In 2017, on the 1 100 000 graduated students of Vietnam, 200 000 did not find a job. This is a surprisingly high figure in many aspects : the economy of the country is developing (+7% growth), the education system is reputed and qualified in technology, the exchange in labor force in the ASEAN region is increasing, foreign companies invest in the country and many choose Vietnam for new offices and branch. Then, why still many of our students are not able to demonstrate their value on the job market, despite the quality of their hard-skills education ? Why don’t they fit in all the requirements of nowadays’ companies ?

Our youth is indeed full of hard-skills and reputable hard-workers. However, there is still a gap between their competencies and the companies’ needs in human ressources. This shift in the trends can be explained by the high value of human intelligence for responsibility jobs (robotization and automation of low-intellectual-intensity jobs) but also by the recent opening of the Vietnamese economy: companies need people that are able to work in an international environment with high knowledge of the local environment. More generally, the global evolution of work tends to focus on people’s ability to work together and to figure out brand new challenges, in respect with the companies’ values and objectives.

These changes demand an adaptation in the way we educate our youth. MIS wants to be an actor of this change and help the students to acquire all the tools they need. On this program, we focus on soft-skills development and self-confidence development. It is about learning how to adapt and perform thanks to collaboration - and being ready to behave professionally in difficult situation.

This soft-skills program will also give them the tools to perform better on different other programs, such as EPICS (Engineering Projects for Innovation in Community Services - lead by ASU in VN) and CAPSTONE (project-based-learning program for graduation thesis writing and defense) and other programs still under development (IProjects).

More than a course, this project represents the opportunity to get in the professional world and learn about project management. It helps students tp affirm an open-mind and working qualities that complete their academic knowledge. It will give them the network and the opportunity to meet with private actors and show them their competencies. The methods we pivot on are originated from ASU's EPICS-program, added with other human-centered-design methods such as the Design Thinking, and driven to meet the culture and context of central Vietnam.

Program ambition: build an open program where students will enroll in order to increase their soft-skills and get a method to generate creative solutions to issues they will met. Those projects main to improve:

- the collaborative skills of students in multi-disciplinary field: we want all teams to have different major represented. We also want students to be able to work peacefully together, even when mixing age (we recruit from 17)

- project management skills: develop a project whiten allotted time and ressources,

- ability to evolve in-between different culture and realities: work with professional, students, entrepreneurs, etc.

- making an idea clear and human-oriented: understand what is an user and why getting a human-oriented-solution is a powerful sink.

- oral and presentation skills: get used to public speaking to be more confident!

- public/private sector collaboration: networking events and possibility to meet big companies,

- design process: what is a process, what is it for and why is it useful?

- prototyping and fabrication: understand and experience the power of prototyping.

- collaboration with the actors of innovation in DaNang.