In 2026, solving talent shortages is no longer optional. According to ManpowerGroup, 72% of employers worldwide cannot fill critical roles, reflecting a structural gap between required skills and available talent. This guide Sunbytes explains the causes and shows 6 talent shortage solutions for international companies to use.
TL;DR
- 72% of employers globally cannot fill the roles they need in 2026, according to ManpowerGroup’s survey of 39,000 employers across 41 countries. The shortage is structural: AI-driven demand is outpacing talent pipelines, and the gap between skills available and skills required is widening every year.
- The seven proven talent shortage solutions differ by type of gap. EOR and global hiring close a location gap in 5 to 14 days. RPO closes a pipeline gap for volume roles. Upskilling closes a skills gap over 12 to 18 months. Applying the right solution to the wrong problem is 12 months of cost without the outcome.
- Vietnam grew 15% as a staffing market in 2025 and ranks in the top 10 most attractive APAC markets. Dutch and EU companies using EOR in Vietnam achieve 38 to 60% lower blended cost for equivalent technical seniority, with market entry in under two weeks and no entity setup required.
What is a talent shortage, and why is 2026 different?
A talent shortage is not the same as a vacant role. Vacancies fill when you hire faster. Talent shortages persist because the workers you need either do not exist in your market, do not have the skills your roles require, or will not accept the compensation you can offer. Understanding which of those is true determines which talent shortage solutions will actually work, and which will cost 12 months without closing the gap.
Talent shortage definition: skill gap vs headcount gap vs location gap
These three terms describe the same surface symptom, a role you cannot fill, but completely different root causes.
A skill gap means workers exist locally but lack the specific capabilities the role requires. This is the most common type in technology and finance, where the speed of tool evolution outpaces training pipelines. AI model development and AI literacy are now the hardest skills to find globally, overtaking engineering for the first time in 2026 (ManpowerGroup 2026 Talent Shortage Survey).
A headcount gap means the talent simply does not exist in sufficient numbers in your market. Western Europe faces this acutely in backend engineering, cloud architecture, and manufacturing operations management. The workers with the right skills are employed elsewhere or have not been trained at scale.
A location gap means qualified talent exists globally but not where your business currently hires. This is the gap that geographic arbitrage solves directly, and it is the one most companies address last, after spending 12 months on solutions that were never going to work.
Why 72% of employers still cannot find skilled talent in 2026
The composition of the shortage has shifted. Engineering roles, which dominated shortage lists for a decade, have been displaced. AI model and application development now ranks first globally. AI literacy ranks second. Traditional IT and data skills have dropped to seventh place. Companies that designed their talent strategy around engineering shortages three years ago are now facing a completely different shortage with the same infrastructure.
The sectors most affected: Professional, Scientific, and Technical Services at 73%, Manufacturing at 72%, and Finance and Insurance at 71%. These are not peripheral industries. They represent the core of most international companies’ operations in Vietnam and across APAC.
The three root causes: skills mismatch, pipeline collapse, and AI-driven demand
The shortage operates through three mechanisms that compound each other.
Skills mismatch has been building for a decade: Universities and vocational training programs produce graduates aligned with curricula designed 5 to 10 years ago. By the time a graduate enters the workforce, the specific toolset employers need has often moved. The problem accelerates as AI rewrites what jobs require faster than education systems can respond.
Pipeline collapse refers to the structural reduction in people entering technical and vocational training at the same time demand is rising: In Western Europe, engineering enrollment has not kept pace with engineering job creation. The gap between supply entering the pipeline and demand pulling from it widens each year.
AI-driven demand is the newest and fastest-moving driver: Roles that did not exist three years ago are now critical hires. AI integration engineers, prompt architects, AI literacy trainers, and automation workflow specialists are all in demand with no established talent pool. Hiring for these roles through traditional sourcing channels produces nothing because the candidates do not have conventional CVs.
