Archives December 2006

QUALITY CONTROLLER (TRAINER)

Company introduction:
a number of successful operating companies with a worldwide coverage. With establishments in Europe (the Netherlands and Belgium) and Asia (Shanghai and Hong Kong) provide for each need in metal components: from standard fasteners to all other types of “custom made”metal- and or plastic components.

Job description:
1.Responsible for the total quality management of products and deliveries in China.
2.Monitor the quality and check the actual products when needed.
3.Evaluate and report directly to the Project manager but also the Quality manager in the Netherlands.
4.Analyze possible problems and issue solutions which include visiting of suppliers and factories.
5.As a trainer and give guidance to several Chinese co-workers who cooperate within the purchase department team.
6.Implementation of zero defect system is of great importance.

Your profile:
1.Minimum education of BA (Bachelor).
2.Good knowledge of production processing on metal products and surface treatments.
3.You are technically well grounded through education or experience and have a commercial approach when it comes to problem solving.
4.Accurate and disciplinary, able to work individually as well as in a team.
5.Coaching but especially training of Chinese co-workers, Chinese culture.
6.Initiative and able to organize and plan your activities.
7.Fluency in English is required. Familiar Word, Excel and Outlook.
8.European with work experience in China is desired

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_sh@dacare.com’

Achievo’s approach to finding talent in China

By Ian Lamont on Mon, 12/18/2006 – 12:28pm
Last week for the Computerworld Weekly I/O podcast, I interviewed James Zhang, vice president of human resources for Achievo. This Silicon Valley company has capitalized on Western and Japanese firms’ interest in outsourcing software development work to China, where costs are cheaper. Zhang told me the privately held company has grown rapidly since being founded several years ago, and now has more than one thousand employees in North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia.

However, the competition for talented developers in Asia has led to high turnover in some cities. Achievo’s strategy for recruiting and retaining developers in China includes setting up partnerships with universities and training institutes across China, in addition to Beijing and other economic centers, where competition and costs are higher. The institutions that have already partnered with Achievo include:

Beijing ACEIT Training Institute
Beijing Information Technology Institute
Hunan Vocational College of Science and Technology
Shenzhen University
Zhuhai College of Jilin University
While industry-academic partnerships are nothing new, they are a first for some of the institutions approached by Achievo, and also entail alterations to the curriculum for those students who are interested in working for Achievo after graduation. A transcript of a portion of my interview with Zhang follows:

Computerworld: Achievo has a very interesting HR strategy, to find talent in China. You’ve created a series of partnerships with local training institutes and universities. Can you describe generally how these partnerships work?

Zhang: My plan is to strategically select some partner, mapping [to where] we have operations in China. Because China is so big. You cannot really [depend on] just one university to supply [talent] from North to South, from East to West. People have a different regions, [and] styles, and … habits, so they probably want to live and work close to their [home] region. We have four universities lined up with us, and we have one training institution lined up with us. Then the schools will specifically tailor some courses for the people who are interested in working for Achievo for the long term. So those students will be having some courses being switched to what we like them to have. And then they will take an internship to come to our company to work for us for several months, [to work toward their] graduation, their essays or final papers. We need to do the interviews to see who will be qualified, and then they will join Achievo. So there’s progress, and a program set up.

Computerworld: Why bother doing this? Can’t you just put an advertisement in the local newspaper, saying that you are looking for talented people? Or use other channels, like an H.R. agency to find people?

Zhang: Well, the [personnel] strategy needs to match the long-term growth of the company. The company is growing very fast, and doing very well. The university program is specifically targeting entry level engineers, which from cost-competitiveness and also from the supply pool, this will be the best source that we can get candidates.

Computerworld: How many graduates from these training institutes and universities will Achievo be able to recruit in your plan?

Zhang: We are looking for probably several hundred that we will need to hire next year from the university program.

Computerworld: So have you been able to hire anyone so far, or you really just got this off the ground?

Zhang: Yes. I think we have recruited close to a hundred [people] already through two universities and one training institute. And there are two more [programs] that we have set up, and one more [program] that will be finalized in a two-week timeframe.

Recruiting The Different Types of Job Seekers

There are many types of job seekers, and knowing which you¡¯re recruiting for can make your job attracting the right applicants and getting them through to the offer process much easier. Here¡¯s a profile of 3 major types.

The High Maintenance Job Seeker
High maintenance job seekers tend to increase when the stakes are higher. These might be for senior talent or leadership positions. In fact, it¡¯s perfectly appropriate for these job seekers to be higher maintenance ¨C there¡¯s more on the line for both the employee and the company.

