In this episode (FN.008): The discussion about Vietnamworks, the longest-running and largest recruitment company in Vietnam.
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Below is a transcript of the episode, edited for readability.
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Granger: Good morning and welcome to Lotus Talks! This is Granger Whitelaw and Cameron Lynch. The month is going fast. It’s been a big week here The Lotus. We launched a new edition of our magazine with Ha Anh Vu, the supermodel.
Cameron: Yeah, that’s great. Everybody should check it out.
Granger: She is a beautiful lady. She is dynamic as they come. I am here to tell you that my time interviewing her was amazing. You are enthralled by not her beauty, but her mind, the way she thinks, the way she talks, her passion for this country… She is truly an intellectual, someone who seeks information to continually grow. From seeing her, you wouldn’t think you would sit down and have an intellectual conversation. The article was called “Is Perception Everything?”.
Cameron: Basically, don’t judge a book by its cover.
Granger: Exactly. Well, earlier this week, we were talking about recruiting in Vietnam as well as the issues around recruiting, hiring good people and qualifying them. And today, we’re going to profile what we believe is the leading company for recruiting online – Vietnamworks.
Overview of Vietnamworks
Granger: Vietnamworks is the longest-running and largest recruitment company in Vietnam. It was established back in 2002, as a part of Navigo Group. It was acquired in 2014 by En-Japan and is now continuing to grow. It has over 600 employees, 6 million monthly visitors and they provide jobs for about 3 million people a year. Pretty amazing! I think they have about 13,000 companies on their platform. Certainly, we are one of them. We recruit from Vietnamworks.
Cameron: Yeah. We actually had a lot of applications from three job postings. It’s quite a good method.
Granger: There are others out there, right? Careerbuilder is here…
Cameron: There are tons of them now. There are also ones for freelance specifically. Vlance is another one that only deals with freelance work. There are lots of options when it comes to trying to find good staff.
Granger: But certainly, Vietnamworks is the leader in the market. We want to talk about that today because for our listeners out there who are always thinking about how to improve their business, we think this is a good solution. They do have some consulting services as well. And if you are looking to recruit, take these things in mind.
What is the process of recruiting with Vietnamworks?
Granger: Cameron, tell us about how we went through the process of hiring on Vietnamworks. What is it really like in action?
Cameron: For the most part, when I went through the process, it was my first time ever using it, and we had to register the company, we had to fill out all the job descriptions. For a startup or a brand new company, you were pretty much making all the processes, you’re making all the descriptions of the tasks. That’s a fun little process in and of itself.
Granger: Trying to figure out how to write job descriptions.
Cameron: Exactly. But after that, it’s pretty simple. You start a new template, you get it going, you fill in all the worlds, you can choose whether or not to disclose a salary…
Granger: You pick a template on the site?
Cameron: No, it’s like fill in the form, so you fill in a form and then you send it off. You have to buy packages. So there are multiple packages that you can purchase and basically, it’s like a search engine.
Granger: Let’s just go back one step. So, to use the site, can you upload a JD instead of filling out the form?
Cameron: Generally, you fill in the form with the JD. You just cut and paste. It’s pretty easy. You have to do job tags after that too.
Granger: Are tags important?
Cameron: It’s a search engine. So, you have to have ways to get higher in search.
Granger: So, using the right tags for the job description is equally as important as the headline, right? Because it is a search engine inside of a website.
Cameron: The headline is normally just the title. So, for example, The Vietnam Group – Marketing Manager; The Vietnam Group – Graphic Designer… So, that works really well. From three job postings, we had over 300 applicants. There’s no shortage of people applying. And then once you get applications you can confirm or reject.
Granger: Inside the site, you can say: Here’s an application; I’ve read it; I have made a phone call and contacted them; I have scheduled an interview; We’ve accepted or declined… Do you have those different things that you can do?
Cameron: You can do pretty much all of that.
Granger: So it helps you categorize where you are on the process. That helps you with your workflow while you’re going through the recruiting process.
Cameron: The job searchers can also add the resumes or they can fill in the template too. This is what I am, this is my history,… And they can be in English or Vietnamese. So, it just automatically gets pushed out to the company once they apply.
Granger: So you can get it in a unified manner, which is nice too.
