Archives 2009

How to Do Twice As Much With Half the Recruiting Team

Times are tough. Even those companies that are doing reasonably well are cutting their recruiting teams by a minimum of 30% to a maximum of 90%, and tightening up expenses to the absolute barest minimum.

Half of these cuts are probably necessary anyway, the balance most likely an overreaction to the dismal economic conditions most companies are now facing.

There is an expectation that along with the cuts these recruiting departments need to drastically improve their productivity by 30%-50%, almost overnight.

The good news is that while most corporate recruiters are working hard, the majority are not working smart.

As a result, getting 50% or 100% productivity gains isn’t that hard to do. With this in mind, here are some things recruiting leaders can do to increase overall productivity by at least 100%.

An Almost Endless Stream of Ideas on How to Increase Corporate Recruiting Department Productivity by Over 100%
Only hire recruiters who are, or can become, partners with their hiring managers. Recruiters who are partners with their clients get more time to discuss real job needs, they send out fewer candidates, make more hires, and overcome natural hiring manager resistance to see top candidates who don’t fit the bill on paper. Partners make twice as many placements per month than recruiters who are perceived as vendors to their clients, so this is a huge productivity opportunity.
Make sure your recruiters are competent to do the work assigned. One way to increase productivity is to ensure all of your recruiters are as good as those in the top 10% on your team. (Contact me if you’d like to check out our new online recruiter assessment tool we’ve created with Profiles International.)
Make sure every recruiter understands the jobs they’re filling. Sadly, most recruiters don’t know much about the jobs they’re representing. Whether it’s a call center in Chicago, a sales rep in San Jose, or a J2EE architect in Ashtabula, recruiters need to know what drives on-the-job success, why the job is critical to the company, and why a top person should consider it.
Make sure your recruiters totally understand their target market. Recruiters need to be subject-matter experts regarding the job, the industry, and especially the needs of their ideal “target” candidates. Creating candidate personas is the first step, including demographics, associations, first- and second-degree networks, conferences, recognition awards, academic connections, and motivating needs. This allows them to write compelling ads, post them in the best places, know exactly who to call, what to say, how to get great referrals, and how to convince the best people your job is the best of the bunch.
Make sure your recruiters know how to recruit. Recruiting means getting more candidates interested at the beginning, ensuring that few drop out in the middle, and 95% of all offers are accepted on fair terms. Effective applicant control is at the core of this and most recruiters don’t even know what this even means. Do you know how many candidates you’ve lost because your recruiters dropped the ball somewhere in the process?
Make sure your recruiters are respected by the candidates they represent. If recruiters aren’t seen as subject-matter experts and career advisors by their candidates, you’re losing some great people before the process even begins. You’ll get a good sense of this by calculating how many “A” level candidates your recruiters uncover and place on a typical search. If it’s not 70% or more, you’ve found a huge productivity improvement opportunity.
Make sure your recruiters can accurately assess candidate competency. Recruiters should be able to get this right 80% of the time with a 30-minute performance-based phone screen, at least to the point of not embarrassing themselves by recommending a totally unqualified person. Think of the time wasted sending out a candidate who shouldn’t be seen in the first place.
Make sure your recruiters are tough-minded, confident, and persistent. The best recruiters don’t take no for an answer, they defend their candidates from superficial assessments, and they close on career opportunities more than money. These recruiters are 2-3 times more productive than those who cave at every negative. Double your team’s productivity by making sure your recruiters are those who don’t give up without a fight.
Manage time. Cold-calling people you don’t know is a big time-waster. Calling people who are good who will call you back is an ok thing to do if a great ad didn’t work. A sequenced sourcing strategy based on the “low-hanging fruit principle” of selling should be established for every search assignment. Then, measure your recruiters on qualified sendouts/hour to start finding out where your team is wasting its time.
Don’t let your recruiters call people who won’t call them back. Start tracking voice-mail return rates. Those with the highest percentages (target a minimum of 75% to start) usually spend more time calling referrals, are seen as subject-matter experts or come across as extremely professional. To improve productivity 300%, either train your recruiters to increase their callback rate from 25% to 75%, or hire those who already do it without complaining how hard it is.
Make sure your recruiters get 2-3 high-quality referrals on every call. The ability to get high-quality referrals is the secret behind passive candidate recruiting. A great referral will call you back if you mention the name of the great person who provided the referral. Recruiters then need to prequalify every referral and only call those who are worthy. If you track great referrals per call, you’ll quickly know which recruiters are able to play in the passive candidate recruiting talent game.
Prepare a process-flow diagram of every step in your hiring process and calculate the yield at each of these steps. Look at each step in your hiring processes and see where you lose the most candidates. First, track ad response and apply rates. At the back end of the process, figure out how many good candidates were poorly assessed or excluded for dumb reasons. Then start working on those process steps that can double or triple your team productivity.
Make sure you’re attracting early-birds, not leftovers. When you examine the problems associated with most active candidate sourcing programs, you quickly discover that they’re attracting leftovers, or candidates who have been in the market a few weeks or more. If you’re not attracting the best of the bunch as soon as they start looking, you’re wasting time and resources going through electronic stacks of resumes of unqualified people. Implementing an early-bird sourcing strategy can increase your active candidate sourcing productivity by 100-200%!
Eliminate all barriers-to-entry. The best people, whether they’re active or passive, are more discriminating and don’t want to be pushed into filling in an application before they’re ready. To address this critical need, establish an open-door policy where you allow candidates to “just look around” before getting serious. This is what Web 2.0 is really about — establishing two-way relationships using a variety of entry points to attract someone’s attention.
Manage your 500-pound gorillas. A huge productivity loss is managers who can’t recruit, don’t know real job needs, or can’t accurately interview. If you’ve ever lost a good candidate for one of these reasons, or if managers refuse to see a top-notch person with a slightly different skill set, you know how much time is wasted here. Getting hiring managers inducted into the real world of hiring top performers will double your productivity almost overnight. Not doing it will diminish the impact of everything else mentioned here. (Contact me if you’d like to find out about our new gorilla taming programs.)
Doing everything described will absolutely result in a 100%-200% productivity gain. If not, you didn’t do them right, so start over and try again. Even if you did achieve the productivity improvements, start over again anyway to get another 100%-200% productivity improvement.

