Firms from Kanagawa Pref. hold job interviews in Vietnam

Detailed summary

Firms from Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture have held a round of job interviews at a university in Vietnam. This comes as foreign companies are increasingly turning to the country as a…

Firms from Japan's Kanagawa Prefecture have held a round of job interviews at a university in Vietnam. This comes as foreign companies are increasingly turning to the country as a solution for domestic labor shortages.

Prefectural officials and representatives from two firms, including a semiconductor-related company, visited the Hanoi University of Science and Technology on Thursday. They held interviews with four students who are searching for jobs in Japan.

One Vietnamese student said he hoped to use his skills to work at a Japanese company for a long time.

The prefecture helped organize the event as a way to support small- and medium-sized businesses as they look for highly skilled talent, such as engineers.

Wakisaka Michihiro, a Kanagawa prefectural official, said more than half of the small- and medium-sized companies in the prefecture cited labor shortages, especially in science and engineering, as a challenge. He added that the prefecture wanted to help them address the issue.

The Kanagawa government is opening an overseas office in Hanoi this month, together with a prefecture-affiliated organization. The race to secure workers from Vietnam is heating up, with South Korea, Taiwan and others also seeking to tap into the country's young labor force.

Opening of the article, excerpted from NHK World. To read the rest, open the article on the publisher's site.