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As barriers fall in auto business, China jumps in

Wednesday, November 08, 2006

By Gordon Fairclough, The Wall Street Journal

NINGBO, China — The first cars to roll off the line at Geely Group’s sprawling plant here six years ago were crudely built hatchbacks, powered by Toyota Motor Corp.-designed engines. Annual production was less than 5,000.

Today, Geely makes 180,000 cars a year, with models including sedans and a sports car. It has engineered its own six-cylinder engines and is selling cars not just in China, but in Latin America, the Middle East and Russia as well. Geely even signed a joint-venture deal recently to build London’s iconic black taxicabs for sale in England.

“How to make cars is no longer a big secret,” says Li Shufu, Geely’s chairman. “The technologies are widely used and shared.”

Major changes in how the world’s biggest auto makers operate — outsourcing everything from design to component manufacturing — are making it easier for China to join the ranks of globally competitive car producers in far less time than it took Japan and South Korea.

The result: In many ways, cars are becoming a commodity. And the manufacturing of vehicles is starting to shift to China, in much the same way that production of garments, televisions and computers did. The development is likely to pose a serious challenge to established car companies around the world.

“China is coming,” says Michael Laske, head of Austrian engine-technology firm AVL List GmbH’s China operations. “It’s inevitable. The business is different today.”

China is already the world’s second-largest vehicle market, and it is growing fast. China’s government is working to promote the growth of domestic auto manufacturers, including Mr. Li’s Geely, whose cars will be on display this month at the Beijing Auto Show.

Plenty of obstacles remain to China’s becoming a true world player. China’s domestic brands still often fall short of the quality and reliability standards expected in Western markets. And many in the industry say Chinese car companies don’t yet have the skill and experience needed to run a global business that can distribute, market and repair vehicles in countries around the world.

“It’s easy to build a car,” says Ford Motor Co. Chairman Bill Ford Jr. “It’s harder to build a brand.”

Geely’s Mr. Li, a 43-year-old engineer, wants to be China’s Henry Ford, making affordable autos for the Chinese masses and exporting them around the world. The son of poor farmers, he has created an empire of auto plants in four cities, and expects to make two million cars annually by 2015.

Mr. Li also has built a university — with a library modeled on the U.S. Capitol — and a chain of technical schools that teach young Chinese how to make cars.

Geely buys fuel-injection systems from Robert Bosch GmbH of Germany. Interior parts come from a Chinese company that also supplies Volkswagen AG and General Motors Corp. Its steel plate comes from the same mill that sells to Ford, GM and Volkswagen. Dies and other manufacturing equipment come from a Taiwanese company.

Plenty of Advantages

Chinese auto companies already have plenty of other advantages. Many of them have learned a lot from joint ventures with the world’s biggest car manufacturers — from GM and Toyota to DaimlerChrysler AG and Volkswagen.

As big international manufacturers have moved to China, many of their main suppliers have followed them, and are now working for Chinese manufacturers too. The big car makers have also cultivated a host of suppliers and helped them get up to speed, something which has big spillover effects for local assemblers.

Upheaval in the global auto industry is also helping China. Chinese companies have managed to buy designs and equipment and hire talented executives from struggling competitors.

Shanghai Automotive Industry Corp., which has long-running joint ventures with GM and Volkswagen, bought blueprints for sedans from now-defunct MG Rover Group Ltd. of Britain and hired many of the company’s engineers. It launched the first of its own Rover-based vehicles last month and plans to begin selling the cars abroad next year.

Western companies looking to cut costs are also looking to China. DaimlerChrysler is in talks with Chinese state-owned Chery Automobile Co. about a joint venture to produce compact cars under Chrysler’s Dodge brand name for sale globally. The negotiations are at an advanced stage, people familiar with the situation say. Fiat SpA of Italy recently announced plans to buy engines from Chery to power some of its cars.

