Executive, professional and technical hiring for foreign-invested companies in Vietnam, from role scoping and salary benchmarking to the offer, the contract and the first day.
Part of Viettonkin's HR and People services
Newly licensed foreign-invested projects in Vietnam numbered 4,054 in 2025, with registered capital of USD 17.32 billion, up 20.1 percent in number but down 12.2 percent in value from 2024. Behind each of those projects is a first round of hiring, and for a foreign-invested company the most important local appointments are usually made before anyone inside the business knows the Vietnamese candidate market well enough to make them.
The market for senior, bilingual and technically specialised people is competitive and fragmented. Strong managers and specialists are rarely sitting on job boards waiting to be found, salary expectations differ sharply between Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the provinces, and a home country pay structure copied across without adjustment either loses the best candidates or overpays for the rest. The foreign employer is also competing with established local and multinational employers who already know what the role is worth.
Hiring is also where the Vietnamese employment compliance cycle starts. The Labour Code 2019 caps probation by the type of role, sets a floor for probationary pay, allows only two types of employment contract and treats any document that contains the substance of an employment relationship as a contract, whatever it is called. An offer letter drafted to home country conventions can therefore create obligations before the formal contract exists. We run recruitment with those rules built into each step rather than checked after the hire.
The difficulty is rarely finding applicants. It is finding the few people who combine the technical profile, the language and the experience of working inside a foreign-invested company, and then securing them on terms that hold.
For graduate and junior roles, posting a clear bilingual advertisement on the channels candidates actually use produces enough applications to screen. Management and specialist roles behave differently. The people who can run finance, operations or human resources for a foreign-invested company are usually employed, are approached regularly and move for a specific reason. Reaching them means direct outreach and referral, and it means being able to describe the role, the reporting line and the package in terms that make sense in Vietnam.
Compensation is where foreign employers most often misjudge the market. Regional salary surveys built on Singapore or Bangkok data do not translate cleanly, and the gap between the two largest cities and provincial locations can be wide for the same title. Allowances matter as much as base pay, because transport, telephone and meal allowances are part of how packages are compared locally, and each has its own treatment for income tax and insurance purposes. A package also has to sit at or above the regional minimum wage for the work location and fit the employer's own salary scale.
Timing adds pressure. A newly licensed company often needs a country manager, a finance lead and an office administrator at the same time, while the legal entity, the bank account and the payroll registrations are still being completed. We plan the hiring sequence around that setup so that nobody is offered a start date the entity cannot yet employ them on.
Foreign employers tend to treat these as contract questions for later. In Vietnam they arise at the offer stage, which is why we settle them before a candidate is approached.
Article 13 of the Labour Code 2019 treats a document with a different name as an employment contract if it contains the agreement on a paid job, the salary and management by one party. An offer letter that sets out the role, the pay and the reporting line can therefore carry contractual effect. We keep offers consistent with the contract that follows, so the two never say different things.
Only one probation period is allowed for a job, and none at all where the contract runs for less than one month. The ceiling depends on the role, from 180 days for an enterprise executive down to six working days for jobs without a qualification requirement. A probation clause copied from a home country template is frequently longer than Vietnamese law allows for the position.
Salary during probation is agreed between the parties but cannot be lower than 85 percent of the salary offered for the job. During probation either party may end the arrangement without notice or compensation, and at the end of it the employer has to tell the employee the result.
An employment contract is either indefinite or fixed term, and a fixed term cannot exceed 36 months. Seasonal contracts no longer exist as a separate type. The choice matters at offer stage because renewal rules, notice periods and termination grounds all follow from it.
A foreign employee's contract cannot run longer than the work permit, and the parties may agree several consecutive fixed-term contracts, which is an exception to the usual renewal limit. The permit or exemption has to be in place before the employee starts, so the offer and the start date are planned around it.
The Labour Code prohibits employers from charging employees any recruitment cost, and labour discrimination is a forbidden act. Selection criteria, interview questions and assessment notes are prepared with that in mind, and the employer has to give candidates truthful information about the job, pay and insurance when asked.
Article 25 of the Labour Code 2019 sets the maximum. Shorter periods can always be agreed, and the probation clause is drafted for the role rather than for the organisation as a whole.
Scroll the table horizontally on smaller screens.
| Type of role | Maximum probation | What it means in practice |
|---|---|---|
| Enterprise executive under the Law on Enterprises | 180 days | Reserved for the executive positions the Law on Enterprises describes. A senior specialist or department head is not automatically in this category. |
| Role requiring a junior college degree or above | 60 days | Covers most professional hires, including finance, legal, engineering and human resources roles below executive level. |
| Role requiring a secondary vocational qualification, technicians and skilled workers | 30 days | Applies to technical and skilled operational roles. |
| Other jobs | 6 working days | Counted in working days rather than calendar days. |
| Any contract of less than one month | No probation | Probation is not permitted at all for these contracts. |
The sequence below applies to every role. What changes with seniority is how much of the effort goes into direct approach rather than advertising.
We review the job description for clarity and for the local market, and recommend changes to title, reporting line or requirements where the draft reflects home country conventions that candidates in Vietnam will read differently. The probation terms and contract type for the role are agreed at this point.
