Category: Хүний Нөөц

Mongolia has a problem with workers who are not really into their jobs. 11% Of Mongolian workers are truly engaged in their work. This is according to Gallups global workplace survey. To understand what it means to be engaged it is more than showing up to work. It means you actually care if your projects succeed or fail. You want to help make things better. You are invested in your work.

So what about the 89% of workers? They are not really into their work. Some just show up. Do the minimum and some might even want their company to fail. This is a problem for managers and it affects a lot more than just the payroll.

It is also important to note that being engaged does not mean you are happy. You might like your office. If you do not care about your work, you are not engaged. Engaged workers treat the company’s problems like their problems. They want to help fix things and make things better not just because they are afraid of getting in trouble.

Gallup found that teams that are really engaged are 23% more profitable. This is true for companies around the world. In Mongolia the employee engagement rate is 11%, which is very low. In the USA the rate is 34%. This means that 11% of workers in Mongolia really care about their work and want to do a good job. The other 89% of workers are not really invested in their work. They might just be doing the minimum. They might be doing worse. This is not a small problem it is a big deal. It affects the economy in ways that’re hard to measure.

Engagement is not the same as happiness. Happy workers can still not be engaged. Engaged workers make the company’s problems their own problems. They want to fix things and make things better. If an employee gets an email on a Friday afternoon, they might reply away because they want to get it done not just because they are afraid of their boss.

Gallups research shows that Mongolia is behind the rest of the world when it comes to employee engagement. In the US 34% of workers are engaged. In Western Europe it is 13-15%. In East Asia it is even higher. This is not a cultural thing it is a sign of a bigger problem with how companies hire and treat their employees.

When workers are not engaged it can be very costly. It is not always obvious. It can sneak into little things like meetings starting late or reports being turned in on time but not being very good. Worldwide Gallup says that disengagement costs the economy $8.8 trillion in lost productivity. In Mongolia the exact cost is not known. It is likely to be very high.

What is really concerning is that many disengaged workers just stick around. They do not quit. They do not do a very good job either. They take up space that could be filled by someone who’s actually enthusiastic about their work. In Ulaanbaatar’s job market this just keeps a cycle of mediocrity going.

So why do people disconnect on the job? The reasons are surprisingly simple, Gallup surveys suggest workers need clear expectations, positive manager recognition, roles where their skills are used effectively, and opportunities to learn and grow.

Consider how many Mongolian workplaces are actually achieving these four things. Job descriptions are generally ambiguous, performance reviews occur perhaps once a year in a rushed discussion, and important tasks are put on hold in favor of a never-ending stream of “urgent” matters which have little to do with an employee’s defined role.

What has occurred is that people are simply showing up to work without being engaged. This isn’t because people are inherently lazy or apathetic. It’s simply because employers are failing to foster genuine engagement and no one is quantifying the true cost of this failure.

How the right match changes things

Engagement is fundamentally about a match. A professional who lands a role aligned with their capabilities where the expectations are clear, and pay ranges are disclosed openly, is practically engaged before the first day even begins. Achieving this perfect fit is a challenge in today’s market of fragmented information.

This is precisely where Lambda.Global provides a solution: it’s not necessarily about fixing disengagement, but it certainly elevates the chances of a strong match being made. Providing clear salary information in job listings allows both employers and candidates to bypass the complicated guesswork of salary negotiations. Asking candidates to pass tests based on skills rather than the beauty of their CVs automatically weeds out the unsuitable. Providing ongoing market information on skill value and demand enables professionals to focus their energies and training efforts where they are truly needed in the economy.

The most telling factor on the Lambda.Global platform is the amount of time saved. Job listings where clear salary information is available and where a wide range of candidates are encouraged to apply are filling up in a fraction of the time they typically take through traditional means. The speed itself is not important; the match quality is.

A speedy hire implies that a suitable candidate has seen and deemed the offer worthwhile. This correlates directly to the increased employee engagement in that individual’s role. Conversely, a lengthy, protracted job search and subsequent low-quality hire that ultimately ends up in a problematic situation for both sides will often result in high employee turnover come the following year.