U.S. private-equity investors are also betting on Chinese car makers. Capital Corp. of America has a deal with Hebei Zhongxing Automobile Co. to sell its pickup trucks and sport-utility vehicles in North America. A Capital Corp. unit, China America Cooperative Automotive Inc., or Chamco, is helping Hebei Zhongxing meet U.S. safety and environmental standards.

“We’re outsourcing the manufacturing of cars,” says Bill Pollack, executive vice president of Parsippany, N.J.-based Chamco. Building cars in China will help Chamco “have a significantly different cost structure from what’s in place today” in the U.S., he says. Chamco pickups will be priced starting at $13,250 and will arrive in the U.S. by late 2007 or early 2008, Mr. Pollack says.

A Chamco ad recruiting dealers that appeared in a recent issue of trade magazine Automotive News compares the arrival of the Chinese autos to the Japanese. “If you didn’t move fast enough to get a Toyota or Honda dealership, here is the next opportunity of a lifetime,” the ad says.

It will likely be years before Chinese cars arrive en masse in the U.S. market, but the country’s car makers already are exporting to price-conscious customers in the developing world — an area vital to the prospects of U.S. and European firms.

Mr. Li says the Chinese are determined to make a big splash. “Autos stand for a country’s image, its power and its economy.”

Woven into the carpet on the floor of Mr. Li’s meeting room is a poem he wrote last year. It exhorts Geely’s employees to be diligent. “The freezing wind is gone, Spring comes,” the poem says. “We bury our heads to work.” The poem ends by promising that, “After ten years’ endeavor, Chinese cars will become powerful.”

Mr. Li was born on a farm in rural China in 1963 and grew up amid the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. He alternated years in school with work in the fields, depending on the state of his family’s precarious finances. When he finished middle school at age 17 in 1980, he used his graduation gift of 100 yuan, worth about $12 today, to buy a camera.

The camera launched his career as an entrepreneur. He used it to take pictures of villagers for a fee. In time, he opened a studio and raised enough money to go into a totally new line of business: stripping precious metals out of discarded appliances and machinery. That led to an enterprise making refrigerator parts.

Then, in June 1989, the Chinese military cracked down on pro-democracy protesters in Tiananmen Square. “We felt very insecure,” Mr. Li says now. It wasn’t clear whether the government’s market-friendly policies were going to be rolled back, he says. “For the sake of safety, I gave up everything.”

He turned over his factory and his savings to the local government. Mr. Li finally went back into business a few years later. He started a company making building supplies. In the early 1990s, he decided his real ambition was to build cars. “Chinese people were starting to have money. Families would be able to afford cars,” he says.

But the Chinese government — which at the time barred private companies from the auto business — wouldn’t give him a license. So Mr. Li made motorcycles. But he also built a pilot automobile plant, and he and his engineers began experimenting with car production.

Mr. Li and his cohorts bought a series of cars then available in China and started dissecting them to learn how they were built. Then they started trying to assemble their own. They finished the first prototypes for their own cars in 1998, based — loosely, Geely says — on competitors’ models. Geely finally got government approval to sell cars in 2001.

Some plants made cars based on a Toyota model that was being produced by a state-owned company and sold under the name Xiali, according to industry analysts. Toyota sued Geely in 2002 for trademark infringement and unfair competition, saying that the company implied in ads that some of the parts were made by Toyota.

The court ruled in favor of Geely in 2003. A Geely spokesman, Zhang Xiaodong, says the early Geely Haoqing model was developed by “learning and imitating” the design of the Xiali.

Critics of Geely say that another of the company’s early models bore a striking resemblance to a small car made by PSA Peugeot Citroen. Mr. Zhang, the Geely spokesman, denies that the company copied a PSA Peugeot Citroen car. But he says that Geely did buy parts from suppliers that made components for both the Xiali and PSA Peugeot Citroen vehicles. Many suppliers were based in the same province, Zhejiang, where Mr. Li was born and where some of Geely’s factories are located.

