1 CHAPTER I INTRODUCTION Human resources play an important role in the process of economic growth and are the lifeblood of an organization Today, in every organization personnel planning as an activity is necessary It is an important part of an organization and is a vital ingredient for the success of the organization in the long run There are certain ways that are to be followed by every organization, which ensures that it has right number and kind of people, at the right place and right time, so that organization can achieve its planned objective For every organization, it is important to have the right person for the right job In having shortage of skills and the use of new technology are putting considerable pressure on how employers recruit a good staff, recruitment will play a vital role The effective recruitment and selection of employees is the fundamental human resource management activity that (if it is well managed) can have a significant impact on organizational performance as well as lead to a more positive organizational image (Pilbeam and Corbridge, 2006) Recruitment is one of the most important roles of the human resource professionals The performance quality of an organization depends on the effectiveness of its recruitment function Organizations have to develop and follow recruitment strategies to hire the best talent for their organization and utilize their resources optimally A successful recruitment strategy should be well planned and implemented as well to attract more and more talented individuals in the organization “Right person for the right job” is the basic principle of recruitment and selection Every organization has to give attention to the selection of its manpower, especially the high-quality manpower The operative manpower is important and essential for the orderly operation of the organizations Every organization needs manpower for carrying different activities smoothly and efficiently, hence, recruitment and selection of suitable candidates is essential Human resource management in an organization will not be possible if they cannot select a suitable person to work in the organization The problem of retention begins with recruitment In most of the organizations, the recruitment function operates independently of the retention department Indeed, the human resource has a direct relationship between them and the increase of the number of employees Therefore, every organization’s hiring process affects the quality of employee and instrumental in devising suitable strategies In recruitment, human resource department comes across a wide range of people who are different in terms of their mind, their attitudes, beliefs, and all other factors It becomes difficult to judge what motivates whom Incentives may motivate a certain person, but may be equally unimportant to others The money, it has been observed is the prime motivator in most of the cases but only to a certain extent and may fail afterwards The talented managers not deal with all this They not have strategies are almost having a universal appeal or in other words, they have not designed programs that motivate all Recruitment is the input of the human resources management process and it affects the quality of human resources in organizations However, after recruiting, retaining the employees is difficult Organizational problems such as training time and investment, losing knowledge and looking for the candidates, and failing to retain a key employee, are all costly Various assessments suggest that losing a middle manager costs an organization up to 100 percent of his salary The loss of a senior executive is even more costly A recent study shows that 85% of human resource executives said that the greatest challenge in managing the workforce is their organization has the inability to recruit and retain good employees and managers (Greg Smith, 2008) Employers tend to face major challenges when they are aware of the increasing difficulty of finding skilled people, a younger workforce with different attitudes about work, and a growing population of older workers heading toward retirement Therefore, employee retention, especially the key employees, is an important challenge in organizations today Background of the Study In Vietnam, the globalization and the integration process recently have created an increase in different types of businesses and the job market has been established quickly The movement of human resources between different organizations has an impact in the job market and it may lead to “brain drain” problem as their competent employees leave This is not only happening in Vietnam, but also in the global arena as the state of the job market has raised the stakes in the war for talent (Crump, 2008) Also, an unemployment rate of just 6% makes it easy for your top performers to find another job if they are unhappy working for you- and hard for you to replace them In the position of an organization’s leader, there are many times you have to ask yourself: How to recruit a good employee? In fact, recruiting good employees is very difficult, but retaining them is doubly difficult They're leaving after training or having steady experience makes organization’s leaders having a headache Many people believe that the only employees’ retention strategy is showing their rights and responsibilities in the labor contract That is not the only way Performance’s effect, the motivation to implement contract’s commitment and the determination to fulfill the employee's duties depends on their working environment In fact, the world economy is at the most exciting stage of globalization