Things are changing so fast you need to keep at it by establishing a continuous improvement program. Bottom line, this is what this article is really about.

Taiwan job seekers expand search to China

Taipei – Taiwan’s economic woes are causing an increasing number of the island’s residents to search for work in China, a job placement agency said Friday.

According to the 104 Job Bank, an average of 22,000 Taiwan job seekers a day contacted the placement agency in March, asking for for jobs in China, up 20 per cent from February and up 30 per cent year-on-year.

The figure is the highest since the human resources agency started operations in 1996.

In March the company could offer 5,300 jobs in China so far, one job for every four job seekers wishing to work in China.

All those jobs were provided by China-based Taiwan companies for which the placement centre serves as as online ‘matchmaker.’

Taiwan’s jobless rate hit a record 5.33 per cent in January, driven up by the global financial crisis.

Taiwan media reported on a growing number of people committing suicide after losing the jobs and running into debts.

Pre Sales Consultant (fi205sh)

Job Title: Pre Sales Consultant?Asset Arena Back Office?
Report To: Financial BU
Location: Shanghai
It is one of the worlds leading software and IT services companies. They provide software and consulting solutions that are designed to meet the specialized needs.
Job Description:
1. Demonstration of the complete software suite as well as explanation of the various connectivity capabilities with third party software (front-office, market connectivity).
2. Managing and performing indepth evaluations (during a week workshop for instance) of the software in the context of specific business requirements.
3. Ability to analyze business requirement to provide best practice and customize the system to fit prospects requirements.
4. Maintain hardware, software and data demo environment for demonstrations and evaluations.
5. Responses to queries from prospects and clients which may take the form of informal requests or more formal RFI/RFP documents.
6. Presentations of the company and its solutions to prospects/clients and at trade shows/exhibitions.
7. Keep pre-sales documentation up to date.
8. Support product management in definition of business requirements of clients/prospects and market.
9. Keep close to, and provide analysis of market trends and developing business requirements.
10. Develop and maintain knowledge of competitor’s solutions.
11. Provide feedback to Product Management and Sales about the performance of the software, and the clients perception of the software both at demonstrations and evaluations.
Qualifications Requirements ?
1. Masters degree in Finance, Investment, Accounting or a related field, or a Bachelors degree from an accredited college or university with five years relevant work experience. CFA is ideal.
2. A minimum of 3 years (if Masters Degree in Finance/Investment/Accounting) business experience in a financial institution, management consultancy or relevant software/systems house.
3. Knowledge of all types of financial instruments (equities, fixed incomes, ABS, MBS,…) including derivatives (i.e. Futures, Options, SWAPS, OTC and Exchange Traded). This would ideally have been gained in a back office environment or a solution vendor.
4. Knowledge of the Asset Management work process especially the valuation and accounting process would be instrumental. Again we would prefer this knowledge to have been gained in an operations role in an asset management company or at another software vendor.
5. Knowledge of the accounting principles, indepth understanding of the CAS is essential, knowledge of IAS would be an advantage.
6. Although not an indepth technical role, some conceptual understanding of IT systems and related technology would be preferable. This covers database/SQL knowledge, Unix/Linux knowledge, some basic programming skills.
7. Knowledge of financial software.
8. Excellent communication skills and the ability to work with a diverse range of clients and people.
9. Written and verbal English skills is mandatory.
10. French is a plus.
* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_fi205sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Production Manager (mkt278sh)