As Geely’s engineers became more sophisticated, they started work on a series of other models. The company contracted with local and foreign design firms, and Mr. Li began to hire engineers from other companies.

In 2005, Geely launched the CK-1, a compact sedan designed by the former design arm of Daewoo Motor Corp. of South Korea. It has since sold nearly 100,000 of the cars. Two more models, including a midsize sedan, have been introduced this year, and others are being developed to launch in 2007.

The company now makes its own engines and transmissions, examples of which sit on plinths in the lobby of Geely’s headquarters in Hangzhou, about 110 miles south of Shanghai. Interiors are fancier, too. Some have leather seats and DVD players. On a dais sits a Jinggang sedan, dubbed the “King Kong.” “Some people say the rear end looks like a Cadillac,” one employee, taking a visitor on a tour, says with pride.

Shim Bong Sup, a veteran engineer with Daewoo, joined Geely in 2004, charged with improving its engineering and vehicle-development skills. His main focus has been to force engineers and designers to focus first and foremost on improving quality.

When Mr. Shim first arrived at Geely, he says the company was having serious problems with its interiors, which were too easily deformed in high temperatures because parts weren’t made to exacting-enough specifications. That problem and others have been resolved, he says.

“In design and development, there is still room for improvement,” says Mr. Shim. But he adds that manufacturing is improving quickly.

At the Geely factory in Ningbo, car bodies move along the assembly line in yellow cages suspended from a cableway in the ceiling. Robots do the most critical work: welding chassis and bodies. But workers do much more of the assembly by hand than in Western auto factories.

Assembly-line workers in Geely’s plants tend to be in their early to mid-20s. And they are paid an average of about $150 a month — roughly 80 cents an hour. To insure quality, workers use small stamps to imprint their names in a book attached to each car as it passes their station on the line.

“First it was Japan, then Korea. Now it’s our turn. We’re ready,” says Liu Lei, 24, dressed in Geely’s blue factory uniform. “We are learning from our mistakes. We have a lot of confidence.”

Geely has exported more than 20,000 cars to 42 countries, mostly in the developing world. “This is our first step. We want to sell the cars, test them out and get some experience,” says Jie Zhao, head of international operations.

Soon, the company plans to start selling in richer Asian countries and in Eastern Europe. “In the last step, we will go into Western European countries, as well as the U.S.,” Mr. Jie says. Mr. Jie refuses to give a timeline for exports to America, saying it is hard to predict how quickly the company will be able to get ready.

In an effort to gain experience for entering the U.S. market, Geely started selling some cars in Puerto Rico this year. The company said it couldn’t provide sales figures.

For Mr. Li, China’s emergence as an automotive powerhouse is an unavoidable result of the flow of economic history. “Globalization is changing the world distribution of industries. Industry here is developing from the simple to the sophisticated,” says Mr. Li. “China will become a base for car production.”

Ford Motor’s Mr. Ford agrees that auto business and other manufacturing industries in the U.S. are going to be affected by the growing sophistication of Chinese companies. Ford, along with Japanese partner Mazda Motor Corp. and ChangAn Automobile Group of China, has one assembly plant operating in Chongqing and is finishing construction on two additional factories — one for cars, the other for engines, in Nanjing. This is happening as Ford is cutting thousands of jobs in the U.S.

“Americans don’t get it. They don’t understand what’s going to happen,” Mr. Ford says.

Chief Financial Officer

Company Introduction:
World famous energy service company , new established JV in HK, in charge of Asia Pacific area business, operation centre in SH.