A small change that yields enormous results

Double the engagement rate overnight simply isn’t in the cards; we’ve been at 11% for years and it’s going to take years to climb. However, massive national initiatives and cultural overhauls aren’t required to spark this change. Most business improvements happen when employers are armed with the right information. Companies need to know the going market rate for a position to extend competitive offers. Employees need to understand which skills are truly in demand in the economy to avoid wasting time and money on pointless certifications.

Lambda.Global provides this vital information. Unlike companies focused on motivational buzzwords and thought leadership blogs about work-life balance, it taps into constantly updated real-time data driven by market demands. Ultimately, the 89% of disengaged workers in Mongolia aren’t a lost cause, they are simply waiting for good reason to care and the right match may be a start to it.

References

1. Gallup, State of the Global Workplace Report
2. Gallup, How to Improve Employee Engagement in the Workplace 
3. Lambda.Global, internal placement data (2025–2026)

For quite some time, getting the best job in UB has revolved around being able to know the right person in the industry. While this practice continues to hold up, it brings with it the drawback of repeatedly listening to the same names, the same referrals and the same salary predictions. Platforms like Lambda.Global are revolutionizing the process by incorporating something that was not there before – real data presented in English.

Professional circles in the city are quite narrow. However, what powers career development today are no longer coffee meetings or conference badges. Today’s job matching platforms, talent hubs and professional networks are gradually taking over many aspects of the process that had once been covered by informal discussions.

The coffee meetings had their limits

The previous method allowed for some dramatic shifts with a simple introduction. However, this practice came with the limitations related to having too narrow circles to produce relevant results. Moreover, the system excluded Mongolians abroad who could become valuable contributors to the local industry. As a result, only candidates that were present at these gatherings would be included in the selection process, whereas many others were left ignored.

A report by the International Labor Organization in 2025 highlighted how skill shortages in percentages ranging from 10 to 20% were experienced even in traditional sectors like cashmere. This clearly illustrated that the problem was not about lack of workforce. Rather, it was about mismatching of job applicants and employers due to inability of connecting effectively with each other. The old-style networking proved unable to solve the problem.

The platforms that got there first

Local job boards have always played a significant role in the job market of Mongolia. Luckily, this problem was solved through online platforms which increased the visibility of a vacancy to thousands of people within just days as compared to previous methods which took many days or weeks. These websites became the starting point for all new job seekers.

But posting jobs does not mean analyzing the labor market. One vacancy may attract hundreds of applications, but both parties get little information about the salary, the rising demand for their skills or a potential match somewhere else in another industry who missed the chance of applying for the job because they never saw the vacancy.

Specialties of Lambda.Global

As it has entered an existing market, Lambda.Global knew it wouldn’t succeed by creating yet another job board. Instead, it focused on addressing the gaps in that market like the lack of data-driven insights, data in English, and connection with the verified talent pool.

First, while other websites continue publishing outdated benchmarking data based on the voluntary self-reporting surveys of their members, since 2022, Lambda.Global provides compensation benchmarks based on the actual placements made. While other job boards provide skills reports based on the skills expected in the future according to the latest government forecasts, Lambda.Global tells about which skills companies really need at this very moment.

The choice between the two training courses or an unknown company’s job offer might be hard, but the market data on current skills can make it much easier.

Lambda.Global works entirely in English. While hundreds of Mongolian citizens working abroad are eager to return home for work and many international companies seek skilled Mongolians to expand their operations in Mongolia, a large part of the market remains hidden behind language barriers.

As it is reflected in the platform’s own placement statistics, positions advertised with clear compensation information and unlimited search criteria tend to be filled twice as quickly as those advertised based only on the traditional recruiting principles. This trend does not only demonstrate the increased speed of recruiting. It is also indicative of the fact that when the labor market is becoming more transparent, the matching process gets significantly better.

Networking did not perish. It evolved.

None of this, however, is saying goodbye to relationships. Relationships still require trust and good reputation in a small city. The only thing different is that relationships are now augmented by data, not replaced. Hiring managers still place value in a referral. However, referrals are even more valuable when coupled with a clear salary expectation based on the data and true competencies required. Job seekers still have an advantage of being acquainted with the right people inside companies. But this advantage can be further enhanced through having access to the same data and knowledge.

