FOREIGN TRADE UNIVERSITY
FACULTY OF BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION
Major: International Business
***
MID-TERM INTERNSHIP REPORT
The process of human resource management at VICA Consultants International
Ltd. and some recommendations for improvement
Student : Do Thi Anh Ngan
Class : A1
Supervisor : Ms. Le Thi Thu, Msc
Hanoi, 7/2009
Internship Report
2
Internship Report
Table of Contents
Table of Contents 3
Preface 4
Part 1: Introducon to VICA 6
Part 2: The analysis of the human resource management process at VICA 12
Part 3: Recommendaon for improvement 20
Part 4: Internship experience 22
References 24
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Preface
The world business is becoming more and more complicated as technology is in its
age of development and changing at a rapid pace. It seems that technology is
reducing the role of people. However, this could be true in the production era only.
Today, there are a lot more of new types of business where human play an
important role along with that of machines and technology. Furthermore, there is a
change in the conception and perception of the management of human resource

from her and I hope and believe that this report would not disappoint her
expectation.
In conclusion, I wish that this report will provide you with valuable information and
I would welcome all comments in order to improve my knowledge, viewpoint as
well as writing.

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Part 1: Introduction to VICA
1. Establishment and Development of VICA
VICA Consultants International Ltd. was established on 26
th
April, 2001 by five
members namely Nguyen Thanh Hai, Nghiem Thi Minh Nguyet, Nghiem Quang
Minh, Vu Thi Boi Lan, and Pham Ngoc Thang. At the end of the year 2001, Mrs.
Vu Thi Boi Lan withdrew her capital in order to invest in another field. At the end
of the year 2003, Mr. Nghiem Quang Minh withdrew his capital because of health
related problems and turned to work for a state-owned company. In 2002, the
company received the capital of Mr. Nguyen Hong Tho, but by October, 2005, he
withdrew his capital in order to continue his study. At present, the company is
owned by three stakeholders namely Mr. Nguyen Thanh Hai, Mrs. Nghiem Thi
Minh Nguyet and Mr. Pham Ngoc Thang, who are professional consultants of high
calibre with 15-30 years of experience in working for projects in Vietnam.
The company was first named Vietnam Investment Consulting and Auditing
Company Ltd. because at the time it provided not only consulting but also auditing
service. At present, the company just focuses on the consulting field, so it changed
its name into VICA Consultants International Ltd. (although VICA is still the
abbreviation of “Vietnam Investment Consulting and Auditing”, which is its old
name).
Since its establishment in early 2001, VICA has become a well known provider of

The Procurement Unit is responsible for preparing Express of Interest Letter and
Bidding Documents. This unit includes one unit head and 2 employees.
The Research and Operations Department is made up of 4 sections, which are
independent but still can support each other when needed.
The Social Unit is in charge of society related works such as basic investigation,
economic and social investigation, resettle planning, resettle supervision, and
compliance of safety policy of sponsors. At the same time, the unit can support
other ones when needed. The head of the unit is responsible for 6 employees.
The Project Management Unit is responsible for managing the implementation of
projects and the company’s services, at the same time assigning specialists to take
part in the management in a specific service if necessary. This unit includes 4
employees who report directly to the vice director of the department.
The Water and Environment Unit is in charge of works relating to water supply,
rural and environmental sanitation, for example, rural water supply, rural sanitation,
environmental protection planning, environmental effect evaluation, and
compliance of safety policy of sponsors. This unit includes one unit head and 3
employees.
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The Engineering and Design Unit is responsible for designing irrigation works,
rural infrastructure and urban development. This unit includes one unit head and 2
specialists.
The Accounting and Finance Department includes one unit of Accounting and
Administration. The unit is under the direct management of one Vice Director cum
Chief Accountant and it has one accountant and one administrative staff.
With such a structure, VICA ensure its good operation and that its consulting
services is according to the claim “Quality makes Difference”
3. Business activities
VICA’s main Clients are:
- International donors, such as the WB, ADB, AFD, UNDP, DFID, IFAD,