Duties and responsibilities:
1.Establish and direct finance & accounting function
2.Ensure financial accounting controls are designed and operating effectively
3.Provide financial assistance to the marketing, operations and other departments
4.Create and monitor the annual budget and rolling 12-month forecast
5.Perform near-term cash flow forecasts as requested
6.Monitor the Finance Department’s actual to budget performance
7.Coordinate financing initiatives if necessary
8.Coordinate monthly, quarterly and annual reporting requirements for the Shareholders
9.Prepare timely and accurate financial reports and present findings and recommendations to top management
10.Establish and manage treasury & cash management activities
11.Oversee the JV Company’s capital structure-determining best mix of debt, equity and internal financing
12.Prepare financial and economic outlook (monthly) and plan (annual)
13.Prepare ad hoc financial reports and models as required e.g. analysis of new-builds, acquisition opportunities
14.Direct and develop tax compliance & planning
15.Assist in developing Board and other presentations
16.Liaise with auditors, legal and financial advisors on regulatory and legal matters

Qualifications and experience:
1.Fluent in English and working knowledge in Mandarin preferred
2.Significant knowledge of PRC, Hong Kong, and S.E.A. generally accepted accounting principles
3.Familiarity with US generally accepted accounting principles
4.Accounting/Finance degree and post-graduate professional qualification (Chartered Accountant, Certified Public Accountant or equivalent)
5.Experience with US corporation preferred
6.8 years or more work experience
7.Experience with Big 4 accounting firm desirable

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_eo065sh@dacare.com’

More ‘Boomerangs’ Return To Their Former Employers

If you’re looking for a new job, don’t rule out companies where you worked before. They might be more interested than you would think.

Former employees, once spurned as damaged goods or disloyal, are increasingly getting a warm reception — or even a recruiting call — from many companies. The attitude shift is prompted by an unemployment rate that’s been below 5% all year, a shortage of skilled workers and the need to control labor costs in the face of globalization.

Managers have come to appreciate that returning employees generally require less training and are likely to get up to speed more quickly than a fresh hire. So-called boomerangs already know a company’s systems, policies and culture.

The odds of a good fit between the worker and job are also enhanced because current managers or other employees can usually vouch for the person’s past performance. “When you know a person and you know the caliber of their ethics, their personality and attitude, it’s invaluable,” says Daniel Solomons, chief executive at Hyrian, a Los Angeles recruiting firm.

‘Not Mount Everest’

The bottom line for job seekers: If you pine for a former employer, you can do something about it — and you don’t have to return with your tail between your legs. “This isn’t Mount Everest,” says Philadelphia career coach Julie Cohen. “This is feasible.”

Ms. Cohen says one benefit of being a boomerang is that you already have contacts within the company. Use them. Former co-workers can advise you of jobs before they’re available to the public — and give you the lowdown on the responsibilities and the people involved.

Sacramento career coach and author Kathy Sanborn advises people to make contact a few months before they’re ready to send in a resume. Ms. Sanborn suggests emailing an article that could help the boss address a business concern. A friendly call or even a lunch invitation to an acquaintance who’s in a position to lobby for you is also appropriate.

If it’s been a while since you were in touch, that first call or visit is an ideal time to catch up on what’s happening at the company and to relate a few experiences that show how you’ve developed. During the second contact, a couple of months later, you can fish for job openings or suggest you’d be interested in returning to the firm.

My, How I’ve Grown

When you’re ready to apply, the experts suggest clearly explaining how you’re more valuable than you were when you jumped ship.

Matthew Whipple left accounting giant Ernst & Young in 1998 and returned this year. In the interim, he went to work for a smaller accounting firm that had a contract with the United Nations; he got promoted and moved to Geneva, Switzerland, for part of the term. He was called upon to manage large projects and work with government officials, and he learned new accounting skills.

Back at Ernst & Young, “I can draw on all those experiences now,” he says.

Mr. Whipple had stayed in touch with his colleagues and participated in Ernst & Young’s alumni program. The company has 32,000 registered alumni in the U.S. who participate in volunteer events, workshops and networking sessions. This year, 26% of the people Ernst & Young hired to be managers or above were boomerangs.

Back After a Break

Boomerangs don’t always return from working somewhere else. Some had opted out of the work force because of illness or to manage family responsibilities.