Job Title: Production Manager
Job Description:
Company introduction:
Be a dynamic and fast-growing pharmaceutical company with a solid technology foundation. With more then 10 years development.

Report To: Technical Director
1. Oversee the daily safe, efficient, effective, operation of Rx production facilities
2. Initiate, expedite, and report of the continuous improvement on production process and production line.
3. Responsible for all production related projects and ensure projects are finished on time and within budget
4. Design, maintain, and utilize quality system for production
5. Implement and update the SOP systems
6. Participates in the decision making process of the strategic development
7. Ensure all reporting are done on time and according to internal standards
8. Build and maintain a team with high performance.

Requirements:
1. At least 8 years of pharmacy and engineering management experience.
2. At least 5 years of production or project management experiences.
3. Strong teamwork and good communication skills. Possess strong practical knowledge on unit operations with hands-on experiences.
4. Post graduate degree or equivalent, in Chemical Engineering, Biochemical Engineering, or related disciplines
5. Team player demonstrated ability. Problem solving ability. Persistency and tenacity.
6. Strong analytical, organizational and panning skill required.
7. Good command of English both spoken and written.

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mkt278sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

More teaching jobs for graduates

Schools across China will hire 50,000 college graduates as short-term teachers this year to help ease employment pressure.

That is almost triple the number of teachers hired last year.

They will work under three-year contracts with local education departments and be paid by a special central government fund, the Ministry of Education said.

“Most of the jobs are only open to students who will graduate from colleges this year,” ministry spokeswoman Xu Mei said on Wednesday.

“But some teaching positions are open to outstanding degree holders who graduated in past years, such as those who have volunteer teaching experience in rural schools,” she said.

The short-term teacher project was launched in 2006 to help college graduates find employment.

The teachers will work at primary and high schools, mostly in rural areas.

Besides salary from the central government, they may get bonuses and subsidies from local governments, Xu said.

After the three-year contract expires, schools will decide whether to renew the contracts.

The teachers will be recruited through public job fairs.

The ministry also announced other policies this week to help ease employment pressure on college graduates.

Graduates recruited by the army will have their education loans paid by the government and those who are awarded an honor in the army can be recruited as postgraduate students without taking the difficult entrance examination.

The country will also provide subsidies and reduce taxes for small and middle-sized enterprises that recruit college graduates this year.

To promote employment, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) urged local departments to create more jobs for graduates.

“Local governments will provide special subsidies for college graduates who work at the grassroots,” Wang Yadong, deputy director of MHRSS’ employment promotion department, said in an earlier interview.

Special funds and subsidies have been earmarked to encourage college graduates to work in rural and grassroots positions or to start their own businesses.

However, “most graduates are focusing on jobs in large cities and few would like to start their own businesses”, Wang said.

A recent study by the MHRSS found only 0.3 percent of college graduates in 2007 started their own businesses.

That is much lower than some developed countries where the rate is about 40 percent.

A total of 6.11 million fresh graduates – 520,000 more than in 2008 – are expected to enter the job market this year.

