Japan to Recruit 30,000 IT Engineers in Next 4 Years

Japan might need to recruit 30,000 foreign information technology (IT) engineers especially from India and Vietnam to work in the country in the next four years. Nguyen Doan Hung, chairman of the Vietnam - Japan IT Cooperation Club (VJC) made the statement at the Vietnam IT Day 2016 in Japan held by the Vietnam Software and IT Service Association (Vinasa), VJC and Japan Information Technology Service Industry Association (JISA) with the theme of “Vietnam - Japan IT Cooperation heading to TPP” in the end of February. A representative of FPT Software said that the company aimed to increase its staff working in Japan from 500 to 3,000 by 2020. The company also set goals to earn revenue of $500 million by 2020 from the Japanese market, accounting for 50% of its total revenue. FPT Software’s target for the market is to increase revenue by 40% and 60% in human resources this year, the representative said. Vietnamese enterprises have made efforts in seeking ways to co-operate with the Japanese as well as Vietnamese schools in order to meet the large demand. However, according to experts, Vietnamese IT companies face the challenge of insufficient human resources, especially skilled staff with good software skills and knowledge of foreign languages, mainly Japanese and English. IT experts said that to meet the requirement of the important market, Vietnamese firms should focus on their human resources, have close cooperation programs with training units and develop human resources both in quantity and in quality. At the conference, Vinasa shared information on the Vietnamese IT market as a fast-growing market with preferential policies from the government and a new vision considering IT as the most important driving force for the country’s socio-economic development. The software engineers will be playing an essential role in winning more orders from Japan as many Vietnamese engineers cannot speak Japanese. Vietnam has become an attractive investment destination for nearly 80 Japanese IT companies and Japan’s second largest outsourcing partner after China. Vietnam is listed in the top ten software exporting nations in the world and recently surpassed India in software exports to rank second in the Japanese market. (Vietnam News Mar 12)