community participation in all stages.
- Preparing investment plans, preliminary designs for infrastructure subprojects
and works.
- Monitoring of safeguard policy as stipulated by the donor (environment,
resettlement and ethnic minorities).
- Capacity building for relevant institutions, training for project staff and
beneficiaries on various fields as specified in each project.
- Provision of consultancy on community development to local communities
including ethnic minorities and women.
For Urban Development Projects, VICA has capability to provide:
- Socio-economic survey and project preparation as required by donors, provision
of financial, economic, institutional and social consultants for project design.
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- Project management and implementation support in procurement, disbursement,
financial management, reporting, and human resources management.
- Provision of senior consultants and engineers to implement feasibility and pre-
feasibility study reports, basic design, technical design and construction
technique design.
- Senior consultant provision for infrastructure schemes construction in line with
international standards and Vietnam’s regulations.
- Monitoring of safeguard policies as regulated by donors (environment,
resettlement and ethnic minority development).
- Institutional capacity building, training project staff and beneficiaries on various
fields in line with regulations of each project.
- Support consultation in closing completed projects including project completion
procedures and post evaluation.
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Part 2: The analysis of the human resource management

1.2. Human resource management process.
Analysis and Design of work
Job analysis a systematic investigation of tasks, duties and responsibilities of a job
(Job Description) and the necessary knowledge, skills, and abilities a person need to
perform the job adequately (Job Specification). Job design is the process of
designing the way work will be performed and the tasks that will be required in a
given job.
The analysis and design of work is useful because it provides a means for the
managers to understand all the tasks required to produce a high-quality product as
well as the skills necessary to perform those tasks. They need to understand the job
requirements to make intelligent hiring decisions as well as to better manage and
evaluate their employees’ performance so as to make the right decision of
compensation, rewards, and promotion.
HR planning
Human resource planning is about assessing the future supply of, and demand for
human resource, providing mechanisms to eliminate gaps that may exist between
supply and demand, and making readjustment as labor market conditions change.
HR planning can help managers to make decision in recruitment, avoidance of
redundancies, training and development, labor cost, productivity bargaining and so
on. The HR planning process starts with an analysis of situation and environmental
scanning. The second step is forecasting demand for employees, in which two
questions are addressed: How many employees will be needed and what kinds of
employees will be needed. After that, the HR planner has to analyze the current
supply of employees, i.e. how many employees and what kinds of employees does
the organization currently have. Finally, he/ she will develop an action plan in order
to eliminate the gap between the people supply and demand.
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Recruitment and Selection
Recruitment is the activities that influence the number and types of applicants who

organization’s strategic plan) and developmental instruction (providing employees
with the appropriate skills needed for higher level positions to which they may
eventually promoted).
Compensation
Compensation refers to the remuneration system of a company, how it pays
workers, what benefits it provides them. There are two kinds of compensation that
are financial compensation and non-financial rewards. Financial compensation
includes wages, salaries, bonuses, and commissions (direct) or insurance, vacation,
and health care service (indirect). Non-financial rewards include praise, self-esteem,
and recognition.
How a company designs its compensation system and delivers it to its employees
plays an important role in satisfying and motivating them, and thus has great impact
on their performance.
Some external influences on compensation include the labor market and the
economy condition, some controls and guidelines of the government and
international organizations, the bargaining of trade unions. The internal influences
include the size and age of the organization, the labor budget, the job itself, and the
employees’ knowledge, skills and abilities.
Performance management
Performance management can be defined as a systematic process for improving
organizational performance by developing the performance of individuals and
teams. The overall aim of performance management is to establish a high
performance culture in which individuals and teams take responsibility for the
continuous improvement of business processes and for their own skills and
contributions within a framework provided by effective leadership.
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Employee relations
Employee relations consist of all those areas of human resource management that
involve relationships with employees – directly and/ or through collective