Nokia Plans New Round of Job Cuts

Nokia has announced more job cuts, and they’re unlikely to be the last. On March 17, the company said it is eliminating 1,700 jobs, including about 700 in Finland. The announcement comes a month after Nokia said it was closing a research and development center in Finland, while imposing temporary layoffs at a Finnish handset factory.

But more cuts will be needed for Nokia to meet its goal of saving $900 million, says analyst Jari Honko at eQ Bank in Helsinki. He estimates the measures disclosed so far will save about $390 million. So Nokia isn’t even halfway there.

Compared to what’s going on in some other industries, the scale of the latest job cuts is modest—though that is certainly no consolation to the Nokia employees affected. The 1,700 jobs, including about 700 in Finland, represent only about 1% of Nokia’s total workforce. It’s also worth remembering that Nokia increased its headcount by 16,000 people in 2008, so the most recent round of cuts represents less than two months of recent hiring.

Most Nokia watchers still believe that the company’s scale and history of innovation will enable it to emerge from the downturn stronger than competitors such as Motorola. But 2009 will be a perilous year for Nokia. The company lost market share in smartphones to Apple and Research In Motion in the fourth quarter (though Nokia may have gained some share back after rolling out its touch-screen 5800 XpressMusic handset in recent months). Growth in emerging markets has stalled. Nokia Siemens Networks, the company’s telco equipment unit, faces a strong challenge from China’s Huawei.

Nokia investors can only hope that the company will show the same pluck and creativity that has rescued it from big setbacks in the past.

China’s R&D offshore outsourcing market growing: Zinnov

BANGALORE, INDIA: Zinnov Management Consulting, a leading management consulting firm, today launched an in-depth study on China’s R&D Service Provider Landscape titled “R&D Globalization – R&D Service Provider Landscape in China”.

The study in totality brought to light the entire R&D service provider market in China and estimated the market to be USD 1.3 billion as opposed to a market of about USD 3.5 billion in India. It read that revenues related to R&D services for top 3 players in the China market is growing at a much faster rate than the industry average of 46.6 percent.

The China R&D offshore outsourcing market is dominated by Chinese service providers with relatively small presence of India and US based service providers. Though the overall R&D offshore outsourcing market is growing fast, most revenues come from low-end QA/ testing work.

“We have noticed that a majority of customers of China-based service providers are very uncertain about the capabilities of their partners owing to the nascent stage at which the market is in. However, at the same time, we do see an up-swing in the growth of US based companies trying to offshore their R&D related work to third party service providers in China”, said Praveen Bhadada, Engagement Manager, Zinnov.

The report highlighted that the R&D offshore outsourcing market in China is highly fragmented with the top 10 service providers accounting for about 28 percent of the total market share. It also read that there are more than 10,000 large to small sized outsourcing service providers in China providing IT services/ ITeS / R&D services. Divulging specifics on how Indian service providers have fared in the market, the report said that the Indian players have not been able to scale up their operations in China, in spite of having ambitious ramp up plans since their inception.

“MNCs who were looking at diversifying risks related to R&D Globalization, chose Chinese service providers as a risk mitigation strategy for the market. Additionally, reasons like cultural and language differences, coupled with issues around recruitment and retention of key employees, acted as deterrents to their growth. “Therefore today, most of the top Indian service providers in China do not offer a broad array of R&D services as opposed to their Chinese competitors and the focus is primarily on IT services”, said Chandramouli, Director-Advisory Services, Zinnov.

The report additionally highlighted that the cumulative revenues for top 4 Indian service providers is about USD 65 million of which R&D services constitutes only about USD 7.7 million.It read that the billing rates of service providers for R&D related work oscillates widely and primarily depends upon the kind of work, also adding that the rates for top 5 service providers are relatively higher owing to their experience, capabilities and quality of talent.

The strong ability of overcoming some of the most difficult challenges, coupled with favorable growth drivers have contributed towards the current state of the China offshore outsourcing market. Even today, communication issues with lack of scalability are primary reasons that are restraining its growth. However, low cost of operations along with the proximity to certain key markets in APAC region are some of the key drivers of growth.

The report also stated that in the near future, Chinese service providers would surely increase their focus on the US/ European markets by extending their sales operations in those geographies. The current high fragmentation would surely prompt the market, which is undoubtedly passing through a growth phase at the moment, to enter the integration phase observing increased M&A activities, as the top players would like to grow both organically and inorganically in a market which is expanding fast. Initiatives from Government and enterprises will also improve the talent capability which might act as a key driver in unleashing the market potential in the years to come.