Lambda.Global does not replace the coffee talk with the recruiter. It ensures that this coffee talk will be data-driven. And it provides opportunities for many professionals who were never invited to these coffee talks before.

References

1. ILO, Survey finds job quality key to attracting youth to Mongolia’s cashmere sector
2. MONTSAME, Additional Jobs Centers to Be Established Nationwide
3. World Bank, Skills demand in Mongolia: Main Findings of the Skills Module of the Barometer Survey
4. Lambda.Global, Sector Salary and Skills Reports
5. Jarnias Cyril, Mongolia Job Market for Expats (2026)

The foreign workforce in Mongolia is expanding rapidly whilst the crucial info expats need is still locked behind language barriers and outdated channels. Lambda.Global is part of the components that are unlocking it.

A friend of mine used to work in the procurement team at Oyu Tolgoi project. From her experience, all of the expats who arrived with her went through roughly the same first month. They all had firsthand excitement, followed by paperwork confusion, followed by the realization that nobody had told them half of what they needed to know. What tripped them up was everything around the job and neither the job itself, the role, the equipment nor the people were an issue.

By late 2025, over 37,000 foreign nationals from 138 countries were registered as residents in Mongolia. About 23,800 were employed under formal contracts in the third quarter of 2025 alone which is a jump of more than 33% from 2024. That means more than half of them are here for work. Obviously, mining remains the anchor with around 5,200 expats but construction, manufacturing and education are all drawing people in rising numbers. In fact, the government is even debating legislation to ease quotas and reduce the monthly fees companies pay for each foreign hire which currently run at twice the minimum wage per worker. This is a market that wants skilled outsiders. The question is whether it knows how to welcome them properly or not.

The compensation puzzle

At larger mining operations, expat salaries can range from USD 3,000 to USD 8,000 a month with housing, transport and school fees. An English teacher at a good international school in Ulaanbaatar might see USD 2,500. These numbers sit in a strange relation to the local average salary which hovers around USD 500 to 720 a month. The gap is wide enough that an incoming foreigner can easily misread the market.

This is not information that appears in a welcome packet. The government websites have accurate data but they are mostly in Mongolian and the expat forums are full of threads from 2018. Maybe the recruitment agencies are useful but they represent a narrow slice of opportunities. So that narrows it down to the fact that someone who arrives in Ulaanbaatar with a signed contract is essentially assembling a market picture from fragments.

Language is the first wall

English is making steady progress in Mongolia’s professional ground, especially among younger workers and in internationally facing companies. However, it is still far from universal. Many documents such as government forms, rental agreements, bank documents and even the labels on a pharmacy shelf are rarely seen in English. To combat this, the Immigration Agency recently launched an AI-powered chatbot that can answer questions in multiple languages which is a helpful step. Unfortunately, a chatbot will not be able to tell a newly arrived geologist whether the salary they were offered matches what the contractor down the road is paying someone with identical experience.

From what I saw at Oyu Tolgoi project, the expats who adapted fastest were not the ones with the best technical skills but the ones who found reliable information early were. They knew what a reasonable rent in Mongolia looked like and whether the company’s visa support was as solid as promised. The people who arrived with good information settled in and started contributing.

Lambda.Global filling the gap

Lambda.Global is not going to help someone find a dentist or register with a local clinic. But for the professional side of an expat’s life, it is built on exactly the right principle. The entire platform operates in English. That fact alone sets it apart in a market where most career resources are locked behind a language barrier that many foreigners never fully cross.

Beyond language, Lambda provides the kind of market visibility that is usually only available to locals with deep networks. Lambda bases its benchmarking on concrete placement rather than outdated surveys based on self-reports. This way, a mining engineer contemplating relocation to Mongolia knows what kind of salary he can expect today, rather than two years ago.

Moreover, Lambda surfaces opportunities that would otherwise remain invisible to anyone outside the inner circles of the professional network in UB. A foreigner who has not yet built relationships here has no access to the word-of-mouth pipeline that fills so many roles. Lambda opens that aperture. It shows what is available, in English, with data attached.