Sectors hit hardest: technology, engineering, finance, and manufacturing
| Sector | Shortage rate (2026) | Hardest roles to fill | Primary cause |
|---|---|---|---|
| Professional & Technical Services | 73% | AI engineers, cloud architects, data scientists | Skills mismatch + AI demand surge |
| Manufacturing | 72% | Process engineers, automation specialists, bilingual plant managers | Headcount gap + location gap |
| Finance & Insurance | 71% | Compliance officers, risk analysts, financial modelers | Skills mismatch + pipeline shortfall |
| IT Services | 68% | Backend engineers, AI/ML specialists, cybersecurity | AI demand surge + location gap |
For context on how recruitment costs compound when roles stay vacant, the guide to recruitment costs covers the full financial picture.
The real cost of leaving talent shortage unsolved
A vacancy has a day-one cost and a compounding cost. Most companies track the first. Few track the second until it becomes a retention crisis. The hiring strategies during talent shortage determine how fast the compounding stops.
Direct costs: extended time-to-hire, agency fees, and above-market salaries
The average time to fill a technical role in Western Europe sits between 45 and 66 days. Skills shortage solutions for companies that wait too long to act compound this cost: each day a role is vacant represents lost output, management time, and agency fees accumulated across a search that was not designed for a structural shortage.
Above-market salary pressure is the most visible cost. When three candidates are available for 50 open roles, compensation climbs. If you are solving your talent shortage by out-bidding competitors, you are solving a symptom, not the cause. The next hire will cost more, and the one after that more still.
External recruitment agency fees in specialist technical fields typically run 18 to 25% of first-year salary. For a role paying EUR 80,000, that is EUR 14,400 to EUR 20,000 per hire, before accounting for time lost, rework from a poor fit, or re-hiring if the candidate leaves in the first year.
Indirect costs: team burnout, project delay, and revenue impact
When a senior backend engineer is vacant for six months, the work does not stop. It redistributes. Your remaining team absorbs the load, which accelerates their own disengagement and increases their likelihood of leaving.
Project delay is the cost that surfaces in leadership conversations. A product launch pushed by three months because a key hire was not made does not appear in the hiring budget. It appears in the revenue forecast, the customer satisfaction data, and the competitive position review. The vacancy caused it; the cost is not attributed to the vacancy.
Global Workplace 2024 research puts the productivity cost of disengagement at 18% of annual salary per affected employee. When talent shortages create overload, disengagement follows. The hiring strategies deployed during a talent shortage need to address this compounding effect, not just the open vacancy.
The compounding problem: attrition caused by overloading remaining talent
This is the mechanism most companies miss. A two-person vacancy on a six-person team increases individual workload by 33%. Sustained overload produces disengagement. Disengaged employees with strong technical skills, the people hardest to replace, have the most external options. They leave.
The vacancy that started the problem is now three vacancies. The talent shortage has reproduced itself inside your team. The cost is no longer linear.
Solving this requires addressing the original shortage quickly, not gradually. For context on how recruitment process improvements reduce time-to-fill, see the recruitment process guide.
7 talent shortage solutions that work in 2026
The question is not whether to act but which solutions match your shortage type and timeline. Each of the seven below has a different speed of impact, cost profile, and best-use scenario.
1. Global hiring and geographic arbitrage
Global hiring and geographic arbitrage is the fastest of all talent shortage solutions for a location gap. If the talent you need does not exist in your local market in sufficient numbers, looking harder in that market will not change the outcome. The talent is somewhere else.
Geographic arbitrage means identifying markets where the skills are available, the compensation differential makes the hire financially rational, and the employment structure is accessible. Vietnam is a primary example for Dutch and EU companies: strong engineering talent pool, blended cost 38 to 60% lower than equivalent seniority in Amsterdam or Berlin, and EOR infrastructure that allows compliant hiring without entity setup.
The model works for roles where output is independent of physical location. Backend engineering, cloud architecture, data science, finance analysis, and software QA are all candidates. It does not work for roles that require local presence, physical client interaction, or regulatory credentials tied to specific jurisdictions.
Speed of impact: 5 to 14 days via EOR. 3 to 6 weeks via traditional international recruitment. Cost level: Low to Medium (EOR fee + salary differential). Among global talent shortage strategies, EOR global hiring delivers the fastest time to fill roles for cross-border hires.
