However, in many places, there is still a paradox: Businesses find it difficult to recruit workers to meet requirements, while many people who have been trained cannot find jobs in their field. Some projects have to recruit people from other places or take more time to retrain; there are also young people who have to leave their hometowns because their place of residence does not have suitable jobs.
This paradox shows that the bottleneck is not only in the number of workers, but mainly in the lack of connection between training and development needs. In fact, many localities have clearly identified for themselves key economic sectors, from processing industry, high technology to marine economy, tourism and logistics.
However, the human resource preparation plan has not kept up with the development plan. There are seemingly simple questions such as how many workers each industry needs, at what level, what skills are needed and at what time have not been fully answered by localities.
Meanwhile, some training institutions still open majors and enroll students based more on available capacity than the actual needs of the market. Learners choose careers in a situation of lack of information, and only when they graduate do they discover that their expertise has few job opportunities or that the trained skills do not meet the requirements of businesses.
The consequence is that businesses lack people but workers still lack jobs. Businesses have to re-train, while workers accept to work in the wrong profession, have low incomes or continue to move to other places to seek opportunities. Social resources for training have therefore not been used effectively.
To overcome this situation, there are many things to do, of which the most important is that the human resource development plan must be built by localities simultaneously with economic planning and investment project lists. At the same time, it is necessary to build a human resource demand map for each region, each industry and each large project. This map must indicate recruitment needs, skill standards, expected income levels and the time of labor use.
More importantly, the link between schools and businesses must become a regular part of the training process. Businesses need to participate in building programs, creating practical conditions, ordering training and opening up job opportunities. Schools must update knowledge, technology and be responsible for the quality of outputs.
Connecting training with development needs is not a private matter of the education or labor sector. That is the common responsibility of the government, businesses and training institutions.
When these three subjects look at a real need together, learners have the opportunity to choose the right profession, businesses recruit the right people, and human resources truly become a driving force for development.