Organizations must complete in many aspects, especially human resources More than ever, human resource - a key factor for the success or failure of the organizations becomes a scarce and expensive resource In Vietnam, along with the process of international integration is the emergence of many corporations and foreign organizations This makes the labor market boom, while the risk of lacking human resources is very high because there are many opportunities for them An organization can become successful not only by attracting many talented employees, but also knowing how to put the right people in the right jobs and have strategies to retain them Thus, attracting talented employees is always some of the primary goals of the human resources management in all the organizations If the organizations not know how to retain talented employees, they will transfer to the competitors and the organizations have to look for the new supplementary human resource These will make them to spend more and consume a lot of their time In the Northern Midlands and Mountains of Vietnam, consisting of 15 provinces with a very special geographic location and have the significant roles in economic, political, cultural and social and security and defense This region has the highest terrain, the most divided and the most dangerous in Vietnam and the largest territory of Vietnam The total area of this region is 100.965 km2, accounting for 28.8% of the total natural area of the country The Northern Midlands and Mountains is a sparsely populated area Average population density in mountainous areas is 116persons/km2 This is a region with many ethnic minorities, 30/53 minorities (56.6% of ethnic groups in Vietnam) Economic growth of this region is still slow and there is a great disparity in the level of socio-economic development between midland and mountainous areas In the region, there are seven universities, including one regional university - Thai Nguyen university, four universities under the management of the ministries (Quang Ninh University of Industry; Viet Tri University of Industry; Tay Bac University; Bac Giang Agriculture and Forestry University) and two local universities under the management of the provincial authorities are Hung Vuong University (Phu Tho province) and Tan Trao University (Tuyen Quang province) Tan Trao University in Tuyen Quang Province was established under Decision No 1404 / QD-TTg dated 14 August 2013 of the Prime Minister, on the foundation of the Tuyen Quang College of Pedagogy Currently, the university has faculties and departments directly under the school, centers, and 11 function rooms Tan Trao University is a public, multilevel, and multidisciplinary university; a tertiary training, postgraduate, scientific research, application, and transfers technology center in the fields of education, economics, culture, science, and technology It plays a pivotal role in the system of professional training university in Tuyen Quang Province The average scale of the university is about 6000 students per year The total number of lecturers is 240, wherein there are associate professor, 22 doctors, 163 masters degree holder, and 54 bachelors degree holder, in which 140 are women and 100 are men, with 38 main trainers, and 212 trainers Hung Vuong University in Phu Tho province, on the other hand, was established in 2003 on the foundation of the Phu Tho College of Pedagogy The mission of the university is to develop and train quality human resources for Phu Tho province and other neighboring provinces Its goal is to become an interdisciplinary and multi-level center for training high-quality human resources It also aimed to be a center for scientific and technology research for the socio-economic development of the province and the mountainous region in the north In 2003, Hung Vuong University has a total of 180 employees, in which there are 136 lecturers, associate professor, doctorate degree holder, and fellow and more than 20 masters degree holder According to the project of building and development lecturers of Hung Vuong University from 2005 – 2010, it plans to train lecturers to obtain a doctorate and master’s degree, with the vision 2030 In 2015, 60% of teachers have a master's degree, and 11% have doctorate degree The plan in 2020 for the 940 employees is 70% of them will have a master’s degree, 15% have PhD to ensure that in 2030, 100% of the lecturers meet the standard qualifications, which is 70% masters, and 30% PhD In 2017, Hung Vuong University has a total of over 590 employees, of which there are 374 lecturers, associate professors, 52 doctorate degree holder, 213 master’s degree holder, 11 engineers and 89 teachers, who are taking PhD and Master’s degree courses In the 21st century, education and training in general and tertiary education, in particular, are facing many challenges of the intellectual economy, globalization, revolutionary modern science and technology, and harsh competition for high-quality human resources Therefore, tertiary education in Vietnam nowadays plays an important role The Resolution No:14/2005/NQ-CP confirms that reform of higher education is the duty of the entire people under the leadership of the Party and the State's management The State increases investment in higher education, and to promote socialization, creating favorable conditions in policies for organizations, individuals and the whole society to participate in the development of higher education During the last few years, higher education in Vietnam has been developing in terms of both quantity and training scale Since 1997, in order to meet the demands of