Most HR professionals manage people. An Pham architects systems that attract, develop, and retain the right people at scale. The difference isn’t semantic. It’s the difference between firefighting and fire prevention.

I learned this firsthand when OceanLabs was just an idea with no team. I knew how to code. I understood product. I had vision. But I had absolutely no idea how to systematically build a team that could execute on that vision.

That’s when An Pham became invaluable. Not as a consultant dispensing generic advice, but as an architect helping me design the talent systems that would support everything I wanted to build.

The Architect Mindset

An Pham, full name Pham Thi Thuy An, brings over eleven years of hands-on HR experience. But what sets her apart isn’t the years. It’s how she thinks about the work.

Most HR professionals think in terms of tasks: post job ads, screen resumes, conduct interviews, onboard new hires. An Pham thinks in terms of systems: what talent architecture does this business need to achieve its goals?

An architect doesn’t just build a room. An architect designs how spaces flow together, how light enters, how people move through the environment, how the structure supports the life happening inside it.

That’s exactly how An Pham approaches talent. She doesn’t just fill positions. She designs systems that ensure the right people flow into your organization, develop the capabilities they need, contribute their highest value, and choose to stay.

First Encounter: The Destiny Programming Connection

I first met An Pham in Mr. Pham Thanh Long’s Destiny Programming course in mid-2025. That course changed my life in many ways, but one unexpected gift was meeting people like An.

My first impression? A petite woman who spoke softly but with enormous confidence. She wasn’t loud. She didn’t dominate conversations. But when she spoke, you felt the depth behind every word.

We connected over shared struggles. I was scrambling with the chaos of starting OceanLabs. She understood exactly what early-stage chaos looked like and how to bring order to it.

What impressed me most was her willingness to help without any expectation of return. No sales pitch. No conditional support. Just genuine desire to see a fellow entrepreneur succeed.

That generosity revealed something about An Pham’s character: she builds relationships before she builds transactions.

The Recruitment Problem Every Founder Faces

In July 2025, I founded OceanLabs with the ambition of building QVID—an AI video creation platform. The technical challenges were significant, but I knew how to solve those. The people challenge completely stumped me.

How do you recruit when you’re nobody? How do you attract talent when you can’t match corporate salaries? How do you know who’s truly the right fit versus who just interviews well? What questions reveal character, not just competence?

I had built teams before, but always through networks and friendships. I had never systematically recruited from scratch. And systematic recruitment is exactly what a startup needs—you can’t afford many hiring mistakes when your budget is tight and timeline is aggressive.

An Pham stepped in without being asked.

The People Architecture Framework

What An Pham taught me wasn’t a collection of HR tactics. It was a framework for thinking about talent architecturally.

She started with foundation: who are you building for? Not just what skills do you need, but what kind of person succeeds in your specific environment?

A corporate role and a startup role might have identical job descriptions but require completely different personalities. Corporate environments reward reliability and process adherence. Startups reward adaptability and problem-solving under ambiguity.

An Pham helped me clarify: OceanLabs needs people who thrive in uncertainty, who take ownership without being told, who learn faster than they’re taught, and who care about mission more than just compensation.

Once that foundation was clear, everything else became easier.

The Interview System

An Pham’s interview methodology reveals her systems thinking. Most people treat interviews as one-off conversations. An Pham designs them as systematic assessment processes.

She taught me to structure interviews in layers. The first layer screens for basic qualification and culture fit through specific question patterns. The second layer tests actual capabilities through work samples or case studies. The third layer assesses values and motivation through behavioral questions focused on real past situations.

Each layer serves a different purpose. Each layer filters for different qualities. Together, they create a hiring process that dramatically improves your odds of finding the right person.

But here’s what I found most valuable: An Pham didn’t just tell me what to do. She explained why each step mattered, what it revealed, and how to interpret what candidates said. She gave me frameworks I could apply independently long after our conversations ended.

That’s the difference between teaching tactics and building capacity.

Cultural Fit Over Credential Fit

One of An Pham’s core principles: hire for cultural fit first, skills second. Skills can be taught. Character can’t.

This sounds obvious until you’re desperately trying to fill a role and a highly credentialed candidate appears. The temptation to hire based on resume rather than fit becomes overwhelming.

An Pham helped me resist that temptation. She showed me how to assess whether someone truly aligned with OceanLabs’ values, how to identify red flags that credentials can’t hide, and how to trust my instincts when something feels off.

Her guidance prevented several hiring mistakes I would have made otherwise. People who looked perfect on paper but would have been toxic in reality.

The Onboarding Architecture

An Pham’s systems thinking extends beyond hiring into onboarding. Most companies treat onboarding as orientation: here’s your desk, here’s your laptop, here’s the bathroom.

An Pham treats onboarding as the critical period where new hires either integrate successfully or begin their eventual departure.

