HCM City (VNA) - Many banks throughout the country need torecruit more employees for their newly opened branches this year or to replacestaff members who quit their jobs before the Lunar New Year (Tet) holiday.

On the website of Nam A Bank, for instance, the bank is seeking to recruit1,000 employees for many different positions, such as directors, deputydirectors, managers and others because it wants to expand its operations thisyear and next.

It also provides many internship programmes for students of majors includingeconomics, finance, and business administration.

Nguyen Luong Hieu, head of the Nam A Bank’s Human Resources and TrainingDivision, said that the bank is focusing on recruiting more human resources forlending and telephone sales.

IT engineers also are needed for the bank’s digital banking this year, Hieusaid.

Others banks, including Indovina Bank Ltd and Tien Phong Commercial JointStock Bank, have published their recruitment needs on an online recruitmentportal, VietnamWorks, with more than 680 jobs on March 2.

According to experts in the banking sector, its positive results last year andstrong forecast for this year have fostered the heavy recruitment.

VnEconomy cited a statistic of the State Bank of Vietnam released in thebeginning of this year showing that 25.3 percent of credit organisationsnationwide are facing a shortage of employees.

A bank’s employee in HCM City said that many of her colleagues have quit theirjobs because of heavy workloads and pressure to reach high sales targets.

They also thought that the industry had many legal risks.

More than 52 percent of these organisations plan to increase their staff in thefirst quarter and 68.7 percent will recruit more employees for the whole year,the SBV statistics say.

A banking workforce report on February 26 released by Navigos Group, arecruitment company in Vietnam, shows that 56 percent of 15 surveyed bankscould enhance their policies to attract employees although they already hadbasic and reasonable policies for employees.

According to the report, up to 89 percent of the surveyed banks have an averagesalary ranging from 10 million VND to 30 million VND (440-1,321 USD) per month.

Twenty six percent of employers said that uncompetitive wages and remunerationare the biggest recruitment obstacle.

Thirty seven percent of employers also said that in order to increase theefficiency of recruitment, banks should consider offering financial incentivesto attract candidates.

According to the survey, 62 percent of 237 candidates received a bonus of oneto three months of salary on average; 18 percent received 3 to 5 months ofsalary; 7 percent received 5 to 7 months of salary and 5 percent received over7 months of salary.

Moreover, the average annual salary increase of the surveyed candidates isquite high. Forty percent of them have an annual salary increase of over 10 percent.

According to the report, 50 percent of candidates said they would like to workat a foreign bank or branch of a foreign bank in Vietnam; 31 percent of themwant to work for joint stock commercial banks; 11 percent select state-ownedcommercial banks and 3 percent select joint venture commercial banks.

The candidates said that some main reasons why they want to work in foreignbanks including expecting to be treated fairly and work in a healthyenvironment; expecting high salaries and more promotion opportunities;expecting to use English and work with expat colleagues and managers andexpecting to have training opportunities.-VNA