HANOI (ILO News) – More than 400 young people and 100 parents from the rural suburbs of Hanoi participated in a city’s Youth Career Fair on 28 December in seeking for appropriate career orientation.

The event, organized by the International Labour Organization (ILO) at Hanoi Electrical Mechanics College in Mai Dich, was expected to change the attitudes of the rural youngsters and their parents towards their future careers.

“Not only universities lead to good careers,” the ILO Viet Nam Director Gyorgy Sziraczki, said. “Career choices should be made on the basis of the young people’s interest and aptitude and their parents should play the role of counselors, not decision-makers for them.”

Skills mismatch on Viet Nam’s youth labour markets has become a persistent trend whereas over-education and over-skilling coexist with under-education and under-skilling.

During the fair, the high-school and vocational college students and their parents learned about a diversity of careers and career paths to select appropriate learning and career choices.

The participants had a chance to talk to speakers who are successful in different careers about their career choice. A Q&A session also allowed them to share their concerns and have their questions answered in different areas of universities, vocational training and the labour market.

The activity was part of the ILO’s Rural Youth Employment Programme, which aims to introduce an integrated decent work-based methodology in rural youth entrepreneurship, basic career and vocational guidance in rural vocational training centres, and develop and ICT-based communication system related to the labour market for the young people in the countryside.