2. Employer of Record to hire without entity setup
An Employer of Record eliminates the entity barrier that stops most companies from acting on global hiring decisions. The EOR is the legal employer in the target country: it signs the employment contract, registers the worker for statutory insurance, withholds income tax, and runs payroll. The client company directs the work.
EOR is not a temporary workaround. It is a permanent operating model for companies with fewer than 30 to 50 employees in a market who want compliant employment without the overhead of entity registration, which takes 16 to 24 weeks in Vietnam and carries significant legal cost.
Speed of impact: 5 to 14 business days for Vietnamese nationals. 3 to 4 weeks for foreign employees requiring work permit under Decree 219/2025/ND-CP. Payroll on time from day one. Offboarding within 24 hours.
3. Recruitment Process Outsourcing
RPO is the right talent shortage solution when internal recruiting capacity cannot scale fast enough to meet hiring demand. Unlike a staffing agency, which fills individual roles, an RPO provider embeds into your hiring process and handles sourcing, screening, and pipeline management at scale.
The distinction matters operationally. A staffing agency delivers candidates. An RPO delivers a recruitment function. If you need 40 engineers in 12 months and your internal team is built for 10 hires a year, the capacity gap is structural. Adding three more internal recruiters does not close it as fast or as cost-effectively as an RPO that already has the candidate pools, the screening infrastructure, and the market intelligence.
RPO is particularly effective for companies entering new markets where local sourcing knowledge is the bottleneck, not budget or role definition. A Vietnam-based RPO partner has existing relationships with passive candidates who are not looking at job boards.
Speed of impact: 2 to 4 weeks to pipeline. 4 to 8 weeks to first hire. Cost level: Medium (per-hire or monthly fee structure).
4. Upskilling and reskilling existing employees
Upskilling is the right solution for a skills gap when the headcount exists but the capability does not. It is the slowest solution for an acute shortage and the most sustainable solution for a structural one.
The data supports it: organizations with structured L&D functions retain employees twice as long and fill more roles internally (LinkedIn Workplace Learning Report 2024). But the return is 12 to 18 months out. A company with a six-month vacancy cannot upskill its way to filling that role before the business impact is already absorbed.
Where upskilling works best: building AI literacy across an existing technical team that already has the engineering foundation. AI model and application skills are learnable in 3 to 6 months for engineers who already understand the underlying systems. This is faster than external hiring for a skill set where the external candidate pool is also scarce.
Speed of impact: 12 to 18 months. Cost level: Medium to High (training programs + lost productivity during learning curve). Best for: long-term pipeline building, not acute role vacancies.
5. Skills-based hiring: expanding the qualified candidate pool
Skills-based hiring is a talent shortage solution that removes degree requirements and job-title prerequisites, filtering in qualified candidates who built their capabilities outside traditional credentials. It works for a specific type of skills gap: one where the capability exists in the market but is held by people whose CVs do not trigger conventional screening.
81% of employers now use at least some skills-based hiring practices, according to the 2024 TestGorilla State of Skills-Based Hiring report. The early adopters are seeing measurably larger candidate pools for hard-to-fill roles. A backend engineering role that previously required a computer science degree from a recognized university has a significantly wider pool when the requirement is a demonstrated ability to build and maintain production-level systems.
Speed of impact: 2 to 4 weeks to see expanded pipeline. Requires updating job descriptions and screening criteria first.
6. Contractor and COR arrangements for flexible talent access
Contractors give you access to specialist capabilities for defined project scopes without the commitment of permanent employment. The model works for a role that requires a specific capability for 3 to 9 months, after which the need either ends or converts to a different requirement.
A Contractor of Record resolves this. The COR is the legal engaging entity for the contractor: it manages the service contract, handles payment, and absorbs the compliance liability. The client directs the work. For companies that need contractor flexibility without classification risk, COR is the correct structure.
Speed of impact: 5 to 10 business days via COR. Cost level: Low to Medium (service fee + contractor rate).
7. Strategic staffing partnerships
Strategic staffing is a proven recruitment strategy for addressing talent shortages in senior and specialist roles. A specialist staffing agency with sector-specific talent pools and salary intelligence consistently outperforms generalist job boards because the candidate relationships already exist within the firm’s network. Generalist job boards only work when candidates are actively searching and the role does not require niche capability.
