UK trained Vietnamese professionals may be one of the solutions to help Vietnam achieve the region's top growth rate in coming years. — File Photo

HA NOI — To achieve the region's economic growth of more than 6 per cent in 2016, one of the key requirements for Viet Nam is a quality workforce.

To that end, motivating and providing opportunities for overseas students to return and work in their home country is vital, which is among the strong commitments of the Institute of Chartered Accountants in England and Wales (ICAEW).

As the local labour market is in a state of low quality but redundant quantity, employers are looking to ‘hunt down' talents from among overseas students. While this has consistently been considered as a highly potential quality source for manpower, luring these ‘talents' home seems a daunting task.

In fact, despite having the advantages of learning from one of the most advanced educational systems in the world - acquiring essential life and job skills, many overseas students find it hard to land a good job when they return home.

Nguyen Ngoc Anh, Chairman of the Vietnamese Professionals in the UK Association (VietPro), shared his experience, "Most VietPro members want to return and work in Viet Nam in the future, but exactly when will depend on various factors."

"First will be the opportunities to operate in a professional environment, second, comes compensation, and third are the chances for career development and promotion in Viet Nam as a developing country, compared to advanced countries.

Dang Mai Trang, head representative of ICAEW in Viet Nam, said, "There has been some information gap that leads to low confidence and confusion, sometimes even difficulty to reintegrate when these students come back home."

Nguyen Thi Van Anh, Managing Director, Navigos Search Vietnam – one of the eight ICAEW's partners in the campaign, said, "Personally, I think that these meaningful activities provide the young practitioner community in the UK with a wide range of knowledge on what is going on back home."

Tran Thuy Trang of Deloitte Vietnam, also spoke highly about the efforts.

"I believe through these creative and professional events in London, those young talents who want to return and contribute to their homeland's economic development have been aware what opportunities are opening up in a rising country, what they should take with them when they are back to be successful."