The applicants know about the company’s job vacancy through those channels and
hand in their application forms including resume, copies of their certificates and a
picture of themselves directly to the company or via email. The company will select
from the application forms the applicants best suitable for the job vacancy, inviting
them to the company to do tests and interviews. The company’s managing director
directly interviews the applicants, negotiates and makes selection decision. The
selection criteria include education background, experience, foreign language
capability, and computer literacy.
Training and Development
There are two kinds of training that VICA provide its employees, i.e. internal
training and external training. Internal training is carried out at the company office.
The managing director directly delivers the lecture or instructions to the employees;
or the company may invite an expert to provide the training. The employees are
provided with skills and knowledge relating to preparing bidding documents,
supervision and evaluation, questionnaire design, economic and social
investigation. External training means employees will be assigned to take part in
training programs provided by National University of Civil Engineering and some
training centers. Those training programs are often about project management and
procurement.
Compensation
The salary level of the company is designed basing on the circular number 219 of
the Ministry of Finance and “the UN-EU guidelines for financing of local costs in
development co-operation with Vietnam”.
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Besides salary, the employees receive some other benefits such as social and
medical insurance, 12 days of absence per year for those working for the company
more than 1 year, 4-month maternal leave, holiday bonus, and overtime pay of
150% of basic fixed salary.
Performance management

wide and profound in comparison with other types of companies, especially bigger
ones. However, as I said earlier, HR is important to all types of companies and
every company should pay attention to this field.
VICA does a good job in making its structure simple and flat in order to be suitable
and adapt to the nature of work it does. This helps it to reduce the cost of operation.
For example, the recruitment and selection is carried out by the director of each
department itself. And the head of each department as well as each unit is
responsible for its own staff. There is no a separate department of human resource.
This can be considered as a good thing because a separate HR department is in fact
not necessary in this case.
However, there is no need for a human resource department; this does not mean
there is no need for strategic human resource management. In fact, the company is
lack of strategy in the HRM area. They need to have strategic methods in order to
both reduce expenses and enjoy greater effectiveness.
The next part will discuss how the company could improve its HRM practices.
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Part 3: Recommendation for improvement
Firstly, the company should have a clearer job analysis. Job analysis is very
important. It may create some expense at the beginning but in the long term it
makes every job clear, help the job holders understand their responsibility
thoroughly, help management team to make better decision. The company does
have job descriptions, but it does not have job specification which clarifies what
qualification the job holders must have in order to perform their tasks well. This is
important as it is just like a guideline for employees; they can look at the job
specification and see what knowledge, skills or abilities they already have and what
they lack for. Consequently, they can easily eliminate that gap in order to get their
job well-done.
Secondly, the company should have a clearer HR planning. It should make a
clearer plan about how many employees the company may need in a normal

One is to verify information provided by applicants, and one is to get additional
information about applicants, which maybe predictive of job performance.
In the training part, the company should assess carefully the training needs,
whether the training is really necessary and what types of training would best
solved the problems.
Finally, the company should have ways to maintain a good and long-lasting
relationship with its associate consultants. It can hold parties or vacations with the
participation of both external and internal consultants in order for them to have
chance to interact with each other and share their experience. This is also a kind of
benefits to build and maintain relationship with them. Besides, the company’s
compensation for their associate consultants should be comparable to or even
greater than what other consulting firms may offer.
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Part 4: Internship experience
During my internship, I was assigned to do the following work:
- Translating reports and other documents such as questionnaire, Terms of
Reference, Express of Interest letter from Vietnamese into English.
- Designing a questionnaire.
- Receiving phone calls from outside and pass through the wanted people
- Making phone calls and leave messages to outsiders.
- Booking airline ticket and hotel rooms
- Faxing or sending documents via email
- Make photocopies
It was very hard for me to do the translation job because the documents are relating
to unfamiliar issues to me such as rural development, water resources, energy and
so on. However, the interpreters of the company have helped me a lot in finishing
my work. They give me suggestion on how to translate complicated sentences and
some special terms. This job helped me a lot in improving my English and
broadening my vocabulary.

competitive advantage. 2
nd
ed. USA: International Thomson Publishing Inc.
Torrington, Derek; Hall, Laura; Taylor, Stephen, 2008. Human resource
management, 7
th
ed. Essex: Pearson Education Limited.
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