All of the above point to one key fact which is that Mongolia wants and needs skilled foreign professionals. Wishing for competent professionals and making sure it is easy for them to perform at their best is another matter entirely. Fortunately, the divide consists of little things that can be solved, such as a lack of consistency, language barriers and uncertainty about costs and incomes. Lambda.Global is one of the few platforms attacking that divide directly with data that is accurate, current and readable to someone who just got off a plane.

Conclusion

The foreign professionals who make it work here are the ones who get good information early. Unfortunately, the ones who leave after six months of frustration are often the ones who never found it. Lambda.Global can make things clearer for them. And in a country where clarity has historically been nothing more than a myth, that is worth more than most people realize.

References

1. MONTSAME, Mongolia’s Foreign Population Exceeds 37,000
2. MONTSAME, Over 50% of Foreign Nationals Reside for Employment Purposes 
3. MONTSAME, 在蒙古国就业的外国人数量增加33.6% 
4. MONTSAME, Around 9,900 Foreign Nationals Employed in Mongolia as of March 2025 
5. Jarnias Cyril, Mongolia Job Market for Expats: Opportunities, Salaries, and Growing Sectors 
6. NNRoad, Mongolia Plans to Relax Foreign Worker Quotas and Fees 
7. MONTSAME, AI-Powered Chatbot Now Offers Information Services in All Languages 
8. Lambda.Global, Salary Trends and Compensation Insights in Mongolia 

As of this moment, someone could be rearranging their LinkedIn profile for the fourth time this month and it’s not because they are looking for a job. Perhaps they are looking for the feeling of moving forward in life even though the actual direction hasn’t changed in three years.

This is not a character flaw at all. It is totally a human response to a market with exponentially noisy signals where busywork feels like progress. On the other hand, Mongolia’s economy is genuinely shifting and the people who know where to look get the real opportunities. But most are too busy curating their digital presence to notice where the ground is actually moving.

The certificate dilemma

It is common these days for people to collect a folder full of completion certificates. Maybe they have an introduction to Python they started and never finished and a blockchain basics course they took in 2022 and have not mentioned since. At the time, each one felt like a step forward but they often amount to a lot of motion without much momentum most of the times.

Some might think that the problem is with the lack of ambition. In truth, it is a lack of signal because that person ends up collecting credentials when nobody tells them what the market actually values. It is definitely pleasant to look at but not especially useful for navigation.

Lambda.Global has been quietly solving this. The platform tracks what employers are genuinely requesting, not what sounds impressive in a webinar advertisement. When the data shows that AI literacy is now appearing in job descriptions across banking, logistics, and professional services that is a signal worth following. When it shows that a certain certification has stopped showing up entirely, that is also useful. It saves someone from spending a precious weekend on something that already expired.

Meanwhile, Mongolian offices have perfected a certain kind of ritual. It’s an ordinary ritual to have a meeting of all employees that exists mostly to confirm that everyone is still employed. The employees write reports, file them and never brought up again. The higher-ups have an email chain that grows longer than the project it was meant to support. These rituals share a common feature of looking like work. Yes, they do feel like work but they do something sneaky over time. They consume the hours that could have been spent on actual skill development.

An employee who spends two hours a day in status update meetings will end up attending ten hours of meetings by the end of the week. To calculate the total hours, that is roughly 500 hours or about 20 full working days. They spent all that time confirming what a two-line email could have handled. The traffic in Ulaanbaatar city already steals enough time. The least a workplace can do is not invent new ways to waste what remains.

The organizations that have figured out how to do that are usually those that figured out hiring and retention too. Data at Lambda.Global suggests a subtle change in the works. Companies that have detailed and goal-oriented job descriptions as well as value autonomy fill positions better than those who create bingo cards for employees.

The diaspora that knows too much to come back

Let’s say a Mongolian engineer in Seoul keeps an eye on job listings back home. She sees the same corporate language that was being used five years ago where it says “dynamic environment”, “fast-paced team”, and “competitive salary” with no real numbers attached. She compares this to the clarity she gets from employers in her current market with specific skills, specific tools and specific pay bands. As a result, she will make the decision to stay put for another year in South Korea.