Workers who are ready to return after an extended absence may find that old bosses are among the most receptive to their resumes, because the past relationship compensates for uncertainty about employment gaps.

Many of the usual guidelines for re-entering the work force still apply: You should consider refreshing your skills with a class or two and should join a professional association to build new contacts and learn the latest in industry news and terminology. But re-entering as a boomerang can make the transition easier.

Brad Sugars, who regularly hires boomerangs for his consulting firm, Action International, based in Las Vegas, says people shouldn’t hesitate to sell the boss on the quirky skills they learned while outside the work force.

Mr. Sugars personally spent three years at home with his kids. When he returned, he found he had more patience and understanding than ever before — two qualities that can help immensely on the job.

If an employer is inclined to hire you back, but seems skeptical about your ability to pick up where you left off, consider starting at a lower level, with the understanding that you’ll return to your old job or level if you pass a six-month or one-year review.

Negotiate that “onboarding” program the same way you negotiate salary and benefits, says Eva Har-Even, a coach with executive consulting firm WJM Associates, in New York.

Be Realistic — and Cordial

But Ms. Har-Even also advises clients to avoid the temptation to idealize the past. Make an effort to recall the negatives as well as the positives of your time at that employer. And do some research to ensure the company and the work environment are still as good as you remember.

The more time has passed, the more things might have changed. “You can’t step into the same river twice,” Ms. Har-Even says.

The increasingly warm welcome for boomerangs also holds a message for anyone getting ready to quit a job: Even if you don’t think you would want to return, maintain your relationships and be courteous when you leave.

“It’s kind of like a date,” says Mr. Sugars of Action International. “The kiss goodnight is important.”

Email your comments to cjeditor@dowjones.com.

Infiniti Officially Launched in China

Beijing, China – The Chinese introduction of the Infiniti Coupe concept car occurred earlier this month to make Infiniti’s official debut in China. Sales are scheduled to begin next year, and Infiniti began recruiting car dealers late last year.

Digging Through Candidates’ Digital Dirt

The results of a recent Careerbuilder.com survey of 1,150 hiring managers in the United States show that 12% of hiring managers have used social networking sites to dig into the backgrounds of potential employees.

Another 26% of hiring managers say they have used Google or other search engines as background research.

Of the hiring managers who Googled candidates’ backgrounds, 51% did not hire the person based on what they found.

Of the hiring managers who gleaned details from social networking sites, 63% decided against hiring the person based on what they found.

Researcher or Voyeur?
Is it fair to judge a candidate based on what is posted on a website or networking profile? Should inappropriate comments or indecent pictures be the deciding vote in whether someone is a good candidate for a job?

“There is a thin line between monitoring and voyeurism. And it is a line that is all-too-often crossed by employers. Employers have the right to look at certain aspects in making a decision, but employers should not be looking into candidates’ private lives. That is well-outside the context of the employee-employer relationship,” says Jeremy Gruber, legal director of the National Workrights Institute, an organization in Princeton, New Jersey.

Gruber poses the analogy of an employer who, upon learning that a potential employee will attend a certain party on Saturday night, shows up in disguise to watch the employee.

“If that happened, people would be outraged. Yet that is what employers are doing every day that they engage in this behavior. They are making decisions based on information not submitted by the employee or references. It is wholly unrelated to the employment relationship,” says Gruber.

“The idea that when you hire someone, you should be able to look at every aspect of their personal life is completely at odds of how a democratic society should operate. It has huge consequences for freedom in this country, when people are afraid or are changing their behavior because of what a potential future employer might say or do,” he adds.

Though Gruber contends that online research into candidates’ backgrounds is legal, he urges recruiters to spend the time on more traditional evaluations to determine whether they can perform the job well.

“The more time you spend on information that is extraneous to the ability of an individual is time spent away evaluating whether that candidate would make a good employee. Look at specific credentials, references, and things of that nature, versus what they did to blow off steam last weekend. There is always a leap of faith involved in hiring a candidate, and you should be wary of looking at extremely untenable aspects of their personal lives,” Gruber adds.