Addressing China’s Talent Shortage

In this excerpt from the McKinsey Quarterly, the authors discuss ways some companies are successfully navigating the country’s skilled-talent shortage.

How to Address China’s Growing Talent Shortage

The imbalance between business opportunities in China and qualified executives to manage them will get worse — a lot worse — before it gets better.

By Kevin Lane and Florian Pollner

The growing need for talented managers in China represents by far the biggest management challenge facing multinationals and locally owned businesses alike. In a recent AmCham Shanghai survey of US-owned enterprises there, for example, 37 percent of the companies responding said that recruiting talent was their biggest operational problem — more than the number who cited regulatory concerns, a lack of transparency, bureaucracy, or the infringement of intellectual-property rights.

Separately, 44 percent of the executives at Chinese companies surveyed by The McKinsey Quarterly reported that insufficient talent was the biggest barrier to their global ambitions. …

Continued strong economic growth in China over the next several years will further fuel demand for good people. Mature economies too face a growing talent gap because of longer-term demographic trends such as lower birth rates and the retirement of the baby boomers. Leading multinationals in these countries therefore increasingly compete globally to find talent, intensifying the problem still more.

On the supply side, the gap is widening at all levels in China. For entry-level corporate positions, there is an ongoing mismatch between the sort of graduates most Chinese universities turn out and the type of candidate who would interest local and regional companies, to say nothing of multinationals. People who prove themselves effective will have increasingly high expectations of their current employers, and if those expectations aren’t met they may easily be tempted by lucrative rival offers. The market for experienced hires is even more challenging, especially when international experience beyond China and Asia is required.

Local companies and multinationals therefore increasingly fish in the same small pond of high-potential graduates and experienced managers with the right functional capabilities, leadership potential, and language skills. Many local companies are willing to match or exceed the multinationals’ compensation packages.

Companies that are successfully addressing the talent challenge in China stand out in a number of ways, including their ability to localize techniques that have worked in other parts of the world.

The most effective companies have a clear strategic view of their talent needs four to five years out, identify gaps at all levels of the organization, and segment their executives carefully. They develop and operate both a sophisticated external-recruiting machine and an internal-development and -training program adapted to the local Chinese environment.

Integrate strategic planning and talent planning. In the past, the world was short of capital and innovation but rich in talent, which was therefore a second-order consideration in defining corporate strategies.

In China today, by contrast, a leading company is likely to think of talent as a key input. A superior understanding of the available talent pools — and a realistic assessment of the company’s ability to attract and develop talent from them — shapes its strategic choices.

Know what you need — it may not be what you think it is. Top companies segment their talent base with the same effort and care that a top marketing department employs to segment its customer base.

That means making projections, based on corporate strategy, for perhaps four or five different salary grades and tenure groups, taking into account the expected number of internal hires, promotions, and likely attrition rates.

Given the rapid rate of change and the likelihood that new assumptions about issues such as employee turnover will have to be built into the model, these targets should be reviewed at least twice a year.

Companies should also define the types of functional capabilities they must build and identify the specific types of leaders they will need — for example, “business builders,” who can lead enterprises into new regional markets, or “execution drivers,” who can instill discipline in performance.

The functional skills and leadership abilities required in China will probably differ from those called for in developed markets … .

Managers in China might, for example, need to know more about simplifying or tailoring products, finding low-capital solutions, and managing alliances and government relations. A higher level of comfort with ambiguity or greater cultural openness may be necessary as well. Companies in China must therefore be prepared to recognize and address the difference between their talent needs in that country and in the rest of the world.

A stronger — and sharper — focus on talent. In China, any company’s local management committee should make talent a standing item on the agenda. The top team ought to review important initiatives every two or three months and invest time in devising efficient processes to gather data from factories, in making specific people accountable for acting on talent issues, and in setting and revising targets.

Senior executives need to take this responsibility personally by devoting significant and highly visible time to talent rather than assigning the problem solely to human resources (HR), and they must apply as much rigor and intensity to recruiting, developing, retaining, and allocating talent as they do to financial planning. We often find that companies ignore some of these basics, treating talent as a “soft” issue and thus ignoring its very “hard” financial impact.

