Archives 2009

Commercial Manager (mkt287sh)

Job Title: Commercial Manager
Report To: Developing Department Manager
Location: Shanghai
Our client is a leading supplier in energy and mining industry for China by providing stable and high quality of resources from oversea. With the development in Global marketing, they are looking for talents to join them.
For this position, we are looking for candidates with oversea education or working experience in European countries. Hope our candidates have strong interest in Investment and M&A project and could handle commercial project independently in future.
Responsibilities:
1. Responsible for the Marketing Analysis, Development and Industry Research in oversea marketing for Metal Mine ;
2. Identifying/delivering short term & mid term opportunity through existing & new account with current solution offering;
3. Developing potential channel or program in the exploitation of mineral resources;
4. As a key member participated in the commercial negotiation, program assessment, law and finance investigation;
5. Effectively work with internal team, such as technical?trading?investment and so on to ensure every program go on smoothly;
6. Supporting the Developing Director in Risk Management activities and tracking of project progress;
Requirements:
1. Degree holder in Business Management, Language or related major;
2. At least 2 year of experience in oversea investment and M&A project; Experience in dealing with foreign vendors/suppliers and project management is a plus
3. Proven successful track record in winning business in the market
4. Conceptual thinker and detail oriented;
5. Be able to work independently, but also a team player with a strong client service approach;
6. Self-motivated, pro-active and fast-learner;
7. Solutions and results-oriented;
8. Be multitasking and can work under stress;
9. Strong written and spoken English communication skills; could speak France also;

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mkt287sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Production Manager (eo160nj)

Job Title: Production Manager
Report To: GM
Location: Nanjing
Company Introduction:
Company introduction: The client is an European company, which has become the world leader in automotive and machine tool markets during past 50 years, by offering its customers a combination of advanced products, market knowledge, and commitment to long term global partnerships. For the quick development in China, they are now looking for the talents to join them.
Job Description:
The job holder is taking up a management responsibility of the production function. His job is to ensure the smooth running of the production function to meet the production plan, productivity, quality, associates training, safety, cost control, and target.

Responsibilities:
1? Responsible for the overall production and operation, pay attention to production safety, products quality, cost control and employee development;
2? According to the company’s policies, ensure employee’s safety from every level and by mutual cooperation;
3? Develop and implement the production procedure, production policies and regulations;
4? Adjust the production strategy according to the information and feedback of engineering or/and sales& marketing department;
5? Control the products quality via various policies and actions, meet the standards and requirements, handle appropriately defective products, and ensure the inventory accuracy;
6? Manage and instruct subordinates’ work, maintain effective communication with other department;
7? Plan the employment of workforce and equipments, effectively control cost, avoid wasting;
8? Coordinate the planning department and sourcing department, keep the production line working smoothly.
9? Undertake other duties as assigned by GM;

Qualifications:
1. Mechanical Degree/background?University degree of Manufacture Operation, Production or relevant;
2. Experience?Minimum 5 years work experiences in directly managing production department with strong sense on efficiency.
3. Desired Qualifications:
With a good level of knowledge and experience of lean manufacturing in shop, including 5S, TPM, Quick Changeover, Poke-yoke, TQM, VSM and so on;
ERP knowledge
Experience in production planning and material quality. Good experience in precision technology, and mechanical production.
4. Ability:
Able to Spoken/written English;
Strong theoretical knowledge and practical experiences in production organization, management and leadership;
Good communication skills in personnel relationships;
Skilled in coaching and leading employees at all levels and in various disciplines within the organization;
Strong ability in coordination and supervision;
Skills of solving production problems, cost control ability and team leadership.
* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_eo160nj@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Procurement & Sourcing Manager (Nanjing) (mkt286nj)

Job Title: Procurement & Sourcing Manager (Nanjing)
Job Description:
Company introduction: The client is an European company, which has become the world leader in automotive and machine tool markets during past 50 years, by offering its customers a combination of advanced products, market knowledge, and commitment to long term global partnerships. For the quick development in China, they are now looking for the talents to join them.

