Employers, job seekers turn to online recruitment, interview

Online recruitment interviews are being used by job exchanges

Labor recruitment needs often increase after the Tet holiday in the initial months of each year. However, the effect of the Covid-19 pandemic this year has not skipped over the labor market and job exchanges are shifting to online work rather than personal contacts.

Instead of preparing multiple sets of documents and bringing them directly to employers, now only a single set is uploaded online and the sender awaits a response to his or her application within one month.

Nguyen Van Thuong, a resident of Hanoi’s Hai Ba Trung District, recently experienced the online process. “I think online job interviews have many advantages over direct interviews, especially in the time of the pandemic, when crowds must be limited. Workers can also save travel time and enterprises are spared the time of organizing job interviews, but the two sides can still provide and obtain the necessary informations related to their employment and recruitment needs,” Thuong said.

Until recently, the format of online job interviews was not widely used in Vietnam, being perceived as an informal recruitment method that does not generate trust on the part of job seekers and employers.

In the past, online work and interviews was piloted in some local service centers on a small scale. However, because of the Covid-19 outbreak, the Ministry of Labor, Invalids and Social Affairs has directed job service centers across the country to suspend employment sessions and large-scale events to limit SARS-CoV-2 transmission.

At the beginning of 2020, the Hanoi Job Service Center temporarily stopped direct working sessions, switching instead to providing online job market information in order to support both workers and enterprises. According to Ta Van Thao, Director of the Hanoi Center for Employment Service, his agency has now started to schedule online job transactions from Monday to Friday during office hours.

In addition to its two main offices in Hanoi, the center also arranged over 13 satellite job exchanges to provide a synchronized online connection employees and employers throughout the city.