They fall short for senior engineering roles, bilingual management positions, or specialized finance talent in Vietnam, where the most qualified candidates are already employed and not looking. A staffing partner with access to passive candidates can deliver a qualified shortlist in 5 to 10 business days, while internal teams relying on LinkedIn often take 3 to 6 weeks to reach similar quality.
The strategic component is what makes this recruitment strategy effective. A partner who understands your team structure, technical stack, and culture filters for fit, not just credentials, reducing the risk of mis-hires that can cost 50 to 200% of annual salary.
| Solution | Speed | Cost level | Best for | Is Vietnam applicable? |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Global hiring / EOR | 5-14 days | Low-Medium | Location gap, no local entity | Yes, primary use case |
| RPO | 4-8 weeks | Medium | Volume hiring, market entry | Yes, staffing firms with local pools |
| Upskilling / reskilling | 12-18 months | Medium-High | Skills gap, existing headcount | Yes, especially for AI literacy |
| Skills-based hiring | 2-4 weeks | Low | Skills gap with non-traditional candidates | Yes, strong bootcamp / self-taught pool |
| Contractor / COR | 5-10 days | Low-Medium | Project-based, flexible scope | Yes, COR required for compliance |
| Strategic staffing | 5-10 days to shortlist | Medium | Senior / specialist roles, passive talent | Yes, especially for bilingual management |
Talent shortage solutions in Vietnam: what international companies need to know
Vietnam ranked in the top 10 most attractive staffing markets in APAC in 2026 (Staffing Industry Analysts). The market grew 15% in 2025. For international companies evaluating talent shortage solutions in Asia, Vietnam offers a combination of workforce scale, cost advantage, and EOR infrastructure that few markets can match.
Vietnam’s talent paradox: abundant workforce, scarce specialist skills
Vietnam has a workforce of 53.3 million people, yet only 29.2% hold a diploma or certificate (General Statistics Office 2025). This gap between workforce size and qualification rate defines the market for international companies and is where the outsourcing recruitment process becomes a practical response.
HCMC’s labor market makes the imbalance clear, with 313,000 job openings in 2025 against fewer than 192,000 registered job seekers (Vietnam Briefing 2026). Volume hiring for entry-level roles remains fast and competitive, but specialist hiring for senior engineers, bilingual managers, AI practitioners, and compliance officers is genuinely constrained.
The talent pool itself is strong, especially in engineering, but the issue is scale. Not enough senior-level professionals are being produced to match the pace of FDI demand, which is why the outsourcing recruitment process helps bridge the gap by accessing broader networks and pre-qualified talent pipelines.
Which roles are most affected by the talent shortage in Vietnam in 2026
| Role category | Shortage level | Salary trend | Best hiring approach |
|---|---|---|---|
| Senior backend / cloud engineers | High | +15-20% YoY | EOR + passive candidate sourcing |
| AI/ML specialists | Very High | +25-35% YoY | EOR + global search + upskilling |
| Bilingual operations managers | High | +10-15% YoY | Executive staffing + permanent placement |
| Cybersecurity professionals | High | +20-25% YoY | EOR + specialist staffing |
| Finance / compliance analysts | Medium-High | +8-12% YoY | Permanent placement + RPO |
| Assembly / operations technicians | Medium | +5-8% YoY | Volume staffing + temporary staffing |
Why Dutch and EU companies find Vietnam a structural talent shortage solution
The case is not primarily about cost, though cost matters. A senior backend engineer in Amsterdam costs EUR 90,000 to EUR 120,000 in annual gross salary plus 30% employer social contributions. An equivalent engineer in HCMC costs VND 40 to 60 million per month, approximately EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,300, with employer SHUI contributions of 21.5% on gross salary (Decree 143/2018/ND-CP). The blended cost differential is 38 to 60%, consistent with the outcome from the Dutch IT services company call-out case.
The timezone works. Vietnam is GMT+7. The Netherlands is GMT+1 or GMT+2. A 5 to 6 hour gap means an HCMC engineer starting at 9am overlaps with Amsterdam office hours from 3pm to 6pm, enough for one team standup and meaningful async collaboration throughout the day.