Posting a Positive Image
For those recruiters who can’t resist the urge to search, the survey notes that not all online research will unearth negative news on your candidates.

In fact, the survey found that hiring managers discovered plenty of positive things that prompted them to select their candidates. According to the survey results, some of these helpful online attributes included the following:

64% — candidate’s background information supported their professional qualifications for the job
40% — candidate was well-rounded, showed a wide range of interests
34% — candidate had great communication skills
31% — candidate’s site conveyed a professional image
31% — got a good feel for the candidate’s personality, could see a good fit within the company culture
23% — other people posted great references about the candidate
23% — candidate was creative
19% — candidate received awards and accolades
Indeed, Krista Bradford, principal of The Good Search/Bradford Executive Research, LLC, views Internet searches as just another medium through which to communicate.

“A tool is a tool, and it can be used for good things and bad things,” she notes. And while she agrees with the notion that invading candidates’ privacy is a bad move — such as trying to gain access to privately held information, such as health or credit information — she contends that public information is fair game.

“As a recruiter, we may not ask a person certain questions, but if they choose to reveal things that would indicate they are making poor choices, then I would think that is perfectly legitimate. When someone writes about his private life in a public forum, he has made it public and it has ceased to be private.”

She says she has never used viewing a personal website or blog to exclude a candidate, adding that she has seen “thousands” of blogs. Instead, she says recruiters should embrace diversity and realize that workers aren’t cookie-cutter, two-dimensional people.

“I use that personal information to see what common humanity we share and how that helps me as a recruiter build that bridge. I don’t use it as a covert way to find bad things; instead, I use it as a way to find genuine human connections,” she adds.

¡ª Elaine Rigoli

How Job Hunters Can Protect Themselves from Identity Theft

Online job boards have become hot spots for identity thieves.

The U.S. Federal Bureau of Investigation said in July that it is investigating a variety of cases involving online job scams. In one scenario the FBI cites, people are finding resumes posted online with Social Security numbers and other personal details, and using the information to apply for fake credit cards and loans in the job hunters’ names. In another, people send a job hunter an email claiming to be from a recruiter or company seeking personal details for a pre-employment background check, and use the information for identity theft.

Margaret Davis, 36 years old, of Chicago, says she was a victim of identity theft in 2001. After applying for a position on a job board, she exchanged emails and had a phone interview with someone whom she thought was from a recruiting agency.

Ms. Davis opened the employment forms emailed to her as attachments and later noticed several attempts to hack into her personal computer. She traced them to the emails, she says, discontinued contact with the person, and reported the incident to the job board. But two years later, she says, she learned that around the time of the correspondence, her Social Security number had been stolen and used to rack up $3,600 through an online account with a large electronics retailer. She then reported the problem to a credit bureau and the police.

Ms. Davis says she was able to restore her credit. But identity-theft problems often aren’t easy to resolve, so prevention — by keeping personal information private and taking precautions to make sure you’re dealing with legitimate companies and recruiters — can save you money and time.

When you post a resume, clear it of personal information. Cyberthieves have been able to gain access to resume databases and troll for Social Security numbers and other personal information, such as where you live and your contact information, says Pam Dixon, executive director of the World Privacy Forum, a public interest research group in San Diego.

Some job boards offer posting options to keep your personal information anonymous, allowing users to check a box to “hide” contact information from employers. Ms. Dixon suggests keeping your name, address, date of birth and phone number hidden, and never posting your Social Security number or any other information that could help a criminal set up a bank or other customer account. On job board CareerBuilder.com, for example, if you “hide” all your contact information, employers can contact you only by email by choosing a “Send email” option.

Since scam artists have been known to post fake job ads, also remove personal information from resumes you submit to potential employers, says Ms. Dixon. Sometimes phony job postings can be spotted by checking for their misspellings and grammatical errors, she says. Ms. Dixon suggests creating a temporary phone number or email address for your job search.

