Article no.

100: Not afraid of failure to attain a successful start-up

09:01 | November 16, 2017

TTTĐ.VN – Having started up his business since he was a senior at Hanoi University, Phan Viet
Hoan, Chairman of the Board of Vietnam IS Information System Solution Joint Stock Company,
the governing body of Mywork Recruiting Social Network, faced numerous challenges at an
early stage. At the age of 25, shouldering a huge loan of VND 1 billion, sometimes being too
stressful, what Hoan did was only shaving his head but never being afraid of failure… Learn how
to keep calm

Learn how to keep calm

Since he was young, Phan Viet Hoan’s parents considered him to be quite an obstinate kid. He was
even punished by his grandparents, as he was so into playing games that he lost his sister’s bicycle.

In his senior year of university, Hoan decided to start up with sport games. Nevertheless, because
of his lack of experience and management skills, his company had only 3 years of existence. With
the business closing down and colleagues gradually leaving, at the age of 25, Hoan had his first
shock in his life when he knew that he was deep in more than VND 1 billion of debt. Moreover, at
that time, Hoan’s beloved father passed away in an accident.

It was a terrible shock, as if he could never overcome it. He struggled everywhere just to borrow
some money but he only received shakes of rejection instead. Handling everything on his own put
him under a lot of pressure. Hoan sought meditation and Buddhology. “Thanks to such profound
mindsets and philosophies, I learned how to calm down to ponder everything that happened. I
first had to search for opportunities and projects that I could still carry out to earn money to pay
debts”, shared Hoan.

Mr. Phan Viet Hoan, Chairman of the Board of Vietnam IS Information System Solution Joint Stock
Company, the governing body of Mywork Recruiting Social Network

After overcoming all the difficulties, Hoan realized that he still lacked tons of knowledge and
expertise to be able to have a successful start-up. Therefore, Hoan made the decision to look for
scholarships and moved to Taiwan (China) to pursue his postgraduate degree. In 2009, he flew
back to Vietnam and started over with his second business, Vietnam IS Information System
Solution Joint Stock Company. It was destiny that brought Hoan to Mywork Online Recruiting
Ecosystem in 2011.

At that time, he was working as a teaching assistant at several universities and had a chance to
meet the former Secretary of the Central Committee of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union
(HCYU), Nguyen Hoang Hiep. “Back then, Mr. Hiep was in charge of Project 103, named
“Supporting young people who are apprentices and creating jobs in the stages of 2008 – 2015.”
The Central Committee of the HCYU had built job centers at provincial HCYUs. However, the
problem was how we could know whether these centers were operating effectively or not and,
based on that, propose suitable policies. For that reason, I accepted to be a consultant,
collaborating to develop projects and building recruitment websites”, Hoan narrated.

On March 26, 2011, the recruitment web portal was officially opened. Right after that, Hoan
cooperated with officers of the Central Committee of the HCYU to instruct and implement the
project at provincial HCYUs all over the country. Yet, during the practical progress, Hoan figured
out that there were still insufficient problems in promoting this product.

With the desire to do something meaningful for society, Hoan came to a decision to persuade
potential investors to upgrade the website to the first recruiting social media platform in Vietnam.
Developing MyWork was based on the social network’s technological application platform, which
allowed participants to interact, connect, and keep up with authentic and high-quality job-related
news. Policies and news about domestic and international labor markets were supported by
MyWork Ecosystem as well.

Towards the community

MyWork Recruiting Social Network Ecosystem includes: MyWork (mywork.vn) – A recruiting

solution to enterprises’ demand of hiring a young workforce, especially those who are between 18
and 35 years old across the country; MyUni (myuni.com.vn) – The web portal of vocational
guidance and job referral for students designed for universities, colleges, and training centers;
MyEdu (myedu.com.vn) – The platform offering online courses; and MyTalent (mytalent.com.vn) –
The platform providing prospective candidates.

Currently, MyWork, with the solution of a job referral web portal for students, is building
partnerships with universities, colleges, and training centers with the aim of equipping students
with the necessary knowledge as well as navigating and vocationally guiding them. This activity is
not only the most prominent but also brings high value, creating opportunities and successfully
introducing jobs to a substantial number of fresh graduates.

“After nearly 10 years of starting up and facing numerous challenges, I mostly prided myself on
having not surrendered to adversity. Self-repositioning after each failure is extremely crucial to a
start-up”, shared Hoan.

In October 2017, Phan Viet Hoan was one of the most prestigious delegates attending the 15 th
Hanoi Municipal Congress of the Ho Chi Minh Communist Youth Union, terms 2017–2022. At the
Congress, he made a major contribution to promoting the start-up movement of the Municipal
Youth Union. Being the founder and CEO of MyWork, the top online recruiting platform ecosystem
in Vietnam, Hoan had 10 years of firsthand experience working, monitoring, and analyzing two
job-related problems for the nation's youth and start-ups.

According to the statistics of MyWork, only 40% of graduates get a job within less than 6 months,
while it takes the rest more than 6 months. On average, students after graduating spend 3–5 years
seeking and finally having the right occupations that suit their expertise. These numbers show the
real situation currently happening, in which human resources are tremendously wasted. Besides,
the workforce that meets the criteria for starting up and working in start-up businesses is highly
required to possess particular qualities, understandings, skills, and training environments, which
are even stricter when compared to working in traditional enterprises. Since start-up organizations
have the characteristic of being creative in agile and stressful environments, they demand the
labor to meet the requirements, such as being innovative and able to work under pressure, having
high expertise and skills, being in high working spirits, and so on.

It would be wasteful if there were no bridge effectively built to promote and connect high-quality
human resources with start-up businesses and, by means of that, help people find appropriate
positions, adding value to the labor demand-supply chain in general and start-ups in particular.
Nowadays, recruiting on online platforms has become a popular means of finding new employees.
For that reason, creating a professional recruiting channel concentrating on starting up is a crucial
thing to do to establish connections that are beneficial to both applicants and recruiters.

"Regarding the creative start-up field, we have generated ideas and a project called MyUp, whose
target is to set up a full range of solutions for the development of start-up human resources. The
project contains exploratory research on start-up workforces, in-depth training programs and
courses, as well as the web portal at the expected website address (http://myup.com.vn). We will
exert ourselves to look for strategic partners, and together, we will foster this demand in
Vietnam", Phan Viet Hoan certainly affirmed.

(To be continued)

Thanh Nam

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