The technical standard is competitive. The Dutch IT services company that filled their two backend engineering vacancies via EOR in 19 days did not compromise on seniority or technical standard. That outcome is repeatable when the sourcing is done through a partner with active Vietnam talent networks, not through general job boards.
How to hire in Vietnam without a local entity using EOR
Setting up a Vietnamese entity takes 16 to 24 weeks and requires minimum charter capital, local representation, and ongoing compliance management. EOR removes all three requirements. The EOR owns the entity. You hire through it.
The practical sequence: define employment terms → EOR generates a bilingual employment contract within 48 hours of receiving complete candidate documents → candidate signs → EOR registers for SHUI from day one → payroll runs on time, every cycle. Vietnamese national hires complete in 5 to 14 business days.
For context on how the process works step by step and what documents are required, the EOR onboarding guide covers the full sequence including Vietnam-specific compliance requirements under Labor Code 2019 (Law No. 45/2019/QH14).
For context on building the recruitment process that feeds EOR hiring, see the guide to outsourcing the recruitment process.
How to choose the right talent shortage solution for your company
The most common mistake when selecting talent shortage solutions is applying one tool to a shortage with multiple root causes. A location gap does not respond to upskilling. A skills gap does not respond to geographic arbitrage. Diagnosing correctly determines whether you spend 12 months on the right strategy or 12 months discovering the wrong one does not work.
Diagnosing your talent shortage type to select the right solution combination
Diagnosing your shortage: is it a skill gap, location gap, pipeline gap, or process gap?
Talent gap solutions start with your own data, not frameworks. Spend one hour reviewing your last 10 failed hires before deciding on a solution. Look for the pattern in why they failed.
If candidates reached the final interview but were rejected for specific capability gaps, you have a skills gap. The solution is upskilling current employees and skills-based hiring to expand who you consider.
If you could not generate enough candidates to interview, you have a location gap or a pipeline gap. Location gap: the talent does not exist in your market. Pipeline gap: the talent exists but is not entering your hiring process. The first needs global hiring. The second needs employer branding, RPO, or referral programs.
If candidates reach offers but decline or leave quickly, you have a process gap or a compensation gap. No hiring strategy fixes a process that loses people after they have been persuaded to join. Fix the offer-to-acceptance experience, the onboarding structure, or the compensation before hiring more people into the same pipeline.
Short-term vs long-term: matching solution to timeline
| Timeline | Solution | What it solves | What it does not solve |
|---|---|---|---|
| Immediate (0-30 days) | EOR hiring, COR, staffing partnership | Active vacancy, blocked market entry | Long-term pipeline, skills infrastructure |
| Short-term (1-3 months) | RPO, skills-based hiring, global search | Volume needs, pipeline quality | Structural skills gaps, AI capability |
| Medium-term (3-12 months) | Upskilling, employer branding, geographic expansion | Capability building, market presence | Acute vacancies already open |
| Long-term (12+ months) | University partnerships, internal academies, COR-to-employee conversion | Talent pipeline ownership | Anything urgent |
Budget-to-impact matrix: which solutions deliver fastest ROI
- Low cost, fast impact: Both require investment in process change, not significant capital outlay. EOR fees are per-employee-per-month. Skills-based hiring requires rewriting job descriptions and updating screening criteria, which takes days, not months.
- Medium cost, medium impact: These require procurement cycles and onboarding periods, but they scale. An RPO that is functioning well at month three is faster and cheaper per hire than internal recruiting at month six.
- High cost, slow impact: They are correct investments for companies with a long enough planning horizon. They are the wrong investments for a company with 10 open roles and a board asking why the engineering team is understaffed.
When to combine solutions: the integrated talent shortage strategy
The combination that works most reliably for your Vietnam hiring: EOR for immediate senior hires, staffing partnerships for volume and mid-level roles, and skills-based hiring criteria applied to both. These three work on the same talent market from different angles at the same time.
For companies evaluating how culture and team composition affect talent strategy, the culture fit guide covers how to integrate culture criteria into hiring decisions without narrowing the candidate pool further.
Your shortage has a type. Your solution should match it.
