Listen and subscribe to “Vietnam Innovators” in English: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube.
Listen and subscribe to “Vietnam Innovators” in Vietnamese: Apple Podcasts | Spotify | Google Podcasts | YouTube.
Glints, a career discovery platform headquartered in Singapore, built its office and team in Saigon in the second half of 2019, looking at Vietnam’s impressive and young workforce. A few months later, COVID-19 hit the world, disrupting industries and employment. While many recruitment agencies felt the harsh impact of the pandemic, Glints Vietnam, albeit new, even became the strongest and fastest-growing business unit of Glints.
“What’s very unique about Vietnam is the way the government handled COVID-19, that we didn’t even feel COVID-19 actually happened. Our team continued to roll forward,” Bryan Lee, country manager at Glints Vietnam, told Hao Tran.
Beyond the impressive COVID-19 management, Bryan also pointed out Vietnam’s fast economic and digital transformation pace, as well as the growing talent pool. All signs, he said, point to the country being a standout in the years to come. “There’s no slowing down here.”
Full-stack talent platform
What’s a week like in the life of a recruiter? Interviewing one to 200 candidates, working with 10 active clients, neverending interactions with different people, Bryan said. Recruitment is a game of speed — how big your database is, how engaged you are with your users, how strong your relationship is with clients and how fast you can simplify the entire process of talent sourcing. Thanks to AI, data science and automation tools, matching talents and companies have become easier.
But Glints is not just a recruitment company, Bryan clarified. It’s not just an agency where professionals and new graduates search for job opportunities or a website where people visit only for career discovery.
By the end of this year or early 2022, Glints is launching its Community and Expert Class platforms, which will help people understand the kind of organizations they aim to work for and the skill sets they need to accelerate their careers.
The Community is a career forum, where professionals and industry newbies share their insights on different fields, discuss skills needed for certain jobs or what companies best match their interest. The Expert Class, meanwhile, will feature online live lessons with industry experts and “learners” for career building and tutorials.
Series C funding
Just recently, Glints got $22.5 million in Series C funding led by Japanese human resources management firm PERSOL Holdings. The largest funding round to date for a talent platform in Southeast Asia, the new capital will help the startup to further expand its product and engineering teams across its offices in Singapore, Indonesia, Taiwan and Vietnam.
As country manager, Bryan will oversee the growth of Vietnam team, from 50 staff at present to 20-30 more by the end of 2021, and the formation of a solid team in Hanoi.
“The new funding will give us more capital to pursue our mission: to build a full-stack talent platform, and to empower talents in Southeast Asia.
It will also give Glints the opportunity to deepen its footprints in the markets they serve, and to double down on their existing products and services and many others in the pipeline.