human resources for the localities, the education system in Vietnam has established the universities under the management of the provincial authorities, besides the national universities, regional universities, and the universities under the management of the ministries In the process of formation and development, besides the advantages, provincial universities are facing many challenges, especially in high-quality employee recruitment and retention The provincial universities' goal is to become the center for training high-quality human resources and also be the center for scientific research and technology for the socio-economic development of the provinces and the mountainous region in the north To strengthen and supplement the staff, the provincial universities became interested in proposing many policies to recruit and attract talented employees (such as professors, associate professors, doctorate degree and master’s degree holder; graduates with excellent and good degree, or employees transfer from other organizations and from the variety of sources) by improving economy, housing, working conditions, and learning conditions Like the other mountainous provinces of Vietnam, the northern midland and mountainous provinces are still the poor provinces There are a lot of difficulties in comparison with the big cities and other delta provinces in terms of socioeconomic conditions The investment in education is limited and in general, the living standard of local people is still low Hence, it is so hard to keep and attract talented individuals from other provinces, as well as in local places to work permanently In fact, the universities have created advantage conditions to motivate employees, both teaching, and non-teaching, for higher educational training such as master’s and doctorate degrees in Vietnam and abroad Facilities such as house for staff, classrooms were upgraded; lounge and quarters were also provided with modern equipment and working conditions were improved However, it seemed that the effort to keep them working in the universities to serve as the stable workforce is not quite effective Now, the provincial universities are facing the situation of "brain - drain" More than ten years (from 2003 to 2016), each year Hung Vuong University appoints an average of - 10 people to take doctorate degree courses and 10 - 15 people to take master ‘s degree courses However, most of them want to move to another organization after graduating for various reasons According to an annual summary report from the Human Resource Department in the last years (since 2014 to 2016), Hung Vuong University has more than 25 people, who transfers to other organization, in which have doctorate degree, 15 have master’s degree and with bachelors degree (in which, in 2014, there were with doctorate degree, with master’s degree; in 2015, there were with doctorate degree, with master’s degree and with bachelor’s degree; and in 2016 there were, with doctorate degree, with master’s degree and with bachelor’s degree) Another learning institution, Tan Trao University experienced the loss of 12 employees (3 with doctorate degree and with master’ degrees) According to the statistics from the Human Resource Department of the universities and preliminary investigations through direct interviews with employees, they discovered that the causes of this situation may be the universities’ recruitment policies; inability to recruit the right people in the right jobs and positions, and many employees and lecturers recruited not have appropriate specialization Besides that, about 65% of the staff are young (under 35 years old), they are qualified, trained, and have desire and ambition, so they want experience more and look for new opportunities Also, "brain drain" at the provincial universities may be a result of poor working condition, lack of appreciation, lack of opportunity for advancement, inadequate compensation, shifts in career and family circumstances 10 In the light of this, the researcher believed that an assessment and evaluation of recruitment and retention practices at the provincial universities in the northern midland and mountainous provinces should be made to find out solutions to improve the recruitment and retention practice, as well as to attract and retain talented employees Therefore, the researcher embarked on this dissertation entitled: “Recruitment and Retention Practices of the Provincial Universities in the Northern Midland and Mountainous Region of Vietnam” Objectives of the Study The study intended to analyze and improve the employee recruitment and retention practices of the provincial universities in the northern midland and mountainous region of Vietnam Specifically, it focused on the following objectives: To determine the profile of the respondents in terms of the following: 1.1 Age 1.2 Sex 1.3 Highest educational attainment 1.4 Length of work experience To determine the recruitment practices of the provincial universities in terms of the following: 2.1 Job analysis 2.2 Sourcing ... problems of scale - quality; Training - use; School capacity - social needs; Knowledge – skills; Autonomy; and Social responsibility Provincial universities are the culture-social centers of... situation of "brain - drain" More than ten years (from 2003 to 2016), each year Hung Vuong University appoints an average of - 10 people to take doctorate degree courses and 10 - 15 people to take... is a multi-level, multidisciplinary educational institution, training mainly according to applied occupational oriented, in order to meet on-site human resource needs, serving the socio-economic