The high maintenance job seeker is marked by the need for more attention, more information, more interview time, more decision making time, and more negotiation. The reason for the extra time is simple ¨C money is not as important. When a senior talent or leader is thinking of joining your organization, the employer brand, culture and peer group are exponentially more important. It takes time for a person to decide if the employer brand is real and if the employees that surround them will match the personal needs of the job seeker.

By tailoring your recruiting strategy to the high maintenance job seeker for the appropriate positions, you¡¯ll be more able to understand their unique wants and needs and have more success in converting them to employees.

The Habitual Job Seeker
Being a habitual job seeker is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of these people should probably be consultants, but not all of them may qualify. At the lower levels of employment and maybe at the senior levels, habitual job seekers may not be desirable. At the lowest level it may not actually matter, but you don¡¯t really want to train receptionists and administrative assistants on an ongoing basis. Similarly with senior leadership positions, they will need enough time to execute on their strategy and see it successful.

In the middle tier, there might be need for short and mid term employees for specific projects or to act as turnaround agents. These are the perfect spots for habitual job seekers. They enjoy new challenges and get bored easily if they don¡¯t constantly try new things. Occasionally you¡¯ll find a habitual job seeker that is worth hanging on to (in fact there are many out there who are wonderful ¨C they just have commitment problems). This is where your recruiting department¡¯s partnership with talent management is critical. Transferring these employees from project to project or allowing them a growth path unrestricted by manager¡¯s desires to ¡°hold on¡± to them can give you the benefits of these employees for a much longer time.

What¡¯s important about the habitual job seeker is that the work is important, but not the employer brand, culture, or other employees.

The Indifferent Job Seeker
The indifferent job seeker may be the most problematic. Even with alternatives where high degrees of employer brand exist, the indifferent job seeker is really looking for the highest wage. This employee is hard to engage and will easily choose to leave when a better wage opportunity exists. Identifying and avoiding these types of job seekers early in the process and certainly before you offer them a job will save you much headache in the future.

Recruiting in the Creative Age: Portfolios

Experience and education are the two pieces of information that most recruiters use to determine whether someone is a fit for a job. These two measures are easy to understand, widely accepted and easy to communicate. They are perfect measures of a likelihood that someone will be able to do a great job. Except for the fact that, in the Creative Age, they don’t work.

Regardless of which age it is, it is hard to describe all the factors that go into deciding whether someone is a good fit for a job: personal factors, relative maturity, diversity of background in experience, comfort with learning, flexibility and openness to change and reaction in difficult situations are all important. None of them can be described by looking at a diploma or a resume.

In the Creative Age, a person’s ability to create / produce under highly unique and individualized situations is the single most critical factor in deciding whether someone can produce in your situation. So how do you determine this if you can’t use experience and education? A portfolio.

Artists of all types have been using portfolios to show their ability since before the renaissance. It’s now time to expand that concept to all candidates. When I talk with someone about a project management job, or a software engineering job, or even an administrative job, I ask them for examples of their work. I am always very specific with them: don’t share something that is proprietary or confidential. If they say they don’t have any examples I ask them what kinds of work they have done in the past. No matter the type of work, they always have some example somewhere. Once you lead them through how to ¡°clean out¡± any confidential data (take out names, dates, descriptors, etc.) they can usually come up with a great portfolio.

Once you have the portfolio in hand, you need to review each piece while asking behavioral questions about each piece:

1 – Describe the situation in which you did this work. What was the specific outcome that was demanded? By who? What specification or instructions did they give you?
2 – Who did you work with on this project? Describe at least one conflict that happened during this project and what it was about. How did you resolve it? Where is that exhibited in this work you have given me?

And so on. Use the portfolio as a way to guide the discussion. Finally, ask for references that can verify that the candidate did the work.

The information you get out of a portfolio and subsequent question session will be much more valuable than simple statements about education and experience.

The Recruiter Obstacle Course: What Type of Candidate are You Recruiting?

couple of weeks ago in The Job Search Obstacle Course, we discussed how difficult it can be for job candidates to find the right type of recruiter. There are several different categories of recruiters out there, and if you¡¯re working with the wrong type, your search is going to encounter some problems.