Report To: GM
Location: Nanjing

Responsibilities:
To manage the sourcing and purchasing business, with responsibilities for leading and developing the team and achieving the company commercial targets.
1. Build efficient and effective purchasing management system, including build various sourcing processes
2. Lead, guide and monitor the purchasing team to implement sourcing processes
3. Lead commercial negotiations with suppliers.
4. Review and amend working processes to ensure efficient running of department
5. Conduct sourcing planning and build sourcing strategy
6. Train purchasing and motivate purchasing team member
7. Lead the purchasing team continually to identify potential new suppliers and closely communicate with current suppliers
8. Lead the purchasing team to build good relationship with suppliers
9. Lead the purchasing team to achieve or exceed company sourcing goals
10. Other responsibilities that company may need
11. Localize the components, the products and/or equipment
Requirements:
1. B.E. in Mechanical Engineering or relevant
2. Minimum 6 year Sourcing/Purchasing experience in manufacturing/ machining process environment
3. Be familiar with machining process and heat treatment. Good experience in precision machinery parts.
4. Rich Experiences in localizing the products and/or production.
5. Strong project management and matrix organization collaboration skills are a must.
6. Ability to carry out several tasks at the same time. Solid analytical skills, with excellent follow-up and attention to detail.
7. Be able to work under pressures.
8. Good oral and written English.
9. Strong leadership. And
* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mkt286nj@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Online Email Shows Microsoft Will Cut Jobs In China

An email, which China’s Xinhua News Agency reports is rumored to be an internal email from Microsoft, is being spread online, stating that a new round of staff reductions at Microsoft will affect the company’s employees in the Greater China region.

According to the email which is said to be signed by both Liang Nianjian, CEO of Microsoft Greater China, and Zhang Yaqin, chairman of Microsoft China Research and Development Group, the global staff reduction will affect few of employees in Greater China, but the company has not disclosed the exact number of employees to be involved.

Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, reportedly sent an email to all staff of the company on May 5, announcing that that company would quickly complete its plan of reducing 5000 staff to lower employees’ distress. Earlier this year, Microsoft already cut about 1400 jobs globally, and at that time, a few of the employees in China were affected.

So far, there is no direct comment from Microsoft China on the report.

TSMC plans to hire up to 300 engineers

Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Corp (TSMC, ???), the world’s biggest contract chipmaker, plans to hire up to 300 engineers after forecasting more than 80 percent growth in shipments this quarter, said recruiting agency 104 Corp (???), which is helping with the headhunt.

The recruitment drive is part of TSMC’s long-term investment in technological research and development, ensuring that it will be among the earliest companies to benefit once the economy recovers, 104 spokesman Max Fang (???) said.

“It is good timing for local employers to launch large-scale recruitment drives because the nation’s tough job market means a bigger selection,” Fang said. “We believe TSMC is just the beginning and there will be more recruitment programs by local companies later this year because hiring is usually closely linked to an economy improving, as it is now.”

An average of 10 candidates apply for each job offered by high-tech firms today, Fang said, as electronics firms hit by the recession remain cautious about hiring.

The Hsinchu-based chipmaker intends to hire between 200 and 300 design, processing technology and research engineers initially, potentially adding more positions later, Fang said.

As of the end of February, TSMC had about 22,000 employees globally, down 3.8 percent from about 22,800 at the end of last year, the company’s annual report said.

Meanwhile, competitor United Microelectronics Corp (UMC, ??) said it had no plans for significant additions to its payroll because prospects for the second half of the year were still unclear.

However, a UMC official said that the company expected strong growth in shipments in the second quarter.

UMC launched a major restructuring in the second half of last year, tweaking its organizational structure and streamlining its workforce to cut costs and improve profitability.

Separately, a survey conducted by 104 suggested an improvement in the domestic job market.

Job openings have increased 13 percent to 203,000 — the highest figure since last October — since the beginning of the year, when 180,000 jobs were on offer.