The diaspora abroad is large, skilled and surprisingly open to returning. IOM data puts the number at over 210,000 Mongolians abroad. Many of them are in their 20’s and 30’s with skills that the domestic market desperately needs. They aren’t going to slog through all the jargon that surrounds their job to discover one that might be suitable for them.They need the signal that is shrouded in vagueness right now. Lambda.Global delivers this signal by unveiling the truth hidden behind the veil, in actual figures, and not in just a lot of buzzwords.

The hidden simple truth

Mongolia’s digital infrastructure works. The government is training tens of thousands of people. The private sector is hungry for talent. The missing piece is not another platform, another app, another networking event. It is clarity.Employees need to know which skills are actually gaining value. Companies need to know who is genuinely qualified and what they should expect to pay. Both sides are currently guessing.

Lambda.Global trades guesswork for data. Not the kind of data that sits in a PDF and gets ignored. The kind that updates as the market updates and tells you, without flattery, what is actually happening. In a professional culture that sometimes confuses motion with progress, that is not just helpful. It is the difference between spending a career looking busy and actually moving forward.

References

1. World Bank, Skills demand in Mongolia: Main Findings of the Skills Module of the Barometer Survey 
2. MONTSAME, AI, Data, Drones, and Cybersecurity Professions in High Demand in Mongolia 
3. IOM, New Era for Diaspora Engagement in Mongolia 
4. Lambda.Global, Sector Salary and Skills Reports (2025–2026)

Most Mongolian organizations default to posting a job and waiting. For junior roles, that works. For the positions that actually determine whether a company grows or stalls, it rarely does. Lambda.Global was built on a different premise, and the results consistently prove why it matters.

There are two ways to hire in Mongolia. The first is familiar: write a job description, post it, and wait to see who applies. It is accessible, relatively low-cost, and for a wide range of roles, it produces a workable candidate pool. The second is less familiar to many organizations but increasingly essential for senior and specialist roles: go and find the person, whether or not they are looking.

The distinction between these two approaches is not just procedural. It reflects a fundamentally different understanding of where Mongolia’s best professionals actually are and how they make career decisions. The short answer is that most of them are not browsing job boards on a Tuesday afternoon. They are employed, performing well, and open to the right conversation if someone has the credibility and the network to initiate it.

Lambda.Global was built to have that conversation. Understanding when a job post is the right tool and when executive search is the only tool that will actually work is the starting point for any serious hiring strategy in this market.

When a Job Post Is Enough

Job postings work well under specific conditions that are worth being clear about. They work when the role has a large enough pool of qualified candidates actively looking for junior and mid-level positions in sectors with a reasonable supply, roles with clear and standard requirements, and positions where the hiring organization’s employer brand is strong enough to attract unsolicited interest.

They also work when speed and volume are the primary requirements when an organization needs to hire ten analysts in a quarter or fill a standard operational role across multiple locations. In these contexts, the passive approach of waiting for applications is both practical and efficient.

Mongolia’s job portal ecosystem has matured meaningfully. LinkedIn penetration among Mongolian professionals under 35 is growing steadily. For the right type of role, these platforms deliver a usable candidate pool within days of posting.

When It Does Not

The job post model breaks down consistently and expensively when applied to roles it was not designed for. Senior leadership positions. Highly specialist technical roles. Confidential searches where the organization cannot publicly signal that a position is open. Roles where the best candidate is currently employed, performing well, and has no particular reason to be scrolling job boards at this moment in their career.

70%   of the global workforce are passive candidates – not actively looking, but open to the right conversation (LinkedIn Global Talent)

That figure reframes the job posting problem directly. If 70% of the most qualified professionals in any given field are not actively applying for roles, a hiring strategy that relies entirely on inbound applications is, by definition, accessing only 30% of the available talent. For junior roles, that 30% may be sufficient. For a CFO search, a technology director mandate, or a country manager appointment, it is not.

Mongolia’s executive talent pool compounds this problem further. The country’s senior professional community is small, well-connected, and largely employed. The best candidates for most C-suite and director-level roles in Ulaanbaatar are not people who would respond to a job post; they are people who need to be identified, approached with a credible and specific conversation, and given a reason to consider a move they had not been actively contemplating.

What Headhunting Actually Involves

Executive search is frequently misunderstood as a more expensive version of recruitment. It is more accurately described as a different activity altogether. Recruitment manages inbound candidates. Executive search goes outbound to find the right one.

