Archives 2006

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.