However, the number of job openings is half the number of current job seekers, meaning that the unemployment rate may not see an improvement in the short term.

The jobless rate hit a new high of 5.81 percent in March, with 670,000 adults unemployed, government figures showed.
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Ernst & Young Cuts Staff In China

Ernst & Young, one of the world’s biggest auditing companies, is reportedly encouraging its staff in China to leave the company.

According to an insider quoted by local media, Ernst & Young recently issued a notice, asking employees to sign an agreement with the company about their departure from the company. The insider disclosed that employees of the company’s auditing, risk consulting, and tax departments across China are mostly affected and as many as 20% of the employees in these departments have been asked to leave.

However, Ernst & Young denied publicly that it is reducing staff or encouraging them to leave. The company said that it has not cut any jobs, but instead it has launched a human resources initiative to encourage staff to take a low-pay leave on voluntary basis and encourage them to take the Certified Public Accountant examination.

Questioned why the company has launched this initiative, some employees quoted in local media believe it is not because of the current financial crisis, but that the company has not done well on localization and has hired too many foreign employees in China and this has led to an increase in human resource costs.

It is understood that starting November 2008, Ernst & Young and KPMG began to think of staff reductions. Earlier, Chinese media reported that Ernst & Young had written to its employees in China asking them to consider taking a 40-day low-pay leave between July 2009 and 2010.

China’s Graduates: How Much a Month Did You Say?

For Liu Kai and Yu Min, about to graduate from Harbin Institute of Technology’s Weihai campus in Shandong Province and on a job-hunting trip in Beijing, the indignities are piling up.

For one, as students from outside Beijing, they aren’t allowed into job fairs held on the campuses of some Beijing universities. At the job fairs they do attend, most jobs are either too low-level, sometimes just requiring a high-school diploma, or too advanced, geared for applicants with years of working experience.

But the main source of humiliation is the issue of pay. For applicants with no work experience, the base salary for a sales job is as little as 1,000 yuan to 1.500 yuan (around $146 to $234) a month.

“We don’t have high salary expectations as long as we can make a living on our own,” says Liu.

But can they live on 1,000 yuan a month?

To put it in perspective, a migrant worker in Beijing earns around 1,200 yuan a month, and many so-called ayis — or aunties, a term for housemaids – can make twice that. As for accommodation, sure, it’s possible to find a 12-square-meter single room beyond Beijing’s Fifth Ring Road for 350 yuan a month but a 1-bedroom apartment rarely rents for less than 1,500 yuan a month, judging from listings at real-estate portal Soufun.com.

A survey of more than 1,000 college graduates from 14 universities in Tianjin finds that 9.8% expect a first salary of below 1,000 yuan a month, while 62% see a monthly pay in the 1,001- 2,000-yuan range, while not one expects a salary beyond 5,000 yuan (in Chinese here).

At the job fairs, Yu finally lands an interview for a sales position with a monthly base pay of 1,000 yuan. A plus is that food and dormitory-style accommodation are paid for. But he still passes on the chance after a phone call from his parents. “My mom strongly rejected my idea to go for this company, as she didn’t think the 1,000 yuan salary was enough for me to survive on in Beijing,” he said.

Yu’s mother doesn’t want him to accept anything for less than 3,000 yuan a month. Judging from the job-fair billboards, that seems an increasingly unrealistic goal. “I don’t see any possibility of that for now,” Yu says.

At a job fair in Zhongguancun, nicknamed Beijing’s Sillicon Valley, a privately owned company selling cosmetics online is hiring telemarketers, at a base salary of 1,500 yuan a month. “We indeed see a lot more college graduates applying for such comparatively low-level positions this year”, said human-resources manager Liu Yansong.

China jobless rate rises

BEIJING (China) – CHINA’S registered urban jobless rate, the only official measure of unemployment in China, rose to 4.3 per cent at the end of the first quarter of 2009 from 4.2 per cent three months earlier, local media reported on Wednesday.
It marked the highest registered urban jobless rate since June 2006, though the figure is based on a narrow population segment and probably understates the real unemployment level by a wide margin.