Lambda.Global’s process for a senior mandate begins not with a job description but with a market map. Who are the people currently in comparable roles across Mongolia’s relevant sectors? Who has recently moved, and why? Who has the international experience or technical depth the role requires? Who is known through Lambda’s network and through structured research to be open to the right conversation, even if they have not said so publicly?

That mapping process produces a targeted list of individuals who match the mandate’s requirements. Each of them is approached directly, confidentially, and with enough specificity about the opportunity to make the conversation worth having. The ones who are interested enter a structured evaluation process. The ones who are not become part of a network that Lambda.Global maintains for future searches because in a market this small, the person who is not right for this role may be exactly right for the next one.

50%   faster time-to-hire through specialized executive search vs open job posting for senior roles – Higher Careers Mongolia, 2025

Why Lambda.Global

Mongolia’s executive search market has grown meaningfully in recent years. Organizations like MSDI Pro, Higher Careers, and others have built genuine capability in senior placement. The market for professional search services in Mongolia is more developed than it was a decade ago, and that development reflects the seriousness with which leading Mongolian organizations now approach leadership hiring.

Lambda.Global operates in this space with a specific and deliberate positioning. The platform combines executive search capability with a technology infrastructure that allows for more systematic talent mapping, candidate tracking, and market intelligence than traditional agency models. For organizations hiring across multiple roles or building leadership pipelines rather than filling individual vacancies, this matters; it means Lambda.Global is not starting from scratch with each search but drawing on a continuously maintained view of Mongolia’s professional talent landscape.

The industries Lambda.Global serves most actively fintech, financial services, mining and energy, technology, and executive leadership across sectors, precisely the ones where passive candidate access is most critical and where the job-post model is most likely to produce a suboptimal result. A fintech company looking for a head of product who understands both the technical and regulatory environment of Mongolian digital banking is not going to find that person on a job board. They are going to find them through a network that knows the market well enough to identify who they are before the search begins.

The Practical Decision

The question every Mongolian hiring manager should ask before deciding how to fill a role is simple: Is the best candidate for this position actively looking right now? If the answer is probably yes, if the role is junior, standard, and draws from a reasonable active candidate pool, post the job. It will work.

If the answer is probably not, if the role is senior, specialist, or confidential, if the organization has posted before and been disappointed, or if the cost of getting it wrong is high, do not post and wait. Find the person. That is what Lambda.Global is for.

In Mongolia’s talent market, the difference between finding the right person and settling for the best available applicant is often the difference between a leadership team that drives the organization forward and one that holds it in place. That difference is worth the investment in getting the search right and worth partnering with an organization that does this specifically, in this market, with the network and methodology to deliver it.

SOURCES & REFERENCES

1.  Higher Careers – C-Suite Recruitment in Mongolia (September 2025)

50% faster time-to-hire via specialized search; market mapping methodology; returnee talent pipeline; PwC CEO Survey 2025 context.

https://www.higher.careers/blog/2025/09/c-suite-recruitment-mongolia-executive-search

2.  Higher Careers – Executive Search Services in Mongolia (September 2025)

Headhunting vs standard recruitment distinction; market mapping, confidential outreach, leadership assessment methodology overview.

https://www.higher.careers/blog/2025/09/executive-search-services-mongolia

3.  Higher Careers – Why Headhunting Is Indispensable for Mongolia’s Competitive Industries (2025)

Sector-specific headhunting needs: mining, fintech, renewable energy, professional services; precision targeting and confidentiality value.

https://www.higher.careers/blog/2025/09/headhunting-mongolia-competitive-industries-2025

4.  9CV9 Blog – How to Find and Hire Employees in Mongolia in 2025

HeadHunter Mongolia, BizNetwork, LinkedIn reach in Mongolian market; job portal landscape; executive search firm overview. https://blog.9cv9.com/how-to-find-and-hire-employees-in-mongolia-in-2025/

5.  9CV9 Blog – Top 10 Best Recruitment Agencies in Mongolia in 2026

GDP 6.5% growth 2026; labor force 1.4M; MSDI Pro headhunting focus; SSC Mongolia and Higher Careers service models. https://blog.9cv9.com/top-10-best-recruitment-agencies-in-mongolia-in-2026/

6.  LinkedIn Global Talent Trends – Passive Candidate Data

70% of global workforce are passive candidates; active candidate pool limitations for senior role searches; talent acquisition strategy framework.

