Chasing lucrative returns during the rapid development of the high-tech industry, multi-national tech giants are rushing to start operations in Viet Nam.

The giants are complaining loudly about a dearth of technically-adept workers coming out of colleges and engineers who require additional training.

Despite the widespread economic downturn, the IBM started expanding its presence a month ago by launching a technology centre and signed two research agreements with Vietnamese universities.

Hewlett-Packard and Sun Microsystems are also investing in the emerging tech industry.

The US corporate giant Intel is building a US$1 billion semiconductor factory on the Ha Noi Highway in HCM City. Work started last year and when completed, the plant will employ 4,000 IT workers.

During its latest mass recruitment, Intel employed 40 IT engineers from a pool of 2,000 candidates, which highlighted the headache faced by foreign investors.

Pham Thien Nghe, the general secretary of the HCM City Computer Association, said 390 universities, colleges and vocational centres nationwide ran courses on computer sciences, information and communications technology (ICT).

The schools have graduated about 10,000 students annually since 2007 but only a few enter the labour market following graduation.

"The majority fail to meet employment requirements," he said

A recruiter for a Ha Noi-based international telecommunications company, who wanted to remain anonymous, said despite spending several months putting recruitment announcements on popular job vacancy websites and notice boards and in newspapers, he could not find suitable candidates.

In desperation, he asked friends to be his head-hunters.

"Most candidates I interviewed lacked communication skills, background knowledge, professional experience and analytical ability. Worse still, they hardly use English," he said.

After spending two years studying abroad at the master level and another three working for Motorola in Singapore, the man concluded the Vietnamese education system puts too much emphasis on science and technology education.

"It fails to teach Vietnamese students to think critically. It’s a vital skill which enables them to compete in the harsh international working environment," he said.

Claiming victory

"In terms of certificates or diplomas, Vietnamese engineers may claim victory. But in terms of professional experience and knowledge, we are nothing."

International tech companies said the lack of English skills were the biggest drawbacks to employing Vietnamese geeks while their Vietnamese counterparts said few graduates had the necessary skills to start work and needed more training.

Nguyen Tu Quang, director of the Bach Khoa Internet Security Centre, said English skills were important but not as vital as presentation skills or work experience.

"We shouldn’t focus too heavily on improving English skills. Instead, we should pay particular attention to enhancing students’ ability for problem solving and decision making.

"Those skills enable them to be senior experts, not just low-paid testers or coders. We should be reality based," Quang said.

Quang’s centre, which works from a laboratory at the Ha Noi University of Technology, has co-operated closely with the university and trains students from their first year or second year so they are readily employable on graduation.

Nguyen Minh Khoi, the DKT Technology Company’s software development manager, found his university education at the Ha Noi University of Technology, was too theoretical.

"Our higher education should be revamped to avoid an obvious increase in unemployment among IT students," Khoi said.

In an effort to curb the problems, the Government recently approved a co-operative plan between the ministries of Information and Telecommunications and Education and Training to develop a skilled labour force for the ICT industry. The VND900 billion (US$50.6 million) plan, which runs until 2015 and may be extended to 2020, aims to take a practical approach to the long-term obstacles facing the industry, including technical education.

Under the plan, 30 per cent of the students majoring in IT and electronics and telecommunications will be to international standards by 2015.

All vocational-school students will get a basic knowledge of IT applications. IT introductory courses will be added to all high-school curricula and 80 per cent of secondary schools.

The plan puts a strong focus on staff training with a target of having 90 per cent of college lecturers as postgraduates and 30 per cent PhD holders.

Advanced training

Senior State officers working at ministry, provincial and district levels will have to attend advanced training IT programmes.

By 2015, all lecturers, vocational instructors, teachers and college students are supposed to have access to a PC.

Nguyen Minh Loc, a young lecturer at the Computer Science Department of the Ha Noi University of Mining and Geology, considered the timeline for equipping all students with PCs as unreachable.

"My students, despite being IT engineers, have to write coding programmes on paper because we have only six computer laboratories for the 22,000 students. There are only seven years to go, so the plan is rather overambitious," Loc said.

Quach Tuan Ngoc, the director of the Ministry of Education and Training’s Centre of Technology Education, said the plan was only an instructive outline.

"The plan was built based on annual reports from provincial and city-level departments. Detailed targets will be specifically tailored to each university, office or training centres," said Ngoc.

The Ha Noi People’s Committee is the first to launch the plan. On Tuesday, it approved a VND36.6 billion ($2million) budget to supply high-tech equipment and improve the skills of workers in some local news organisations, the city’s Department of Information and Communications and Press Association.