Navigos report noted that despite such big opportunities, Vietnamese candidates face certain difficulties in adapting to the corporate culture and working style, Vietnam Net reports.
Speaking at a forum held by the Saigon Times Group in co-operation with ManpowerGroup Vietnam on last December 14, head of the human resource division at Japanese company AEON Vietnam Co Ltd, Nguyen Thi Ngoc Hue said that recruiting employees in the retail sector could be a real challenge because many people do not favour to work on weekends or holidays, especially during the Tet holiday. Not only that, many companies must compete for candidates as the sector has boomed.
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