Longer, stronger pipelines. University recruitment is a key element in the talent strategies of multinationals and local Chinese businesses alike. It requires a highly tailored approach to partnerships with institutions of higher learning, as well as a careful analysis of the top-tier schools, schools with a strong national reputation, and those with solid regional or local standing. (We often find that some of the most successful — and loyal — recruits can be found at universities close to the places where jobs open up.)

Recruitment efforts should begin with a rethinking of a company’s brand attributes and value proposition for Chinese graduates, whose attitudes on these issues often differ from those of their counterparts elsewhere.

Companies have a number of ways to establish a reputation on campus, and all must be explored — for instance, sponsoring a lecture or university chair, hiring student interns during summer vacation, and forging relationships with faculty members to support research. In other markets with similar talent challenges, companies and trade associations have even set up their own schools and universities to alleviate the scarcity of suitable high-potential entry-level talent.

Companies should build a portfolio of relationships with universities, aiming for close ties (developed by a specific team) with a few institutions and for looser links to a number of others. An important objective of these relationships should be to identify talented people at a much earlier stage than companies elsewhere might consider appropriate — as early as the second year of college.

IBM, one of the corporations now building strong bridges to education in China, has formed partnerships with several Chinese universities, donated millions of dollars to educational institutions across the country, and collaborated with the Ministry of Education to improve the teaching and curricula at Chinese universities.

Do-it-yourself development. Since the tight talent market routinely fails to provide candidates who have the right skills and leadership qualities, leading companies build training and development programs and put them at the center of hiring and retention. Global policies and programs may not work; companies in China must tailor them substantially to the mind-set of a highly willing but often relatively low-skill talent pool that nonetheless expects a fast track to senior levels and substantial responsibility.

Employees therefore ought to have clear development paths, which may include unusually fast promotion to intermediate tiers of responsibility, such as assistant brand manager. Apprenticeships and mentoring can promote both learning and commitment, and training should take place in the context of real work as much as possible.

P&G, which uses these tools very effectively, has built one of China’s strongest talent engines, with a high degree of localization. At Motorola, employees can benefit from such tailored offerings as the China Accelerated Management Program, for promising local managers; the Motorola Management Foundation Program, to train new managers in such areas as problem solving and communication; and the Motorola high-tech MBA program, a partnership with Arizona State University and Tsinghua University, which allows high-performing employees in China to earn an MBA in house.

Proactively building the basics is no less important; many Chinese companies either lack the evaluation systems, feedback loops, and other mechanisms regarded as the minimum level of best practice in the West, or they implement them poorly. Companies should not only build these processes but also train employees to manage them effectively (explaining, for example, how to set expectations unambiguously and to have meaningful feedback conversations).

Not the usual suspects. Given the pace of growth in the number of qualified senior managers and the time required to develop them, external recruitment ought to be a regular part of the talent solution in China. Companies should look beyond their own sectors for experienced leaders by identifying industries that have faced analogous challenges, such as similar distribution structures or regulatory barriers.

Often, the types of experiences managers have under their belts indicate their potential more accurately than do the industries where they work. When a top company identifies the key types of leaders it needs, across the ranks, it can define the background, experience, and qualities it wants them to have. Going beyond the usual suspects becomes easier: a company can then methodically identify situations, industries, and companies that have exposed managers to the specific types of experiences it requires.

Turning challenges into opportunities. China poses the dual challenge of aggressive business-building goals and an insufficient pool of talent to achieve them. Top companies turn this challenge into an opportunity by using major initiatives as a chance to develop new leaders from within and to bring experienced leaders recruited from the outside up to speed more systematically.

This approach does require a willingness to give relatively inexperienced people responsibility for major initiatives but can also help companies to develop leaders and capabilities more quickly. The keys to success include matching the right people to the right initiatives, ensuring that the initiatives are truly important, and providing the right support — to build both leadership and functional skills — so that leaders emerge in a “just in time” fashion.

Comprehensive and consistent. Our suggestions address critical aspects of the talent problem in China. But to be effective, they must be integrated tightly with other elements of a company’s operations and organization, including its corporate culture and HR processes.

Employees expect a company’s stated mission, values, and talent policies to hang together consistently; companies that value entrepreneurship highly should reward it highly, for example. This kind of alignment is a distinct challenge in a market where many employees, including managers, are relatively new to the companies they serve.

