Companies in Vietnam hired 175,370 information technology workers this year, up 36.2% yearly, as the country’s tech sector continues to boom with increased investment. According to the Vietnam IT Market Report 2022, recruitment demand for IT staff is expected to exceed 229,000 by 2023 and 290,000 by 2024.

Employers seek candidates with the right combination of hard and soft skills to add value to their organization. While hard skills focus on what you can do, soft skills focus on how you do it. Soft skills are often the key differentiator between top talent.

In this blog, we will discuss soft skills that impress employers looking for tech talent.

IT industry holds huge recruitment demand

According to the report, 55% of the 2,500 employers polled said they had hired more developers than in previous years. Six out of ten (64%) plan to hire more IT staff this year.

According to TopDev, it takes an average of 51 days to fill a position in Vietnam’s tech industry due to the high demand for recruitment and a shortage of suitable candidates.

One of the reasons for the increase in demand is that Vietnam has attracted enough attention from IT companies from other countries, and they are coming in to hire or build their product development teams.

What is the key differentiator between top talents that employers are looking for?

1. Foreign Languages Preference

According to the EF Education First English Proficiency Index, Vietnamese developers rank 13th in Asia and 65th globally. The requirement for English skills among software developers in Vietnam is shifting from “nice-to-have” to “must-have,” necessitating more serious practice of English skills.

For their tech jobs, most employers (more than 80%) require developers to have at least a basic and limited working level. The ratio of professionals working in English is 12.3%, mostly from foreign companies in Vietnam, with both management and customers who frequently use English. Aside from English, Japanese and Korean have recently been two popular foreign language requirements in job descriptions. The hiring pattern appears to be very different from the English-required side. Most Japanese and Korean employers who hire developers for whom a foreign language is required require a Professional working level. They rarely accept Basic or Limited working levels, owing to cultural and communication differences, in which the Basic level may trigger some inappropriate situations. The same requirements apply to other foreign languages, such as French, Chinese, and Russian…

2. Softskill /Interpersonal

Soft skills have become an important criterion in the process of HR/ recruiters evaluating IT candidates, in addition to technical skills. Following the pandemic, the list has shifted dramatically: the top three important soft skills for developers are communication, collaboration/teamwork ability, and a growth mindset.

3. Most preferable nice-to-have skills

To be successful, software engineers must be highly skilled in technology, coding, program development, and collaborative problem-solving. Aside from the required skills, the most impressive skills for candidates are the ability to write clean code, search efficiently, and troubleshoot quickly.