“Automation makes an amount of jobs disappeared. This requires the labour force to acquire new skills”.

Stated Mr. Ousmane Diagana – the Vice President of World Bank Group Human Resources (WB) during the talk on "Education, Technology, and the Future of Work" at Hanoi University of Science and Technology (HUST) this morning (March 22^nd, 2019).

The “higher skills” that employees should have, according to WB Vice Presisdent, are thinking skill, social skill, behavior skill and change-adaptation skill.

“Even someone can stay with one job for life, the special skills for a particular job have a rather short cycle. Thus, in the future, employers shall set priority to mentioned skills, especially social and change-adaptation skills. Besides, skills that related to technology and administration are critical in Industry 4.0 as well”, said Mr. Diagana. He also thought that Vietnamese education was already focusing into some of those skills.

On replying one question from the student of “essential skills to be acquired during university time that we can participate directly into labour market effectively”, Mr. Diagana believed schools these days have combined many different subjects that related to technical understanding and soft skills. This will assist students to have good preparation before joining the market in the future.

However, students too need to learn more about the way of connecting with outside world (ex.: companies, enterprises, etc.) and the sooner they participate into the market the better.

Another example for the students learning about adaptation is in multinational companies, their staff can come from different cultural backgrounds.

Mr. Ousmane Diagana pressed, employees must be ready to work with colleagues from other nations and more extreme competitiveness. Hence, skill for adaptation and strong sustainability are highly needed

Regarding Mr. Ousmane Dione – Country Director of World Bank Vietnam, while previous generations had to search books for answers, the youth now can “Google them within minutes”. That is the digital life.

He stated: “Only 8% of Vietnamese labour force are ready for Industry 4.0’s requirements. So students need to update their knowledge continuously and quickly adapt to new environments”.