Cameron: And you can have the resume during the physical interaction. Online, it’s just pretty simple. When you’re hiring an intern role, which in Vietnamworks does as well, you get a lot of applications. So you have to go fast. And I was the only guy during all that process. It was definitely a lot of applications. So in general,
Granger: I think a lot of this conversation we’re having right now is the platform makes your life as easy as it can in this process. And that’s why we like Vietnamworks. When you do categorize, you have a call, you’ve done those things, then it will put them into a folder. Then you can come to your boss or whoever is and say: Hey, these are the candidates that I think we should actually meet.
Cameron: You can also do that together. You and I, because we’re literally right next to each other, doing the whole process. So I was like: Check out this resume! Check out this resume! It’s kinda like as soon as I get a resume, I would send it off and be like Okay, let’s schedule an interview…
Vietnamworks has 6 million monthly visitors and they provide jobs for about 3 million people a year.
What are the problems you might have using Vietnamworks?
Cameron: One thing that was interesting was a lot of people didn’t show up.
Granger: Yeah. What about that? Why is that?
Cameron: I don’t know. Maybe it’s the ease of sending an application so that you can’t really get how interested a party would be in the job. It’s a clickable button, and turn off your computer. I applied for this job and 40 others. It sounded good last night…
Granger: It didn’t surprise me that when you had people actually send the resumes and then you followed up with an email, then you scheduled the meeting, a number of people didn’t come. And actually I remember that happening. And there was a time when that happened quite a bit. And then there were times when everybody came. So I don’t know if it was just a fluke or maybe because it was a brand new account on the site. As we’ve talked about, if you’re from Coca Cola or UPS or FPT or some well-known company, the applicants have more knowledge and more comfort than a startup. That might have something to do with it.
Cameron: It definitely was a fun process in that regard. But, it worked out. But using the platform, I also received a lot of spam. So for example, I received one application 15 times from the same person.
Granger: Are you sure that wasn’t just the person on repeat or somebody that really wanted the job? Did we interview that person?
Cameron: We did not because we were specifically looking for English speaking individuals and she couldn’t speak English.
Granger: One of the big things that I would say is the better you write the job description, the more descriptive you are, the more detailed you can be on the actual job roles and then tagging in properly, that’s going to find you better-qualified candidates and filter out a lot of people who may not quite be the right people.
Why does Vietnamworks work better than the other platforms in Vietnam?
Cameron: The big question is why does Vietnamworks work better than LinkedIn job ads, Facebook job ads, or any of these other platforms? I feel like it is Vietnam-focused. There are 3 million users… That’s a really big pool to pull from. I think the actual users in Vietnam of LinkedIn are around 3 million.
Granger: Yeah. But I mean Linkedin is more executive oriented. It’s not for kids coming out of college or even middle managers. Maybe they’re looking at it, but everybody knows Vietnamworks, right? And you want a large pool. If you’re looking for an executive search, you can hire an executive search firm. And you can call The Vietnam group, we’ll help you find someone. That’s a much more specific type of job hunt. That’s not a broad-based recruiting, which is what we’re talking about. Vietnamworks is more focused on technology, the younger generation, not really manufacturing as much as F&B, consumer products, software, those kinds of companies as well. I see more of that. Quite a bit of sales, business development, lots of marketing.
Cameron: That’s probably why we received so many applications as well because we were looking for specific marketing people. I think it is a great job in Vietnam and it’s really growing.
Granger: The great thing about a growing economy is that you need to start talking about it. You have all these new businesses that you need to be able to talk about them. You need to be able to get your information out and that’s what marketing is all about. So, I’d like to say Vietnamworks is the best platform for mass appeal. I personally think Facebook is a great platform as you know. We’ve had great success with both, but Vietnamworks is still the leader here in Vietnam. And if you are out there looking to hire, we certainly recommend Vietnamworks as a place for you to post your job descriptions, use their filtering and find great qualified applicants because we have found some great employees there.
Cameron: Speaking of Facebook, I think next week, we’re talking about social media.
Granger: We are? All right, we hope you have a great weekend…Talk to you on Monday!
The Lotus Talks is produced by The Vietnam Group. This episode was produced by Granger Whitelaw, Cameron Lynch and Toan Tang.
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