Vietnam risks facing severe labour shortages  Government and business leaders speaking at a recent forum in Ho Chi Minh City have said that Vietnam is at risk of running out of skilled machinists and other manufacturing workers over the next four to five years. At the conference sponsored by the HCM City Export Processing Zone and Industrial Park Authority (HEPZA), the speakers said the foreign sector is already experiencing difficulty in finding suitable factory workers. Measuring up On the one hand, they said most of the job applicants come from rural areas and in the vast majority of cases lack a high school diploma. This has necessitated additional workplace training programs to bridge the skills and knowledge gap. On the other hand, today’s university grads don’t quite measure up either. In survey after survey, young applicants are rated as deficient in such key workplace skills as written and oral communication, critical thinking and analytical reasoning. As the economy continues to improve over the next few years, foreign sector businesses, in particular, are concerned they won’t be able to find enough savvy graduates who can start contributing from day one on the job. Universities must start paying more attention to employer needs, they said, adding that most employers say graduates may have textbook knowledge but they don’t have the ability to take that knowledge and use it to think critically, innovate, solve complex problems and work as part of a team. The problem isn’t just limited to manufacturing, they said. Official government studies forecast critical shortages of farmers, foresters, and fishers over the next four years as well, which potentially could leave the economy in a lurch. In the foreseeable future, we expect Vietnam employers to demand more labour than will be available, which will, in turn, place constraints on overall economic growth, they said. Redesigning curricula The government, academia and employers need to take the skill gap seriously and start working collaboratively to redesign the curriculum to more effectively develop job-related skills. The curricula that has evolved over time throughout the country is currently too disorganized and leave students with too much freedom in picking their courses, they said. To meet the needs of society and the movement towards a more industrialized economy, foreign sector employers at the forum said the university curricula must be better aligned with employer expectations. In addition, universities must start implementing instructional scaffolding so that students keep moving up until they get to the highest level of language, writing or other skills. Tran Ngoc Cang, managing director of Renesas Design Vietnam operating out of the Tan Thuan Export Processing Zone, said of 150 recent applicants that sought employment at his company, only 15 were chosen. We found that nearly three-fourths of the applicants didn’t understand the required job skills— and about that same number were rejected because they couldn’t clearly articulate their abilities. Of all the complaints from foreign employers at the forum, the bulk of them related to the ability of job applicants to communicate. General professionalism and work ethic were other areas where graduates were found lacking as well. VOV