Five years ago, very few people were talking about AI literacy, cybersecurity, data infrastructure or cross functional digital skills. Whereas, companies throw these words around in almost every conversation about hiring in today’s environment.

The deeper problem is that the market has changed more rapidly than the average person’s ability to track where it is going. Both companies and employees know who these companies need and why the employees need to adapt, but the signal gets lost somewhere in the middle of the two.

Statistics behind the subject

A MONTSAME report from January 2025 showed that over 27,000 professionals are needed in Mongolia’s information and communication technology sector alone. It named AI, data science, cybersecurity, drones and software development as the highest demanded fields. These are not just niche requests from a few corporations. This is the direction the entire economy is leaning.

Moreover, the World Bank’s 2022 skills survey in Mongolia had already indicated that employers were ranking soft skills such as communication and problem solving above technical certifications when they described what made a good hire. Employers were not saying the workforce was empty, but they were saying that it was misaligned.

By 2025, the Mongolian government had responded with several large-scale programs. To name a few, the Ministry of Digital Development signed a three-year agreement with Oracle to train over 60,000 public sector employees and citizens in AI, database management, data security and information technology. Additionally, the National AI Program supported by UNICEF Mongolia and M Bank set a target of training 500 professionals as a first wave. Lastly, Golomt Bank backed an “AI for Women” initiative that gave 100 female teachers and 100 female students access to AI education.

The visibility gap

The problem is not that no one is learning. It is that most people have no easy way of knowing what is worth learning next. A financial analyst in Ulaanbaatar might hear that AI is important. But important how? Important for whom? Which specific AI related skill would make her more effective in her role next year versus just being a buzzword on her CV? These questions have real answers but the answers are scattered across government reports, industry surveys and international studies that most working professionals never see.

There is a growing distance between what the economy is asking for and what professionals know about those demands. That distance is the real gap. Filling it does not require a university degree or a government program. It requires information that is clear, current and specific to the Mongolian market.

Importance of Lambda.Global

Lambda.Global has a market intelligence function. Through its sector reports and skills data, Lambda tracks which capabilities are rising in demand across industries and which are flattening. It translates broad economic shifts into practical signals that a professional can actually use.

The salaries and skills information that comes out of Lambda is based on transactional data, not voluntary survey results. This is important because voluntary surveys will always skew towards those who have something to say, not necessarily those who represent the average employee. Transactional data tells you what employers are really paying for and really looking for.

When the reports show that AI related skills are appearing in job descriptions far beyond the technology sector, that tells a different story than the one about AI replacing everyone. It suggests AI literacy is becoming a baseline expectation across roles, not a specialist path for coders.

Lambda does not train people. It is not a university. But it makes the market visible in a way that helps people decide what to train for. In a country where over 27,000 ICT professionals are needed and where government programs are scrambling to train tens of thousands more. It can make the difference between guessing and knowing.

Why today is different

Economic waves in the past in Mongolia were mostly linked to the cycles of the prices of commodities. An increase in copper prices led to an increase in recruitment while a decrease meant the opposite. The new wave is, however, quite different from the others since the skills demanded by the economy are not dependent on the prices of these commodities but rather to technology adoption within and outside the country.

That makes the skills conversation more urgent and less cyclical than it used to be. A person who invested in the right capabilities during a mining downturn in 2015 was playing a waiting game. A person who invests in the right capabilities during this current shift is not waiting. They are positioning themselves for a different kind of economy entirely.

Conclusion

Mongolia produces thousands of graduates each year and the diaspora alone counts more than 210,000 Mongolians abroad. According to IOM data, many of them highly skilled and concentrated in the 25 to 34 age bracket. The labor shortage is in the connection between what those people know and what the market now needs. Closing that gap depends on making the market’s demands transparent, current and accessible to everyone.

Lambda.Global is building that transparency. It’s built through a process that will change as the market changes and not through one-time reports gathering dust on a shelf. This is more than just a significant contribution to the economic growth of the nation. It is a fundamental one.

