Recruiting skilled workers that can boost productivity and efficiency will be the key theme for next week’s annual National Career Fair, which is expected to present hungry job-seekers with up to 20,000 potential positions.

The two-day career fair, which begins on October 27, will aim to promote the necessity of increasing worker productivity across a wide array of sectors including construction, hospitality and banking.

Hay Hunleng, deputy director of the National Employment Agency, said this was the first time that enhancing productivity would be a core focus of the fair.

“We hope that the fair will help promote the awareness of productivity by showcasing workers’ performance, technology skills and creativity to match them with the right companies,” he said, adding that he expects 30,000 job-seekers to attend the fair held on Koh Pich.

“The job fair will give workers more chances in the job market, and help reduce the time for companies to get high profits,” he said.

Kaing Monika, deputy secretary-general of the Garment Manufacturers Association in Cambodia (GMAC), an industry that hires 700,000 workers, said that increasing productivity goes hand-in-hand with economic growth.

While he added that there was a mismatch between skills and education, he said GMAC would bring in international experts to the fair to train companies on how they can evaluate worker productivity with performance indicators.

“Cambodia should do better to follow market growth patterns, and workers should be more flexible in the demands of a job,” he said, adding that job-seekers generally lack the required skill sets for numerous industries.

“Because of a lack of quality and skilled labour, companies are always chasing after each other’s staff to fill vacancies,” he said. “This limits a worker’s ability to become more productive.”