The situation for recruiters isn¡¯t all that different. There are various types of candidates out there, and different tactics need to be employed to successfully recruit each one. Systematic HR recently provided an overview of their ¡°3 major types¡± of job candidates and how to recruit each one:

¡±The high maintenance job seeker is marked by the need for more attention, more information, more interview time, more decision making time, and more negotiation. The reason for the extra time is simple ¨C money is not as important¡­

¡±In the middle tier, there might be need for short and mid term employees for specific projects or to act as turnaround agents. These are the perfect spots for habitual job seekers. They enjoy new challenges and get bored easily if they don¡¯t constantly try new things. Occasionally you¡¯ll find a habitual job seeker that is worth hanging on to (in fact there are many out there who are wonderful ¨C they just have commitment problems)¡­

¡±The indifferent job seeker may be the most problematic¡­Identifying and avoiding these types of job seekers early in the process and certainly before you offer them a job will save you much headache in the future.¡±

Once you know the type of candidate you¡¯re working with, you¡¯ll have a much better idea of how to successfully recruit them and match them to the right job. But how do you know exactly which category they fall into? Slowly but surely, recruiters and hiring managers are realizing that the simple resume doesn¡¯t quite do it any more:

¡±Artists of all types have been using portfolios to show their ability since before the renaissance. It¡¯s now time to expand that concept to all candidates. When I talk with someone about a project management job, or a software engineering job, or even an administrative job, I ask them for examples of their work.¡±
(From Simply Hired)

Recruiters should have the same advantages as hiring authorities. They should have access to candidates¡¯ ¡°portfolios¡± before committing their time and energy to the recruiting process. With a fuller representation of a candidate¡¯s history, education, skills, etc. it will be much easier to identify which type of candidate they are, and it will make recruiting them or choosing not to recruit them a much faster and more effective process.

What does it take to win

In this ¡°flat¡± world, you gain competitive advantage by capturing the best talent, wherever they are. In Indiana or India. Gone are the days when recruiting was an administrative activity. Now it needs to be repositioned as a strategic weapon. You need to remove the gloves. Attack. And counter-attack.

Leading global recruiting strategist Dr. John Sullivan will show you how. His aggressive presentation includes topics like:

Why “but we are different” is no longer a valid excuse
How to use talent poaching to disarm competitors
How to identify, improve and build these capabilities
How to prioritize internal recruitment needs and external recruitment opportunities
How to block your employees from being poached
Get ready for an experience that will challenge your ideas about recruiting and turn you into a winner in the global war for talent.

China to introduce 30,000 overseas specialists

Dec.18 – China next year is to introduce 30,000 overseas specialists that the country is most in need of but also is in great shortage, according to the Ministry of Personnel.

“The government is to fund the introduction of 10,000 economic and technical specialists and 20,000 educational, health and scientific specialists in 2007,” said Minister of Personnel Zhang Bolin.

Zhang said China should further explore international intelligence resources which has provided strong support to the country’s overall development.

China has recruited a total of 400,000 specialists from overseas, Hong Kong and Macao special administrative regions and Taiwan, and has dispatched nearly 40,000 qualified personnel to study overseas.

The Chinese government will fund 10,000 Chinese talents to go and study overseas in 2007, Zhang said.

He calls for more preferential policies for returning students from overseas study so as to draw more Chinese students back to the motherland.

Since 1978, more than 400,000 Chinese students have studied abroad, with more than 100,000 returning to the country over the last two decades.

Official statistics show that government scholarships have allowed 26,658 Chinese to go and study overseas since 1996, and 97 percent of them returned to China after completing study.

Most students go to top notch universities and research institutes in the United States, Great Britain, Germany, Australia and Canada.

Software Engineer lead

Company introduction:
Our client company is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet.

Responsibilities:
This position is opened to a Technical Leader I or Software Engineer IV.

Join an energized team focused on developing platform and tools of globalization / internationalization / localization that may include the following list of responsibilities:

1.Lead a small group of engineers working on a brand new product. Provide highly specialized technical leadership to the group. Mentor junior team member.
2.Write complete functional and design specifications independently.
3.Design and develop new software product features, implement large portion of software independently.
4.Take a product through some or all stages of product development.
5.Responsible for design reviews and code walkthroughs.
6.Helps engineers find ways to attack new or difficult problems.
7.Contribute innovative ideas for multiple module architecture.
8.Contribute to the development of project goals, schedules, and resource planning.

Requirements:
1.Solid background in SW design, documentation and implementation, and hands-on experience with programming, networking and distributed system.
2.Extensive knowledge of Java, J2EE, JSP on both Windows and Linux. Extensive knowledge of network application development and very good GUI design skills. Strong Java/C/C++ programming and XML development skills. Solid background in object-oriented design and development.
3.Strong experience in developing multithreading and client/server applications.
4.Experience working on database, SQL.
5.Strong experience in defining and developing component level API and API definition guidelines for other to use.
6.Experience in the entire lifecycle of software product development.
7.Ability to plan, design, develop and successfully deliver projects on time with quality.
8.Good oral and written communication skills
9.The idea candidate will have an understanding of globalization / internationalization / localization, translation memory and relevant software systems.
10.Project management skills with emphasis on execution and product delivery.