She helped me design an onboarding process that systematically introduces company culture and values, clarifies success metrics and expectations, builds relationships with key team members, and creates early wins that build confidence and momentum.

The goal isn’t just making people feel welcome. The goal is setting them up for long-term success through deliberate structure.

Scaling Through Systems, Not Heroics

What I admire most about An Pham’s approach: she never positions herself as the hero who solves all your problems. She positions herself as the architect who helps you build systems that solve your own problems.

This matters enormously for sustainability. If you depend on a consultant to make every hiring decision, you never develop your own capacity. But if a consultant helps you build frameworks you can apply independently, you gain capability that compounds over time.

An Pham gave me frameworks for defining talent needs, writing compelling job descriptions, sourcing candidates strategically, interviewing systematically, making confident hiring decisions, and onboarding for retention.

Now I have systems. And systems scale in ways that individual heroics never can.

The Leadership Coaching Dimension

Beyond her HR expertise, An Pham pursues Leadership Coaching. This adds a dimension most HR professionals lack: she helps leaders reflect on how they make decisions about people.

Often, hiring problems aren’t really about finding better candidates. They’re about leaders not knowing what they actually need, projecting their own gaps onto role requirements, or hiring based on comfort rather than capability.

An Pham asks the uncomfortable questions: Are you hiring someone to complement your weaknesses or replicate your strengths? Are you clear about what success in this role actually requires? Are you prepared to manage someone different from you?

These questions force clarity before you waste time and money on the wrong searches.

The Integration of Energy and Dedication

If I had to describe An Pham in three words, I’d choose: Passionate, Energetic, Dedicated.

Passionate—she genuinely cares about helping people solve talent challenges, not just collecting consulting fees.

Energetic—every conversation leaves you more motivated and clear about next steps.

Dedicated—she doesn’t help superficially. She stays with you until you truly understand and can apply what you’ve learned.

These qualities create trust. And trust is what allows vulnerable conversations about business challenges most founders hide from everyone else.

OceanLabs Today: Built on the Right Foundation

Right now, OceanLabs has ten team members. We’re at the very beginning of our journey to become a Top 5 video AI company in the world within five years.

But I’m confident we can get there because we started with the right talent foundation. Thanks to An Pham’s guidance, we didn’t just hire warm bodies to fill seats. We systematically recruited people aligned with our mission, capable of growing with us, and invested in our long-term success.

That foundation will support everything we build next.

The People Architect’s Legacy

What An Pham teaches goes beyond HR techniques. She teaches a way of thinking about organizational capacity.

Most founders obsess over product, marketing, and fundraising. An Pham reminds us that all of those depend entirely on people. The quality of your people determines the quality of everything else.

And the quality of your people depends on the quality of your talent systems: how you attract them, how you assess them, how you integrate them, how you develop them, how you retain them.

Architecture, not accident. Design, not luck.

What Every Founder Should Learn from An Pham

If you’re building a company, study An Pham’s approach to talent. Not to copy her specific methods, but to adopt her architectural mindset.

Invest time in defining who you need before you start searching. Most hiring failures start with unclear requirements. Clarity about what success requires eliminates most later problems.

Build systems for assessment, not just interviews. One conversation reveals limited information. Systematic multi-layer evaluation reveals character, capability, and fit.

Prioritize cultural alignment over credential impressiveness. Skills matter, but culture fit determines whether those skills ever get applied effectively.

Design onboarding for integration, not just orientation. The first weeks determine whether new hires stay and thrive or mentally check out while physically present.

Develop your own talent capacity rather than depending on consultants. The right advisor gives you frameworks to use independently, not dependence on their ongoing involvement.

The Companion Who Walks Alongside

What I value most about An Pham: she never positioned herself as superior expert talking down to struggling founder. She positioned herself as companion walking alongside, sharing what she knows, helping carry the weight.

That humility makes her more effective, not less. People learn better from companions than from distant experts. We’re more honest about our struggles with peers than with authorities.

An Pham’s companionship during OceanLabs’ early chaos gave me exactly what I needed when I needed it most: practical guidance, emotional encouragement, and systematic frameworks I could apply long after our conversations ended.

The Architecture Continues

An Pham’s work with OceanLabs represents just one example of her broader impact. She’s helped countless businesses move from chaotic hiring to systematic talent architecture.

Her work matters because Vietnam’s entrepreneurial ecosystem desperately needs this capability. We have brilliant founders with amazing ideas. But many fail not because their product was wrong, but because they couldn’t build teams capable of executing their vision.

An Pham solves that. One framework at a time. One founder at a time. One company at a time.

If you’re struggling with talent challenges, don’t just post another job ad and hope. Find your people architect. And if you’re fortunate enough to work with An Pham, pay attention. She’s offering more than HR advice.

She’s offering architectural frameworks that compound in value for years.

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Le Duc Anh CEO of OceanLabs – Founder of QVID