Article by Nhu Lich - Thanh Nien newspaper 

Translated by Nguyen Thanh Tu

“Let's think of the rain like a difficult moment in our life and come over it side by side together ...” - Behind every song there are always some useful messages that HCMC Entrepreneurs Singing Club (HESC) wants to communicate with today’s youths.

Journalist from Thanh Nien Newspaper has a talk with Mr. Le Ba Thong – General Director of TTT Corporation – one of the main members of this Club.

-Can you explain why the Club has chosen the topic of  “The power of soft skills and job opportunities” to communicate with students?
-At the present, training soft skills for students seems to be ignored. Many companies have to face the fact that lots of students they recruited can not work as well as they expected just because of lacking soft skills. These students are probably excellent at hard skills (knowledge, specific profession) but totally short of adaptability skills, self-awareness and self-development skills as well as unable to work under heavy pressure…etc... Therefore, we still keep talking to students “It’s a must to well prepare yourself soft skills to integrate with business!”. Besides, in my opinion, training the lacking-hard-skills would be much easier than training the lacking-soft-skills.

-Bringing music and lyrics, experiences and soft skills to students, what will you get in return?
-The truth is we are recruiting while we are singing!!! Are there any better chances for students to attract recruiters’ attention if not these times?! I've just asked my assistant to “catch” 2 students who did MCs for the latest exchange show between HESC and HUTECH. Because, they are dynamic, attractive, and know how to excite the audience... Those skills are good enough to be recruited!

-You bring to students an image of successful businessmen who can sing beautifully and can play musical instruments skillfully at once. Is it true if those who are not gifted for singing will feel less confident?
-Actually, you should take full advantage of any talents that you have. For example, you can play football well, you should make most of it to draw your colleagues in, build the union and cheeriness at working. Or if you are really good at literature, you may take part in writing a wall newspaper or even present a project, an obvious strategy to successfully persuade director board and clients. We should respect and dig deep into our every single skills.

-It’s said the Club has interacted with about 10 Universities around the country. What do you think about the comprehension of students from this program?
-Students at every each region have their own various interests and new aspiration that make us sometimes surprised. However, there are still some students who are slow to be in tune, they are fully new to surroundings and just like high school students. It's not by chance in this program when we arrange the song “Tôi muốn” right next to the song “Hoa học trò”. We consciously intend to reflect the conflict in demand of recruiters and qualifications that students can not satisfy.

-What are your state of mind while communicating with students?
-We always treat them like our future colleague.

-Beside equiping soft skills for youth, is Entrepreneurs Singing Club heading to any other goals?
-Singing Businessmen Club is the playground for all businessmen who like singing in HCMC. In this Club, businessmen can sing as much as they want. Singing for charity is also one of the main targets of the Club. Club is always an ambassador of making budget for program “Green Brushstroke”. We have just worked collaboration with HCMC Young Businessmen Association to held a show of “ The desire of Love”, gross amount 1.150.000.000VND from this program charity fund will be sent to HIV/AIDS infected children.