Vietnam is a promising arena for the IT outsourcing industry

Recent reports all show that Vietnam is a promising arena for the IT outsourcing industry. The 2017 report of the Ministry of Industry and Trade (MOIT) said that software exports brought revenue of VND58.5 trillion in 2017, an increase of 4.4 percent over 2016.

A report from AT Kearney in 2017 showed that Vietnam ranked sixth among 55 most attractive countries in the world in software outsourcing.

Prior to that, a report of Gartner said Vietnam was among 10 emerging countries in IT outsourcing in Asia Pacific. 

Meanwhile, in Tholons’ list of 100 most attractive cities in IT outsourcing in 2016, Hanoi ranked 19th and HCMC 18th.

The hot growth of the software industry has led to an increasingly high demand for labor force. VietnamWorks reported that the number of jobs in the IT sector offered on the job website has increased by 50 percent over the last three years. 

In 2017, nearly 15,000 positions in software and hardware app development were offered via the website.

Software outsourcing firms now have great opportunities to grow thanks to the extremely high demand from the world. However, to grab the opportunities they need to have talented workers.

“The serious thirst for workforce has triggered a stiff race of recruiting and retaining talents which forces IT firms to apply their specific solutions to ensure their competitiveness,” Tran Van Minh, CEO of Evolable Asia Solutions, said.

Evolable Asia, headquartered in Japan, in Hanoi, Da Nang and HCMC alone, has 1,000 workers.

Evolable Asia Solutions (EAS), a subsidiary of Evolable in Vietnam, has had a high growth rate of 500 percent per annum. EAS said it plans to recruit 400 more workers in 2019 and 5,000 workers in the next five years.

Like other software firms, EAS is facing problems in human resources development, including an unstable staff force as workers change jobs regularly, and a lack of high-ranking managers.

However, the company's leave rate is about 5-8 percent per year, which is considered low compared with other firms.

To retain workers, EAS not only offers high pay and allowances, but also job promotion opportunities. Minh said the contract extension rate between EAS and large Japanese partners is 100 percent, so workers don’t have to worry about jobs when projects finish.

According to Nguyen Huu Binh, founder of TopDev, Vietnam will lack 70,000 workers for the IT industry by the end of 2018 and the figure will be up to 500,000 by 2020.

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