Vietnam · Hiring · Leadership
Hiring in Vietnam: why we stopped screening for English and CVs
We have hired dozens of people in Vietnam over five years, for a Finnish education company run from Ho Chi Minh City. Two things predicted almost nothing about who would be good: English fluency and the CV. Here is what we hire for instead, and why.
Short answer
- Our customers are Vietnamese parents. The job is to reassure them, in Vietnamese, not to impress a foreign founder in English. So we stopped using English fluency as the filter.
- The CV was almost useless every single time. Our best hire had modest English and a CV I would have skipped in a stack. Another colleague who started with very little English now runs a critical part of our operations.
- We hire for four things: staying calm with anxious parents, asking questions about the actual work, knowing the local context, and being coachable.
- Above all, people who genuinely care about education. We can teach Finnish education. We can't teach someone to care.
Why isn't English fluency the right filter in Vietnam?
Because it measures the wrong thing for most of our roles. When a foreign company hires in Vietnam, fluent English is the easiest signal to notice: it makes the interview comfortable for the founder. But our customers are Vietnamese parents deciding whether to send their child to study on the other side of the world. They need someone who understands their worries and can answer them in their own language.
So the question is not "can this person talk to me?" It is "can this person talk to our customers?" If a role spends its days with foreign partners, test English. If it spends them with Vietnamese families, English is a bonus, not the bar.
Why did CVs fail us?
A CV tells you where someone has been. It does not tell you how they behave when a worried mother calls for the third time in a week, or whether they will ask the question nobody else thought of. In five years of hiring in Vietnam, the CV has been almost useless every single time.
The best hire we ever made had modest English and a CV I would have skipped in a stack. Another colleague spoke very little English when they joined, and now runs a critical part of our operations.
What do we hire for instead?
- Calm with anxious parents. Our customers are making one of the biggest decisions of their family's life. The people who do well with us lower the temperature in the room instead of raising it.
- Questions about the actual work. The candidates who turn out best ask what the job really involves, day to day. Curiosity about the work beats a polished answer about yourself.
- Local context. Knowing how families decide, who else is in the conversation and what reassures them here is knowledge a foreign founder cannot teach.
- Coachable. Everything about our product can be taught: the Finnish school system, the process, the paperwork. Only people willing to learn can be taught it.
We can teach Finnish education. We can't teach someone to care.
How can you look for these in an interview?
None of the four shows up on paper, so give people a way to show them.
- Calm: play the customer. Ask the candidate to answer a worried parent's question and watch what they do with the worry, not just the facts.
- Curiosity: leave room for their questions, and notice whether they ask about the work itself or only about the package.
- Local context: ask how they would explain your offer to their own family, and what that family would ask back.
- Coachable: give one piece of feedback during the interview and see whether the next answer uses it.
What changes when you lead a team in a language you don't speak well?
I run a company in a country whose language I don't speak well. I thought that would hold me back. I now think it made me a better leader.
When you miss part of every conversation, you learn to read behaviour and how decisions actually get made. You get comfortable letting your team decide things you are not qualified to decide. And your own instructions get clearer, because they have to. I'm not the expert in the room in Ho Chi Minh City, and the team is better for it. More on running a company here is in doing business in Vietnam as a foreigner.
What about contracts and work permits?
This post is about who to hire, not the paperwork. Employment contracts, work permits, social insurance and tax in Vietnam follow Vietnamese law and change often, so use a local lawyer or payroll provider for those.
Questions
Do you need to speak Vietnamese to hire and lead a team in Vietnam?
No, but you need people who do, and you have to let them decide what they know better than you. I don't speak Vietnamese well. My team does, and I let them lead where they know more.
Is English ever the right hiring filter in Vietnam?
For roles that work with foreign partners or customers every day, test it. For roles that serve Vietnamese customers, it is a bonus. Hire for the customer the person will actually talk to.
What did your best hire have in common with the others who succeeded?
They cared about the families they served, stayed calm under pressure, asked about the real work and kept learning. None of that was visible on their CV.
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