TheJakartaPost
Please Update your browser
Your browser is out of date, and may not be compatible with our website. A list of the most popular web browsers can be found below.
Just click on the icons to get to the download page.
Firms lure young talents with high salary, ‘cool’ workspace
E-commerce companies are not only offering high salaries but also a “cool” working environment to attract young talent to work in the rapidly growing digital economy
Change Size
E
span>E-commerce companies are not only offering high salaries but also a “cool” working environment to attract young talent to work in the rapidly growing digital economy.
The chairman of the Indonesian E-commerce Association (idEA), Ignatius Untung, said in Jakarta on Thursday that domestic e-commerce companies, such as those in finance and retail, had to poach employees from competitors because of a shortage in digital talent in the labor market.
He acknowledged that there were many fresh information technology graduates from local universities, but added their skills mostly did not match the requirements of the digital industry.
“That’s why many e-commerce companies are poaching from each other,” he said during a press briefing. According to him, such practices resulted in a high turnover rate of 19.22 percent, almost double the 10 percent rule-of-thumb maximum targeted by most human resource directors.
Ignatius said the demand for employees from e-commerce companies in Indonesia was very high at an average of 70 percent a year because most of them were growing.
As part of the efforts to cope with the employee shortage, the association, which groups over 300 e-commerce companies, will hold an e-commerce expo and a job fair next February at the Kasablanka concert hall in Tebet, South Jakarta.
The two-day idEA Works Edu Expo will start on Feb. 16 while the two-day idEA Works Pro job fair will start on Feb. 22. Both events will feature talk shows, short courses, workspace galleries and group job interviews.
“We want to show that digital industry jobs are cool, creative and well-paid,” said Ignatius.
Ignatius said that, based on a study by idEA of 52 e-commerce companies, the average employee working in the digital economy earned Rp 20 million (US$1,377) per month.
Indonesia’s e-commerce market recorded 78 percent growth this year, the highest out of ten countries surveyed by United Kingdom-based financial services firm PPRO. Indonesia’s e-commerce revenue is projected to grow eightfold to $65 billion annually in 2020 from $8 billion last year, according to a 2018 report by business consultancy McKinsey & Company.
Multinational advertising firm Havas Group Indonesia chief executive officer Anwesh Bose told The Jakarta Post last month that there was approximately a 60 percent deficit between demand and supply of digital talent in Indonesia.
Industry Minister Airlangga Hartarto had said earlier this year that the country would need at least 17 million digital talents to become an e-commerce powerhouse by 2030.
To narrow the deficit, the Communications and Information Ministry vowed last month to provide $9 million to help over 20 local colleges train 20,000 digital talents by next year.
Two tech giants, Google Indonesia and Alibaba, have also stepped in to help the government.
University of Indonesia computer science lecturer Sofian Lusa said it was critical to nurture digital talent now so that they may become digital entrepreneurs by the time the country benefits from its demographic dividend between 2020 and 2030.
“This period can be either a blessing or a curse,” Sofian said, explaining that if Indonesia properly harnessed the dividend then it could expect a major economic boost, but if it fails, then it could expect an increase in
unemployment. (nor)
