The Korea Chamber of Commerce & Industry will team up with top universities in Vietnam to recruit elite Asian engineering students to ease labor shortages at regional small and midsize companies.
KORCHAM said on the 26th that it signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on educational cooperation for training industrial technical personnel with Vietnam National University in Hanoi, Hanoi University of Science and Technology, Hanoi University of Industry, and Posts and Telecommunications Institute of Technology, Vietnam's most prestigious universities.
The agreement was made as part of the "overseas professional technical talent attraction project," through which KORCHAM will recruit bachelor's-level overseas technical talent starting this year to resolve technical workforce shortages at regional small and midsize companies.
The participating universities rank at the top domestically or are designated among the nation's five key base universities.
Under the MOU, each university will seek cooperation to strengthen industry-academia linkages, including ▲ selection and competency assessment of industrial technical personnel ▲ operation of local education programs ▲ development of curricula based on demand at domestic worksites, and plans to begin selecting talent and start training in May this year.
The overseas professional technical talent attraction project run by KORCHAM consists of an "integrated process of selection–education/verification–matching–post-management."
Existing overseas talent attraction projects have mainly proceeded in a supplier-centered manner, first selecting personnel locally and then linking them to corporations.
However, this project will be conducted in a demand-centered manner by first identifying actual hiring and job needs of regional small and midsize corporations through the nationwide chamber of commerce network, and then matching corporations with talent equipped with practical competencies through local training that reflects those needs.
In particular, KORCHAM plans to verify job competencies required by regional small and midsize companies, going beyond simple Korean-language ability.
Trainees will undergo a thorough evaluation to determine whether they can perform their duties without additional retraining when deployed to actual worksites. Overseas talent must complete job projects designed for close alignment with worksites to earn opportunities to be matched with domestic corporations.
In addition to Vietnam, KORCHAM is expanding cooperation with Indonesia's top universities, including Universitas Indonesia, Universitas Gadjah Mada, and Bandung Institute of Technology.
This year, it plans to recruit 200 people in Vietnam and Indonesia, provide intensive training starting in Jun., and bring them to Korea in the second half.
Lee Sang-bok, head of KORCHAM's Human Resources Development Division, said, "For regional small and midsize companies to maintain sustainable competitiveness, leveraging global professional technical talent is not a choice but a necessity," adding, "We expect this project to contribute not only to strengthening regional industrial competitiveness but also to balanced regional development and responses to local extinction."