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_it089sh@dacare.com’

Software and Hardware Project Coordination Manager (IP Phones)

Company introduction:
Our client company is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet.

Responsibilities:
Join the enterprise voice development team as a strong, contributing member of the Unified Voice Over IP(VoIP) Phone team focused on developing the industry’s best IP Phones. Candidates must have a proven track record in all aspects of the software and hardware development lifecycle, including the following list of responsibilities:
1.Oversee all IPCBU-CRDC Project processes for hardware, software and dev test teams.
2.Work with cross functional project teams to develop, track, edit, and report on the status of all project deliverables and schedules throughout the product development cycle and provide overall program management support for IPCBU teams in China on a daily basis.
3.Drive IPCBU-CRDC teams to deliver projects on schedule and on budget
4.Create and edit program plans, and program status presentations
5.Manage IPCBU-CRDC project priorities
6.Run weekly product team meetings for IPCBU-CRDC projects
7.Work closely with CRDC manufacturing teams and external hardware vendors to ensure milestones are tracked and schedule or budget impacting issues are escalated to IPCBU management
8.Assist IPCBU-CRDC manager with resource allocation and daily team deliverables
9.Update IPCBU status pages with current issues and risks on a regular basis and when appropriate participate in IPCBU Ops reviews and R and D meetings
10.Coordinating information transfer across time-zones and development teams
11.Ensure that teams adhear to company’s Engineering process standards
12.Work with US based Program Managers and Engineering leads on IPCBU projects that require IPCBU-CRDC deliverables
13.Willing to travel occasionally and can attend off-hour meetings with company’s teams around the world

Requirements:
1.Oral and written fluency in Mandarin and English
2.Minimum of two years experience project/program management
3.Minimum two years of experience in facilitating cross team development projects
4.Demonstrated experience with the principle practices of the product development cycle
5.Demonstrated ability to articulate complex project dependencies in verbal and written communications.
6.Strong project/program management skills. This includes a working knowledge of MS Project.
7.Track record of delivering on-time, high-quality product/project deliverables and optimizing outcomes per objectives & priorities.
8.Experience working with cross-functional teams, identifying potential problems, ability to work issues at appropriate levels, and drive issues to timely resolution.
9.Experience in working with contract manufacturing to deliver high quality hardware products.
10.Experience in delivering Joint Development Manufacturing projects with external vendors
11. An understanding of hardware manufacturing process used with Foxconn desired
12.A solid understanding of software and hardware development cycles desired
13.Strong skills in working with different groups and managers in a matrix project structure.
14.Demonstrated strength in listening, learning & adapting based on team and partner feedback.
15.Excellent communication skills, including the ability to communicate appropriately with upper management and stakeholders. Know when to discuss details, when to make decisions and, most importantly, when to escalate issues.
16.Good negotiation skills. Demonstrated diplomacy when working with diverse groups with different priorities.
17.Demonstrated ability to influence for results across organizations, functions and organization levels.
18.Demonstrated effective judgment when making tradeoffs. Able to communicate pros and cons of resolution and explain conclusions. Adept problem solving skills.
19.Working Experiences with US based multi-national companies is a strong plus.

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_it088sh@dacare.com’

Hardware Engineer Lead

Company introduction:
Our client company is the worldwide leader in networking for the Internet.

Responsibilities:
1.Self-motivated, team oriented engineer to be part of a geographically disparate engineering organization developing the next generation IP telephony platforms.
Responsibilities include participating in all areas of platform development including design and architecture of modules, timing analysis, system and module testing.
2.Developing tests for prototype bring up and verification,working with cross-functional teams (hardware, software, diagnostics, signal integrity and more) to ensure technically robust product development. Explore and evaluate new tools and methodologies.

Requirements:
1.Ability to communicate clearly with team members and teamwork skills.
2.Excellent understanding of digital hardware design, power design, audio, high speed interfaces, timing analysis and signal integrity issues.
3.Understanding of analog electronic concepts and EMC.
4.Working knowledge of Concept schematics capture, Signal Integrity simulation, verilog HDL, familiarity with Allegro.
5.Experience with high volume run products.
6.BSEE/CS or equivalent with 10+ years relevant experience in internetworking technologies and applications. Experience in Voice Communications, Ethernet Switching and IP is a plus.

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_it087sh@dacare.com’