Officials, concerned about the prospect of rising unrest, have warned that China faces a severe test this year in providing enough new jobs, especially for the country’s millions of migrant workers and new graduates.

The registered urban jobless figures exclude migrant workers and farmers. Economists say the real jobless rate is probably at least twice as high.

Yin Weimin, minister of human resources and social security, was quoted by a financial website, caihuanet.com, as saying that the end-March jobless rate hit 4.3 percent.

Can China Handle Massive Unemployment?

It’s an understatement to say that the job market is getting tight in China. That’s the inevitable conclusion from today’s WSJ cover story “China Faces Grad Glut After Boom At Colleges.” This corroborates a March article in China Daily that put on a positive spin on the situation with this headline: “More Teaching Jobs for Graduates.” The gist there is that the government will pay for schools to hire more teachers to soak up some of the graduate pool (gotta love Chinese media for looking on the bright side of things). China blogger Michael Pettis commented on this trend last month with some optimism about what this could mean for China’s future when he wrote:

“If more Chinese graduates are forced – by terrible job prospects – to consider starting their own businesses, the long term consequences for China should be positive although, as everyone running a small business in China will tell you unendingly, starting and running businesses here is extremely difficult and, what is worse, it is never easy to know when you are and when you aren’t legally compliant. Still, China really does need more entrepreneurialism and one of the unexpected benefits of the crisis may be to boost small businesses.”

The simple fact is that China will benefit over the long-term if college grads actually leverage their education to create value and be entrepreneurial rather than just use it to get hired to work in the bullpen fielding calls for Ctrip.com (CTRP) — see above photo. Though in the short-term, there could be some real pain.

So what
Now, if you’re a regular reader of this blog, then you know our Global Gains mindset. We’re immediately asking “Who benefits?” and “Who gets hurt?” by this big picture trend.

The losers, I think, are pretty obvious. They include companies such as 51Job (JOBS), which does job placement in China. Now, they’d be in a good place if they got paid by job seekers to help them find openings. Instead, 51Job gets paid by corporations who are looking to do recruititing…and there’s not a whole lot of recruiting going on right now.

Other losers are companies that cater to urban working professionals. These, after all, are what college graduates become, and there are fewer of them this year than there were in previous years. A company like Ctrip, which helps Internet-savvy Chinese book travel, looks like a clear example despite the fact that it’s well-run and a leader in the travel space in China. Its addressable market will just be smaller in the near-term, and the company may achieve lower growth rates as a consequence.

Winner winner chicken dinner

On the flip side, there are going to be companies that do benefit, and I think the obvious ones there are firms that help young Chinese people become more competitive job applicants. This quote from Jane Yang in the WSJ is illustrative: “There are no job prospects for someone like me,” she said during a quick meal at the school’s cafeteria. “I think I’ll just go to grad school.”

McDonald’s To Recruit 10,000 Employees In China In 2009

Despite the economic slowdown fast food giant McDonald’s has announced that based on its good performance in China, the company plans to recruit 10,000 new employees in the country, of which, 80% will be college graduates.

Kenneth Chan, the newly appointed CEO of McDonald’s China, told local media that talent is very important for the company’s continuous development in the Chinese market and recruitment is related to McDonald’s business expansion and the promotion of its 24-hour services.

Chan said China is one of the fastest growing markets for McDonald’s and the company’s comprehensive service models, including breakfast, 24-hour services, and dessert stations, in this market play important roles in adding income to the revenue of the restaurants. But it also means they need more employees to do this work. In fact, McDonald’s already started to select quality talents in 2008 and entered several famous Chinese universities, including Peking University, to attract their graduates.

In addition to the recruitment plan, McDonald’s launched a China leadership development plan for the first time to provide professional training to its talent management team and outlet expansion team to make preparation for its further expansion.