HCM CITY — Many banks throughout the country need to recruit more employees for their newly opened branches this year or to replace staff members who quit their jobs before Lunar Tết holiday.

On the website of Nam Á Bank, for instance, the bank is seeking to recuit 1,000 employees for many different positions, such as directors, deputy directors, managers and others because it wants to expand its operations this year and next.

It also provides many internship programmes for students of majors including economics, finance, and business administration.

Nguyễn Lương Hiếu, head of the Nam Á Bank’s Human Resource and Training Division, said that the bank is focused on recruiting more human resources for lending and telephone sales.

IT engineers also are needed for the bank’s digital banking this year, Hiếu said.

Others banks, including Indovina Bank Ltd and Tiên Phong Commercial Joint Stock Bank, have published their recruitment needs on an online recruitment portal, VietnamWorks, with more than 680 jobs on March 2.

According to experts in the banking sector, its positive results last year and strong forecast for this year have fostered the heavy recruitment.

VnEconomy cited a statistic of the State Bank of Việt Nam released in the beginning of this year showing that 25.3 per cent of credit organisations nationwide are facing a shortage of employees.

A bank’s employee in HCM City told Việt Nam News that many of her colleagues have quit their jobs because of heavy workloads and pressure to reach high sales targets.

They also thought that the industry had many legal risks.

More than 52 per cent of these organisations plan to increase their staff in the first quarter and 68.7 per cent will recruit more employees for the whole year, the SBV statistics say.

A banking workforce report on February 26 released by Navigos Group, a recruitment company in Việt Nam, shows that 56 per cent of 15 surveyed banks could enhance their policies to attract employees although they already had basic and reasonable policies for employees.

According to the report, up to 89 per cent of the surveyed banks have an average salary ranging from VNĐ10 million to 30 million (US$440-1,321) per month.

Twenty six per cent of employers said that uncompetitive wages and remuneration are the biggest recruitment obstacle.

Thirty seven per cent of employers also said that in order to increase the efficiency of recruitment, banks should consider offering financial incentives to attract candidates.

According to the survey, 62 per cent of 237 candidates received a bonus of one to three months of salary on average; 18 per cent received 3 to 5 months of salary; 7 per cent received 5 to 7 months of salary and 5 per cent received over 7 months of salary.

Moreover, the average annual salary increase of the surveyed candidates is quite high. Forty per cent of them have an annual salary increase of over 10 per cent.

According to the report, 50 per cent of candidates said they would like to work at a foreign bank or branch of a foreign bank in Việt Nam; 31 per cent of them want to work for joint stock commercial banks; 11 per cent select state-owned commercial banks and 3 per cent select joint venture commercial banks.

The candidates said that some main reasons why they want to work in foreign banks including expecting to be treated fairly and work in a healthy environment; expecting high salaries and more promotion opportunities; expecting to use English and work with expat colleagues and managers and expecting to have training opportunities. —VNS