Companies in China must therefore revisit their HR policies and processes to ensure a good fit with the peculiarities of the changing local talent market; retention policies, for instance, should reflect the priorities of Chinese employees (such as whether they tend to leave for money, advancement, or better learning opportunities), and internal talent markets should be as vibrant and exciting as the external one.

The broad principles of managing talent in China may not differ much from those prevailing in other markets, but the extreme imbalance of supply and demand, coupled with the rapid pace of change in both the corporate and social domains, poses a distinct challenge. Companies hoping to compete successfully in China must raise talent to the top of the agenda. Those that get the solution right will create a real source of competitive advantage.

China draws skilled Chinese back home

Many who migrated to the U.S. are returning to an economy that offers richer career opportunities.

By David Pierson and Don Lee
February 24, 2009

Reporting from Shanghai and Los Angeles — Xun Jia, a doctoral candidate in theoretical physics at UCLA, expected to find a job on Wall Street crunching complex financial formulas upon his graduation.

But after meeting with 10 recruiters to no avail, the Chinese native is looking for new opportunities — in the country he left behind.

“I’m definitely considering moving back,” said Jia, 27, who always envisioned himself establishing a career in the U.S. first but is now firing off his resume to contacts in China. “They need people to go back.”

The Chinese government is counting on people like Jia — nicknamed “sea turtles” because they journeyed across the ocean and then came back — to help retool its economy and find paths to expansion beyond the cheap exports on which the country has relied for so many years.

Late last year, the government launched an aggressive campaign to lure them back and is spending millions to entice accomplished investors, bankers, researchers and engineers to come home.

During a 10-day series of job fairs in December, Chinese banks, universities and government agencies interviewed more than 4,400 people in London, Chicago and New York.

The southern city of Guangzhou has created a $30-million fund to attract overseas financial professionals and along with the city of Shenzhen is considering a multicity recruitment tour of the U.S. this summer.

The economic boom that lighted up China in the last decade had already served as a beacon to many expatriates, drawing thousands home from the U.S. and other places.

A record 50,000 Chinese students who studied abroad returned to China last year, an increase of 6,000 from the year before and more than double the number in 2004, government statistics show.

Though there are no official data, the presence of returning Chinese expatriates and foreign-born ethnic Chinese in China has grown over the years, experts say.

In Shanghai, about 4,000 businesses are said to have been founded by returned students, amounting to more than $500 million in investment, Chinese state media have reported.

Charles Zhang, the founder of one of China’s largest Internet portals, Sohu.com, was educated at MIT. At the prestigious Chinese Academy of Sciences, 80% of the faculty studied abroad, as did more than half of those at the Chinese Academy of Engineering.

“You can find most things you were used to in the U.S. in Shanghai now,” said Greg Ye, a graduate of Harvard Business School who returned to found NewMargin Venture, a private equity fund. “I feel like there’s lots more opportunity here.”

With the global recession slowing the economy to levels last seen in 2002, the Chinese government wants even more of those living abroad to come home in the next few years.

“They want to send a positive message that the government is forward-thinking” by looking overseas for help, said Clay Dube, associate director of the U.S.-China Institute at USC. “That’s the political and public relations side of it. Then there’s a real recognition that moving forward, you’re going to need these folks.”

Senior executives in Shanghai’s financial industry said the interest was so high that they alone carried 330 pounds of resumes from the job fairs back with them.

Although it’s unclear how successful the recruiting campaign will ultimately be, financial firms in Shanghai did recently offer jobs to 53 candidates as a result of the fairs, according to Caijing, an influential Chinese business magazine.

State media also reported that Chinese automaker Futian is eyeing laid-off workers in Detroit, hoping to hire about 10 specialists in research and development, production and sales.

The confidence with which China is courting its diaspora reflects the vastly changed attitudes about the country’s prospects since the economy started to flourish in the 1990s.

In earlier years, many Chinese students preferred to stay overseas while China was still struggling to transition out of a state-dominated economy. A generation of students in the U.S. were helped along by the asylum granted them after the Tiananmen Square crackdown of 1989.

But with China’s economic boom over the last decade, the idea of moving back became increasingly palatable and, in many cases, attractive to the ambitious.

