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Tag: job seeker

  • Vietnam struggles with paucity of AI engineers

    Vietnam struggles with paucity of AI engineers

    IT firms are offering artificial intelligence (AI) engineers salaries of $22,000 a year, but are still struggling to recruit enough people. IT recruiting firm TopDev said in a recent report that companies are having difficulty finding the right people due to a paucity of talents. Salaries are going up as a result. An AI/machine learning engineer could earn up to $1,678 a month, or around $22,000 a year including bonuses and benefits.

    This is higher than what a data scientist ($1,537 a month) or DevOps engineer ($1,505) gets. The latter handles both the development and operations of a product.

    The report said the IT sector generally faces a big shortage as demand is set to go up from 320,000 engineers this year to 400,000 in 2020. The shortfall is 75,000 this year, and set to increase to 100,000 in 2020.

    But they face a struggle as 53 percent of 15,000 IT employees polled for the report are happy with their current job, and 59.8 percent do not want to change their job. This leaves employers considering paying higher salaries to lure away people. The average salary for experienced IT engineers now is $1,318.

    Managers with over five years’ experience can earn from $1,550 to $2,350, while directors with over 10 years’ experience earn at least $2,300.

    But there is a dearth of quality managers and engineers, the report added.

    Gaku Echizenya, general director of Navigos Group, a leading recruitment company, recently said: “The market is experiencing major changes with the fourth industrial revolution. Therefore, businesses need to keep up-to-date with market information from reputable sources to respond promptly to changes, allowing them to set out a strategy to recruit and attract talented people.”

    Employees need to actively educate themselves in IT and digital knowledge, and develop crucial skills such as cooperation with others and people management to increase their competitiveness, he added.

     

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  • Vietnam job seekers switch to foreign companies

    Vietnam job seekers switch to foreign companies

    The increase was recently announced by the executive search company Jobstreet.com.

    Le Thi Huyen Anh, key account sales manager at Jobstreet.com, attributed this to the appealing working environment, remuneration and bonus and other rewards at foreign firms.

    Speaking about the dramatic changes in the area of human resources, she said the element of technology is creating new job prospects, job titles and responsibilities and demanding specific skill sets and multitasking capabilities in new candidates as well as existing employees.

    But the ratio of Vietnamese employees who can meet the multitasking requirements in technology-based working environments remains modest, she said.

    According to Jobstreet’s bliss index of employees, a candidate’s final call on whether to select or prove their loyalty to a certain workplace depends not just on the income and job title. There are also other determinants such as position, reputation, corporate values, working culture and the community of fellow staff members, it said.

    Certain job titles like “officers” and “specialists” are offered higher wage increases and bonuses than others. Half of businesses recently surveyed by Jobstreet.com are committed to expanding recruitment while 10 percent plan to keep the recruitment ratio unaltered next year.

    Nguyen Thi Thu Trang, general manager of JobStreet.com, said the top three recruitment categories this year are wholesale-retail, communication-marketing and information technology.

    Vietnam received an estimated $16.2 billion in foreign direct investment (FDI) in the first half of this year, down 4.4 percent from the same period last year, according to the General Statistics Office.

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  • $14m boost for PMETs to start new careers

    $14m boost for PMETs to start new careers

    An extra $14 million per year has been set aside for two years to help professionals, managers, executives and technicians (PMETs) who want to start new careers in sectors such as retail, food services and events, Manpower Minister Lim Swee Say said yesterday.

    This means a total of $40 million per year, up from $26 million previously, will be available to fund course fees and salary support through Professional Conversion Programmes (PCPs) from now until mid-2018.

    Mr Lim said the PCP initiative will be “critical” in minimising the gap between job opportunities and workers’ existing skills, which will grow as economic restructuring picks up pace.

    “A growing number of PMETs will find that their job experience and their job expertise in some cases may no longer be directly relevant to the job opportunities of the future,” he said, speaking to media at a career fair at the Lifelong Learning Institute in Paya Lebar.

    “More and more of them will have to learn new skills and start a new career in areas they may not be familiar with.”

    PMETs tend to make up a higher share of laid-off workers than their share of the resident workforce, according to Manpower Ministry data. The average PMET also takes longer than the average resident to get back into a job after being laid off.

    Four new PCPs were launched yesterday by the Singapore Workforce Development Agency (WDA) to provide job placement and skills training support for up to 80 retail store managers, assistant chefs, restaurant managers, project executives and assistant project managers each year. Information about applying for the programmes can be found on the WDA website.

    The additions bring the total number of PCPs to 31 across 14 sectors. By 2018, there will be programmes in 20 sectors, as part of the Adapt and Grow initiative announced in this year’s Budget.

    The WDA said it aims to help a total of 10,000 Singaporeans and permanent resident PMETs by then, up from the 7,000 already placed through PCPs so far. More programmes in sectors such as aerospace and public transport will be rolled out over the next few months.

    Some 25 industries, which contribute around 80 per cent of Singapore’s gross domestic product, are being transformed, and both employers and employees must adapt, said Mr Lim.

    Yesterday’s career fair was part of the first Adapt and Grow Career Series of fairs and workshops running this month with 3,000 jobs for Singaporeans and PRs, 1,200 of which are for PMET positions. The series will be held quarterly.

    Several employers at the fair who are offering roles under the new PCPs said they would consider moving staff up to managerial positions if they performed well in the entry-level role they are initially hired for.

    “After three months, we will evaluate and if they are very interested in other aspects of the business such as outlet management, we will look at opportunities for them,” said Mr Wong Wei Teck, 59, managing director of Soup Restaurant Group, who was on the lookout for operations staff such as assistant chefs.

    www.straitstimes.com