References

1. MONTSAME, AI, Data, Drones, and Cybersecurity Professions in High Demand in Mongolia
2. World Bank, Skills demand in Mongolia: Main Findings of the Skills Module of the Barometer Survey (2022)
3. Oracle Academy Blog, Ministry of Digital Development, Innovation and Communications of Mongolia launches a three-year AI and big data skills development program in collaboration with Oracle
4. MONTSAME, 2,500 Specialists and Teachers to Be Trained in Artificial Intelligence
5. Golomt Bank, Golomt Bank supports the “National AI campaign”
6. IOM, New Era for Diaspora Engagement in Mongolia (2025)
7. Lambda.Global, Sector Salary and Skills Reports (2025–2026)

Does being a female employee in Mongolia increases the chance of depression in Mongolia? The simple answer is yes. According to the study “Anxiety, depression, and brain overwork in the general population of Mongolia” indicates that in Mongolia’s younger generation are more prone to anxiety and stress. The study found strong correlation between the age and employment status with stress. Particularly, young women are found to be more prone to stress and anxiety. Another study conducted by the Asian Development Bank found that female employees spend three times more on childcare duties and household works compared to male counterparts. The National University of Mongolia’s study confirmed this finding as they have also discovered that educated women spent more time on unpaid care duties compared to the women with no education or primary education. Study on “Job Tenure and Mental Health in the Mongolian Workplace” also revealed that while blue-collar men’s depression was 27%, women’s were significantly high at 41%. 

All these numbers are telling us that female employees, particularly those in their childbearing age of 20-39 are prone to depression, as they carry out unpaid care work aside their full-time work. To address this issue, Vision 2050, the long-term development policy approved by the Mongolian parliament, promises an improved work–life balance through the introduction of more flexible working hours for working parents. Plus, Vision 2050 aims to increase the number and accessibility of kindergartens and other social services. 
This is a correct measure, if it can be fully implemented on the ground as the study shows that offering free public childcare increases mothers’ employment by 4.5 percentage points in Mongolia. 

“Moreover, international studies show that childcare and flexible hours for parents with young children are associated with reduced parental stress, absenteeism, and staff turnover, as well as increased staff satisfaction and commitment”.

The Save the Children and UNICEF Mongolia promotes Child Rights and Business Principles. The Principle encourages for creating a child and family friendly workplaces around the globe. The first private sector representative that set an example to other private companies in Mongolia was the TESO Corporation. It is the verified and one of top members of the Lambda Global, with an average of eight vacancy advertisements per month. The advantage of Lambda Global is that it verifies the employers’ information including the benefits. If you go to the profile of the TESO Corporation, you can find in the benefits section, that they offer a free kindergarten to the employee’s children. Actually, the kindergarten “Zuv bagachuud” is actively operating since 2019. 

According to TESO, “over 60 per cent of its employees have children aged from 2 to 5 years. The Corporation demonstrated that having an on-site kindergarten played a significant role in increasing employees’ satisfaction by 9 percent and decreasing staff turnover year after year”. 

What an achievement! This is the real action not only to prevent female employee’s stress and anxiety, but taking a huge burden of doing the unpaid care work. It also affects the female labor force participation rate. As studies revealed, majority of working age female in Mongolia are staying at home and undertaking an unpaid care work. This negatively affects the women’s career at the individual level and country’s economic growth at the macro level. 
Therefore, all the organizations, especially the big ones are encouraged to take the initiative and create a family friendly work place. 

References:
1. Anxiety, depression, and brain overwork in the general population of Mongolia, Battuvshin.L et al,2024.
2. Impact of Gender inequality on long-term economic growth in Mongolia, the Asian Development Bank, 2022.
3. Job Tenure and Mental Health in the Mongolian Workplace, Ach Medical University and National Yang Ming Chiao Tung University of Taiwan, 2024.
4. Mapping the Care system in Mongolia, What do we know?, the National University of Mongolia, 2025.
5. Mongolia’s companies to invest in on-site kindergartens UNICEF promotes the development of child-friendly workplaces, UNICEF,2022.
6. Navigating Labor Market Challenges with a Focus on Youth and Women’s Employment: labor Supply Analysis for Mongolia, the World Bank, 2024.