Easy working hours
With the economy seriously affected by the Covid-19 pandemic this entire year, a new graduate named N.H. decided to immediately find any job available soon after graduating from college. Instead of running around to find a job, N.H decided to work as a full-time Grab driver. Every day around 7:30 in the morning, N.H. turns on the App on his phone until noon. At noon he takes a short rest, and then again works till late evening. Although he is on the road the whole day, N.H. is glad that he took this particular job, as he is free to work or rest as he wants, and most importantly, his income is quite good.
N.H. currently belongs to a long list of young graduates who have opted to work as a motorbike driver with companies offering this service on apps. Only in the last few years have young newly graduate youth chosen to move towards jobs such as motorbike taxi drivers. The National Assembly Committee on Social Affairs has reported that about 20,000 graduates were still unemployed but upto 80% students and new graduates were working as motorbike taxi drivers.
In actual fact, if a person is unable to find a suitable job, choosing to become a Grab company driver is a very feasible option. However, even though the immediate employment need may get resolved by working as a motorbike driver, in the long run or even after one or two years, despite the comfort of this job, it does nothing to help you increase your knowledge, but rather one forgets all that was learnt previously in school and college. Mr. Pham Viet Anh, an expert in corporate growth strategy, says that young graduates and post-graduates working as motorbike taxi drivers in an economy that wants to boast rapid growth is very unjustified, and a clear social paradox.
Theoretical knowledge
The reason that so many young graduates are still unemployed, and have to resort to working as Grab drivers to earn basic money to maintain their livelihood is to some extent due to ineffective post-graduation training and consulting programs which do not match appropriate jobs with young qualified graduates.
Mr. Pham Viet Anh believes that in the past many senior and middle level personnel from South Korean used to come to Vietnam to work, which also competed with domestic personnel here. The South Korean government is constantly helping young people in the country to find good jobs around the world. Typically, the K-move program was established to connect South Korean students with businesses in over 70 countries. In order to help young graduates to find jobs elsewhere, Vietnam too must first solve the problem of providing better quality human resource.
The current situation in Vietnam for students in many colleges and universities only allows for passive learning. The college curriculum is outdated, heavy in theory, lacks connection with businesses that eventually employ young workers, and both qualifications and skills do not actually meet the needs of businesses and related jobs. One director of a mechanical engineering industry admitted that the training programs in most universities and colleges were too out of date. This is the reason why job opportunities for new graduates are becoming fewer, or come with very low salaries.
Dire shortage of right training
While the number of unemployed graduates each year is increasing by tens of thousands, businesses still have difficulty in recruiting the right and qualified personnel. For example, the information technology industry is forecast to grow enormously in years to come, but currently businesses still have a hard time in finding and recruiting qualified personnel, despite the offer of high lucrative salaries for many job positions.
According to the Ministry of Labor, War Invalids, & Social Welfare, while many businesses have had to cut down on their labor force, many industries related to information technology are increasing on their recruitment demand. On the VietnamWorks recruitment page from 2010 to present day, the demand for recruiting IT staff has increased four times and will continue to grow in the future. However, there is a dire shortage of the right people for such high tech jobs.
According to the Ministry of Education and Training, currently, Vietnam has about fifty schools providing information technology training. Approximately 50,000 students graduate each year from these information technology centers, but only about 30% can meet the requirements in this field, and the rest need additional training or retraining. This leads to a huge waste in resources and it is clear that there is a vast gap in quality human resource training in universities and colleges, and so far there is no specific policy to fill this gap.
If the quality of training does not change, the quality of human resources in general will remain the same. Hence, it is time to switch from a traditional way of teaching and adopt new methods. Higher education should not passively bring knowledge to students, but should equip students with the basic foundation for self-thinking and problem-solving, with a change in attitude being of utmost importance. This will benefit businesses as well as the future work force.
Many businesses are ready to welcome graduate students, but they want to see a positive learning attitude in students, not for students to just come for internship to finish their degrees. The number of young graduates now working as motorbike taxi drivers do not account for a large proportion of the work force but do represent common problems in education and training, which are also a waste of human resource.
