The survey sought to understand how tech companies are hiring in 2023, as well as gather on-the-ground views from employers in various industries within Singapore, Indonesia, and Vietnam on their hiring strategies for this year.

Conducted between November and December 2022, we received responses from more than 200 companies. The findings provide a comprehensive overview of the current state of the job market and the hiring outlook for the region.

2023 is a year of great uncertainty – employers and talent are faced with geopolitical instability, rising interest rates, inflation, and recessionary fears. While blockchain and crypto hiring may have taken a back seat, the introduction of ChatGPT and other generative AI tech raises concerns about what jobs and industries will be taken over by AI.

Interestingly, we see demand for tech talent taper off, and revenue-generating roles increase as companies refocus on business fundamentals. In uncertain times, businesses will want to focus on investing in revenue-generating units, including sales and marketing. As a result, we expect to see back office teams, particularly larger enterprises, ramped up to handle increased business activity in a post-pandemic period.

We ask 219 employers across industries in Indonesia, Singapore, and Vietnam for their views and hiring sentiment for 2023. We also tracked China employers who are expanding their business and talent base to Southeast Asia. Finally, we looked at hiring sentiment among the region’s startups, SMEs, and MNCs. Here are our top findings:

Revenue-generating roles are taking center stage this year as business development and sales are the top priority across Indonesia, Singapore, Vietnam, and China.

The top three roles across markets are within BD and sales, marketing and PR, and software engineering. For China companies, tech and product capabilities are usually not an issue as they have a proven model from China. However, the biggest challenge is localization, so a key focus is to find the right business development hire to set up the local team.