Recruiting Tech Talent In Vietnam: Opportunities And Challenges

Recruiting tech talent in Singapore is always a big challenge for local businesses dues to their limited labor pool, resulting in a severe developer crunch. To survive, organizations are trying to tap into overseas markets. This is where Vietnam comes in. 

The country is well-known for its affordable but skilled developers, friendly business environment, and IT infrastructures that meet the standard of a regional tech hub. However, hiring remote tech talents is complicated, requiring near-perfect execution. 

Thus, to ensure their success, it is a must for companies to understand the Vietnamese tech talent landscape. 

Recruiting Tech Talents In Vietnam: Opportunities

Affordable But Skilled Tech Talents

Vietnam is well known for its rising tech talent pool with over 400.000 IT engineers currently working and another 50,000 IT graduates annually. Such promising growth is thanks to the Vietnamese government’s investment in science and technological education, economic policies that encourage investment from tech companies, and a strong commitment to turning the country into a regional tech hub. 

As a result, the country is able to provide a great pool of talented, dynamic, and skillful software engineers for international firms to draw from. This is especially important for those who are looking for developers with niche skill sets. 

For example, recruiting local developers that well-versed in blockchain technologies in Singapore is difficult due to the limited talent availability. Thus, many organizations have extended their reach toward Vietnam and built up their own offshore blockchain tech team there instead.

Another compelling reason for hiring Vietnamese developers lies in their salary rate which is much lower compared to the other neighbors in the region, such as Indonesia, Thailand, and Singapore.

From our findings, a mid-senior developer with 5 years of experience in Vietnam will often demand an average gross salary of approximately US$2574 monthly. When compared to a Singapore developer who will cost $5,500 for the same skill set and experience, the hiring cost difference is more than 40%. 

In other words, it is almost double the headcounts within the same budget if firms choose to recruit tech talent in Vietnam instead. 

Government Supports

Aiming to become the regional tech hub in ASEAN, the Vietnamese government put a lot of effort into supporting the country’s digital transformation and its local tech talent. This results in a more business-friendly environment where international firms are encouraged to invest and hire Vietnamese developers. 

At present, the government also plans to open more than 20 schools teaching IT in Vietnam. From there, the government will partner with organizations to have more growth programs, connecting tech talent with new job opportunities. By joining these initiatives, firms can have a much easier time searching for and hiring great developers at any level.

Recruiting Tech Talents In Vietnam: Challenges

Language Barriers

English has never been one of the Vietnamese developer’s strengths, especially compared to tech talents from other countries in ASEAN such as Singapore, Thailand, or Malaysia. However, they also do not fall behind too much, being able to maintain a “moderate” proficiency level where communication in English is no problem. 

In other words, they have solid technical skills and are also good at using English, mostly reading and writing. The main problems of Vietnamese talent are pronunciation and being comfortable with communication. Fortunately, senior developers in Vietnam are often fluent in English thanks to their working experience with international firms. 

That being said, we recommend firms establish several testing rounds and interviews to ensure the candidate pass your expectation for communication skills.

Complex And Long Hiring Process 

Good Vietnamese developers are in very high demand so when they start looking for new job opportunities, recruiters will contact them as soon as possible. Therefore, speed is of utmost importance when recruiting ideal candidates. After all, they will not decline other offers and wait for your response unless you are a highly respected firm. 

Unfortunately, the hiring process for developers is already complex by itself, got multiplied because of the offshore recruitment nature. Consequently, it can take months to successfully secure tech talents as businesses have to conduct screening and sourcing processes carefully.

For example, many factors can quickly extend the interview screening process from days to weeks.

A full tech talent hiring process circles often take at least 01 months or more to conclude. Supposing that you also need to hire multiple positions, then the recruitment time can be doubled or even tripled.

Conclusion

As IT outsourcing is becoming a common choice of worldwide tech firms, Vietnam can be one of the go-to destinations with effective cost while mitigating the risk of complicated cyber attacks. 

As hiring offshore developers is becoming a common choice for organizations to scale up their tech operations, Vietnam can be one of the go-to destinations with its wide tech talent pool, affordable but skilled developers, and government-friendly support.

However, securing tech talents in Vietnam can be challenging if you do not have the HR resources to tackle the challenging hiring process. So we recommended relying on an experienced vendor that specializes in these fields.