Sunbytes helps international companies diagnose whether they face a skill gap, location gap, or pipeline gap, then builds the right combination of EOR, staffing, and recruitment solutions to close it. Dutch and EU companies have used this model to double engineering capacity in Vietnam while reducing blended cost by 38% or more.
Explore Accelerate Workforce Solutions
How Sunbytes helps international companies close the talent gap
A structural talent shortage does not respond to posting more jobs on the same platforms. It responds to changing where you look, how you hire, and how fast you can get a compliant employment structure in place once you find the right person. That is the operational gap Sunbytes closes.
Sunbytes is a Dutch-founded technology and workforce company founded in 2011, with 300+ client projects across 20+ countries. Here is how our three service pillars address talent shortage directly:
- Employment infrastructure that closes the gap: Through Accelerate Workforce Solutions, Sunbytes employs the hire under its own Vietnamese entity. Contract issued within 48 hours. SHUI registered from day one. Payroll on time every cycle. ISO 27001 certified. All engagements under a signed DPA.
- Technical sourcing at seniority levels European markets cannot supply at pace: A location gap without a sourcing partner is still a gap. Digital Transformation Solutions holds active networks of senior engineers, cloud architects, and AI practitioners in HCMC and Hanoi.
Data compliance from the first document transfer. When your candidate documents move between Amsterdam and Ho Chi Minh City, that transfer is subject to GDPR Article 32 and Vietnamese Decree 13/2023/ND-CP. CyberSecurity Solutions embeds both compliance layers into the hiring process from day one, so international expansion does not create a data liability alongside the talent solution.
FAQs
5 to 14 business days for Vietnamese nationals from offer acceptance to day one. The range is driven by document readiness on the candidate side, not by the EOR’s process speed. A candidate who has their national ID, VND bank account, health certificate, and academic credentials ready before the EOR process starts will be onboarded at the faster end of that range. Foreign employees requiring a work permit take 3 to 4 weeks under Decree 219/2025/ND-CP, effective August 7, 2025, which consolidated the application process into a single dossier.
A staffing agency sources and supplies workers, who may be employed by the agency or placed directly with the client. The agency’s involvement typically ends at placement. An EOR is the legal employer for the duration of the engagement: it signs the employment contract, handles SHUI registration, withholds personal income tax, and runs payroll. The client directs all daily work. EOR is appropriate for companies that want a permanent employee in a market where they have no legal entity. Staffing agencies are appropriate for temporary or volume hiring where the agency holds the employment relationship.
Yes, materially. A senior backend engineer in Amsterdam or Berlin carries an annual gross salary of EUR 90,000 to EUR 120,000, plus employer social contributions of 20 to 30% of salary. The equivalent seniority in Ho Chi Minh City runs VND 40 to 60 million per month in gross salary, approximately EUR 1,500 to EUR 2,300, with employer SHUI contributions of 21.5% under Decree 143/2018/ND-CP. The blended cost differential is 38 to 60% depending on seniority and role. The Dutch IT company in the call-out case achieved 38% lower blended cost while doubling engineering capacity. That outcome is repeatable with correct EOR and talent sourcing structure.
In Vietnam, informal contractor arrangements carry misclassification risk under Labor Code 2019 (Law No. 45/2019/QH14), Article 13. Any working arrangement that involves paid work, managerial control, and regular payment is treated as an employment relationship, regardless of what the contract is called. If a labor inspection finds that a contractor is being managed like an employee, the company faces retroactive social insurance contributions from the start of the arrangement, penalty interest, and potential criminal sanctions in serious cases, under Decree 12/2022/ND-CP. A Contractor of Record removes this risk entirely: the COR is the legal engaging party, and the compliance liability transfers to it.
Skills-based hiring removes degree and job-title requirements from the initial screening stage and replaces them with demonstrated capability assessments. In practice, change three things first: rewrite job descriptions to list what the role requires someone to be able to do, remove the degree prerequisite unless it is a legal or regulatory requirement for the specific role, and introduce a skills assessment early in the pipeline rather than after CV screening. The effect is a larger initial candidate pool. The risk is more screening volume. The tradeoff is worth it for roles where the qualified candidate pool using traditional criteria is genuinely insufficient to fill the vacancy.
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