An IT company in the education sector displays its products at HCM City Innovation, Startup and Entrepreneurship Week. The recruitment demand of the IT industry has quadrupled after a decade. VNS Photo Gia Lộc

HCM CITY — The recruitment demand of the IT industry has quadrupled after a decade, according to the report “Information Technology Human Resources of the 2010s and 2020" released by VietnamWorks, a leading online recruitment website, belonging to the Navigos Group.

The seven fields in the IT industry with the highest recruitment demand are software development; technical assistance; project/product management; user experience and interface; QA/QC; and data science.

From 2010 to early 2020, the recruitment demand of the software development segment accounted for more than 50 per cent of total demand and had the largest impact on recruitment demand of the entire IT industry.

When comparing the first half of the decade and the second half, the recruitment demand for this segment nearly doubled.

In this segment, the recruiting needs are mainly engineers with experience in software, mobile, web, and ERP (enterprise resource planning software) with common programming language skills such as JAVA, PHP, and .NET.

Software development in the last decade has mostly involved “outsourcing” services, especially web apps and mobile apps.

Over the past decade, in terms of skills, Javascript developers had the strongest growth in recruitment demand, up to 63.3 per cent compared to 2010, followed by iOS developers which grew by 29.8 per cent; and Android developers which increased to 26.8 per cent.

According to the report ICT Employment: Current Situation and Strategy to Meet New Technology Demands in Việt Nam released by Navigos Group, a leading provider of HR services in Việt Nam, most of the technology companies aim to increase employee scale.

Most of them will have recruitment demands next year at different levels, depending on their scale.

According to surveyed employers, the shortage of human resources directly affects the performance of the company, the overworked status of the remaining employees, and the lack of engagement among employees due to the instability of personnel.

Facing a scarcity of human resources in the technology industry, many businesses have a long-term vision in recruiting by developing current human resources and connecting with universities to prepare for the necessary skill sets.

If Vietnamese candidates do not meet the recruitment requirements, both the employer and the candidate agree that selecting candidates from the Southeast Asia region has the most potential.

Candidates from Europe and the Americas, although they are thought of as highly qualified with a lot of new technology knowledge, are not always selected by the employer. The candidate group also shows that there is no higher competition from candidates from these areas.

Gaku Echizenya, CEO of Navigos Group Vietnam, said: “The uncontrolled objective factors such as the impact of the epidemic leads to limitations in real-life interactions, or risks for people engaged in dangerous jobs, and it makes technology more important than ever because of the ability to transform activities from offline into online, or undertake repetitive or risky tasks.

"The demand for high technology has been recognised by many sectors and businesses. Facing the increase in recruitment demand, enterprises not only face a shortage of technological manpower but also have to prepare solutions to retain talents and cope with rapid changes in new technology."

Salary

From 2011 to 2012, development of mobile apps was strong, leading to the highest average monthly salary for embedded developers of US$3,750 and hardware engineers with a salary of $3,500.

The period of 2013-2014 marked the rise of the "data-driven" era when all businesses were aiming to take advantage of big data, leading to high salaries for two positions: data scientist with a monthly salary of $3,531, and python developer with a salary of $2,900.

The second half of the decade, from 2015 - 2019, continues to be the development of data science as this technology plays an increasingly important role for businesses. This is reflected in the salary posted for the position of business intelligence (referred to as BI) with a salary of $1,532 in 2015.

High technology trends also began to enter Việt Nam at this time and were reflected through the high salary paid for positions such as IoT developer with a salary of $1,800; Artificial Intelligence developer, $1,958; blockchain developer, $2,033; Cloud developer, $2,006, and computer vision developer, $2,382.

IT human resources are "well taken care of" by enterprises when they offer the most important benefits, including social insurance, paid leave, periodic health checks, allowances, personal laptop, and travel, according to the survey. VNS