Before anything is published we recommend a salary range for the level, sector and city, covering base pay, the allowances that are customary for the role and the statutory floor. The aim is a package that is competitive without paying above the market for the position.
Junior and graduate roles rely on bilingual postings and volume screening. Management and specialist roles add direct outreach through our professional network and referrals. For senior leadership, candidate criteria and cultural fit are agreed with the regional human resources team before anyone is approached.
Applications are screened against the agreed profile for experience, qualifications, language and salary expectation. You review a longlist with our notes on each candidate before the shortlist is confirmed, so the interviews are spent on people you would actually hire.
Shortlisted candidates are interviewed in Vietnamese or English as the role requires, and assessed for experience, communication, fit with a foreign-invested workplace and salary alignment. Each comes with written interview notes and a recommendation for your own final interviews.
The offer is reviewed against the intended contract type, probation terms and Labour Code requirements before it is issued, and we manage the conversation with the candidate until the offer is accepted and the contract is ready to sign.
In Vietnam's mid-level market the most common point of failure is not finding the candidate. It is losing them between acceptance and the start date.
A candidate who accepts an offer still has to resign, serve notice and tell their current employer, and that is the moment counter-offers and competing approaches arrive. Notice periods under the Labour Code run up to 45 days for an indefinite contract, and at least 120 days for enterprise managers, so the gap can be long. We stay in direct contact with the candidate throughout that period, pick up hesitation early and bring any real issue back to you while there is still time to address it.
Onboarding is coordinated with your office or administration team: the contract ready for signature, the documents the employee needs to bring, the first day arrangements and, where we also run payroll, the social insurance registration and the personal income tax code handled in the same workflow. For a foreign hire, the work permit or exemption timetable sets the start date rather than the other way round.
Candidate information is also regulated. The Law on Personal Data Protection, in force from 1 January 2026, requires recruiters to ask only for information that serves the recruitment, to use it only for that purpose or as agreed, and to delete or destroy the information of candidates who are not recruited unless they agree otherwise. Our search files are kept on that basis, which also means a talent pool is built with the candidates' agreement rather than by default.
Most clients come to us at one of five moments, and each shapes how the search is run.
A newly established company building its local team with no in-country human resources function, where the head office team does not yet know the salary levels, sourcing channels or interview norms in Vietnam.
Country manager, finance manager, human resources manager, operations manager or legal counsel positions, where the role needs both professional depth and the ability to work inside a foreign-invested management structure.
Companies moving from a handful of employees to a larger workforce, where hiring role by role has started to cause delays and uneven quality, and where crossing ten employees also brings new internal labour regulation obligations.
Entities that need administrative, coordination or specialist staff but have a limited commercial profile in Vietnam, which makes direct recruitment slower and local networks more important.
The departure of a country manager or senior specialist that leaves an urgent gap, where the priority is to move quickly without compromising on the terms or the fit of the replacement.
Since 2009, Viettonkin has supported 2,000+ businesses, including Fortune 500 and VNR500 companies. In the engagements below, which took place in Vietnam, recruitment and the transition of people formed part of a wider setup mandate.
A Canadian corporation established a legal entity in Vietnam for an aircraft components production line. The engagement extended to factory rental, staff recruitment and accounting and tax procedures, with Viettonkin acting as legal representative and handling contract drafting and review.
Read the case study
A Singaporean investor set up a medical firm in Hanoi. Viettonkin advised on the compliance procedures and supported the acquisition of a local business, including the transition of its contracts, human resources, tax and internal processes.
Read the case studyPractical answers on probation, offers, contract types and candidate data.
It depends on the role. The Labour Code 2019 allows up to 180 days for an enterprise executive, 60 days for roles requiring a junior college degree or above, 30 days for roles requiring a secondary vocational qualification and for technicians and skilled workers, and six working days for other jobs. Only one probation is allowed per job, and none for contracts of less than one month.
It can. Article 13 of the Labour Code treats a document with a different name as an employment contract if it contains the agreement on a paid job, the salary and management by one party. That is why we review offers against the intended contract before they are issued, so the terms match and nothing is committed that the contract does not reflect.
Probationary pay is agreed by the parties but cannot be lower than 85 percent of the salary offered for the job. The same salary also has to sit at or above the regional minimum wage that applies to the work location.
A fixed-term contract can run for up to 36 months. The parties may sign one further fixed-term contract, and if the employee keeps working after that the next contract must be indefinite. Foreign employees are an exception: their contract cannot outlast the work permit and several consecutive fixed-term contracts are allowed.
Under the Law on Personal Data Protection, in force from 1 January 2026, the information provided by candidates who are not recruited has to be deleted or destroyed unless the candidate agrees otherwise. Candidates can be asked at the end of a search whether they want to stay on file for future roles.
Regulatory points checked on 17 September 2026; market statistics checked on 11 September 2026. Requirements depend on the entity, the activity and the date of filing.
Tell us the roles, the reporting lines and when you need people in place. We will set out the market for each position, the contract and probation terms that fit it, and how the search would run.