Multinational corporations opened offices, entrepreneurs broke ground and living standards soared in the metropolitan areas along the coast.

“The younger generation has no hesitation going back,” said Henry Zhang of the Chinese Finance Assn., which helped organize a recent recruitment fair in New York. “I think it’s a permanent shift.”

Zhang, of Mountain View, Calif., is part of the older generation. He left China to study physics at the University of Texas at Austin in 1989 carrying all of $245. He knew that heading to the U.S. and staying there offered him the most opportunity.

“Before, you would go to America and never look back,” said Zhang, 45. “You had no regrets. You just had to march forward.”

Now, Zhang says he has the best of both worlds. He travels to China frequently to teach investing at an international business school.

He has turned down full-time job offers in China because he thought it would be too difficult for his family to leave America.

Shanghai, the primary destination for those returning, is looking to seize opportunities created by the global downturn to build an international financial center rivaling those of Hong Kong and Singapore.

Recruiting events now occur regularly. In a low-key affair at the end of December, a group of sea turtles invited 65 people from overseas to spend two days at a Marriott hotel in the Pudong district, China’s financial hub and home to Shanghai’s stock exchanges.

The event was supported by the Pudong government and gave bank executives and agency officials a chance to mingle with people like Will Lu, a Hacienda Heights resident who works for a merchant banking firm out of Los Angeles.

The 34-year-old native of Shanghai, who graduated from USC’s Marshall School of Business, says he was there to network with key people in government and business.

“As in Wall Street, you have to know someone to get into the industry,” he said.

The Pudong event was Lu’s third such recruiting session in China in a month. The others were in Beijing and Guangzhou.

When Lu left China in 2001, he remembers, he and his friends were drawn to the U.S. and its opportunities. That attraction is still there, he said, but the financial crisis has accelerated a shift to the East.

“The focusing point of the world,” he said, “will be changing to China.”

China Purchasing Manager (mkt277sh)

Job Title: China Purchasing Manager
Job Description:
Company introduction:
Our client is a world leader in AFC systems for public transport. It successfully completed many metro projects for numerous cities around the world. With the fast development of metro industry in China, Asia and many other countries, our client will reinforce their entity in R&D, program management and other operational positions.

Report To: GM China
Location: Shanghai

China Sourcing Manager

Responsibilities:

1. Set strategic goals and direction for the department to meet the company goal of revenue, capacity, cost, and delivery
2. Will be fully accountable to achieve the ambitious performance-, cost- and working capital targets together with highly motivated global team members.
3. Executes business processes, drives accountability, collaboration and respect.
4. Oversees all facets of material management. Oversee purchasing and inventory control. In charge of planning and forecasting of customer orders. Oversee warehouse and shipping.
5. Establish material purchasing procedures and standards. Develop supplier/vendor qualification program.
6. Works with Canadian and French team.
7. Supports and gains consensus for the organization’s mission, vision and values. Liaison with third party service provider on various supports to the department.
8. Contribute electrical Material Sourcing Expertise to the Global Procurement Hub.
9. Develop high level contacts with major manufacturers of electrical Materials and factored products for the company and other OPCOs as requested in order to secure correct product at the most favourable prices and quality.
10. Assist in developing supply chain procedures for the Global Procurement Hub.
11. Establish and maintain a formal manufacturer’s development, assessment and grading system.
12. Engage in a constant negotiation process for better payment terms and prices develop and implement sourcing strategies and management of supplier base.
13. Ensure that all Data on Product / Location / Specification is provided to Logistics sector.
14. Establish procedures to be incorporated into global project.

Requirements:

1. BA or Master degree in electrical, automation, controlling.
2. 5 –10 Years experience in electrical Materials Industry in China.5 –10 years Purchasing Experience.
3. Experience in global purchasing/supply chain. Experience in cost/inventory reduction/management. Negotiation skills of high rate and easy going and open-minded nature;
4. Should have an excellent knowledge about raw material sourcing with a Chinese market focus. A regional exposure, particularly to China, will be an advantage. Familiar with the material outsourcing market
5. Strong communication capability and team work sprite. Effective problem-solver and strong sense of urgency.
6. Mature and stable and with due carefulness and timeliness. Strong learning capability and high flexibility.
7. Good interpersonal skills, self-motivated and independent.
8. English / Local Language(s) speaker.
* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mkt277sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #