Recent years have seen an upward trend in the number of startup projects in dynamic Da Nang, and a joint great efforts made by the city authorities and the whole business community to fuel the growth of the burgeoning startup ecosystem. 

Representatives from a startup introducing its products at the International Startup Conference and Exhibition 2017 (SURF) (Photo: Khang Ninh)

However, amongst challenges facing startup developers is how to develop human recourses for their projects.

Ms Nguyen Van Anh, the manager of the ‘Homecares’ project, said, in the early days of operation, her company faced numerous difficulties, especially a shortage of human resources. 

She explained that many young people initially felt still reluctant to apply for job positions at

‘Homecares’ because this project was a just small-scale startup at that time encountering a shortage of capital and consumer markets.

‘Homecares’ connects doctors with their patients who want to have medical examinations and treatment in their own homes. 

The connection is available via telephones, the project’s website and its mobile application. 

The project aims to help patients gain easier access to high-quality healthcare services at displayed prices, and to allow doctors to increase their incomes as well.

In reality, the current obstacles in recruitment activities have become still a ‘headache’ for many freshly-established startups as many young people, especially graduates from tertiary establishments, have yet to gain a thorough grasp of special working environment and activities at such startups.

A representative from the “bTaskee” project said many university and college graduates have continuously preferred to look for career opportunities at prestigious, big corporations for the purpose of  long term employment stability, rather than at freshly-established startups. 

It is the fact that, developing start-ups is very tough as it can encounter many challenges and difficulties, and even repeated failures.

The project “bTaskee” offering the on-demand home cleaning maid service, which was launched at the start of 2016, also now finds it very difficult to recruit interns hailing from Da Nang. 

Staff members of the Ylinkee Company, one of the city’s startups

Mr Nguyen Van Chuong, the founder of the ‘inVietnam’ project, noted, many local startups are facing a shortage of qualified employees who are marketers, salespeople and technicians.  All of them are required to meet such much-have criteria as flexibility, creativity, strong passion and no fear of inevitable failures.

In her view of solutions to the above-mentioned matters, Ms Pham Thuy Lien, the Incubation Programme Manager at the Da Nang Entrepreneurship Support (DNES), suggested that startups should promote the publicity of their internal strengths and great development potentials in a bid to recruit skilled employees.

Importance should be attached to advertising favourable and dynamic working environment, a powerful engine of open innovation processes, and other related strengths. Such effective measures will help engaged employees feel a sense of attachment towards their organisations.

In particular, Ms Lien also noted that it is not a good idea for local startups to recruit human resources in the early days of their operation- the time they usually face some challenges relating to the shortage of capital, and new recruits might feel frustrated.