Think twice before revealing personal information by email or phone. Con artists “phishing” for information through fake interviews may ask for, say, information such as your Social Security number or a scan of your driver’s license or passport, says Ms. Dixon, and claim it will expedite the application process.

Jennifer Sullivan, spokeswoman for job board CareerBuilder.com, also cautions against providing your marital status, eye color or financial information such as bank-account or credit-card numbers.

Two popular phishing methods are asking job seekers to complete a pre-employment background check or to create a direct-deposit account with the company, according to John Kane, acting manager of the Internet Crime Complaint Center in Fairmont, W.Va., which is funded by the FBI, and run in partnership with the FBI and the National White Collar Crime Center. In most circumstances, you shouldn’t agree to a background check until you have had an interview in person, or set up direct deposit until you’ve been hired.

There are legitimate work-at-home positions, as well as freelance and contract work, for which you may need to share personal information with an organization before meeting with hiring managers in person, but before you do, look for signals that it might not be above-board. You can start by searching on the company’s name on the Better Business Bureau’s Web site. Another helpful Web site is Lookstoogoodtobetrue.com, maintained by a joint federal law-enforcement and industry task force.

“The victim community tends to be very vocal in terms of warning people about scams,” says Mr. Kane.

When Shelley Cardenas, 51, posted her resume on a large job board after her employer relocated from Fort Lauderdale, Fla., she received an email offering her a financial post — though she hadn’t applied for the job. When she did an online search for the name of the person who contacted her, nothing came up in affiliation with the company. The same thing happened when she searched online for the names of executives she found on the Web site the email cited. Growing skeptical, Mrs. Cardenas posted her concern on a Web site dedicated to exposing scams online, and a discussion participant sent her a link to user complaints on the site about the company. After receiving six emails that she suspects were scams via the same job board within two months, she pulled her resume from the job board.

“I think it’s unfortunate in this day and age that there are so many people out there that just want to hurt other people,” says Mrs. Cardenas.

If the company that contacts you appears to be a well-known employer, don’t think you’re in the clear. Criminals are copying company Web sites and tweaking the contact information or links, says Ms. Dixon of the World Privacy Forum. Although a Web site may look credible, do an Internet search of the company to make sure the URL of the official Web site matches the address the employer refers you to. If there’s a mismatch, find the phone number of the company’s corporate headquarters on the official Web site to verify that the hiring manager who contacted you is an employee.

— Ms. Mattioli is an editorial assistant at CareerJournal.com.

Speaking about recruiting in China

By Mr Wallacy Gao

Mr Wallacy Gao, CEO of Career International, one of the most important chinese recruitment agencies, shares his vision of the trends and stakes of the recruitment industry today in his home country.

What is the actual shape of the recruitment market in China?
What you have to understand first is that twenty years ago there was no recruiting market in China. The government allocated all jobs. Then, when China began to embrace free enterprise, the local recruitment market started to develop. But at that time, employers still mainly used referrals and job fairs as sourcing channels: they were the traditional government channels.
Suddenly, after 1990, there was a rapid rise in the number of job seekers, and at that time, new sourcing channels appeared. Today, job seekers can choose between many different channel types as Online recruiting, executive search agency, news papers, job fairs ect.
Not only foreign ventures, but also local HR service companies face a booming market. To use a popular Chinese expression to describe a market with such a great potential, I would say that the recruiting market in China is quite a “big cake.” I believe the size of China¡¯s recruiting market will reach to over $1 billion in 2006.

How did the first recruitment agencies appear?
Once the Chinese door have been opened on the outside world, the big cities and business centers as Beijing or Shanghai have quickly attracted foreign companies — giant corporations as well as small start-ups. All those companies need to recruit, and so need professional HR agencies to help them source their ideal personnel and build their Chinese HR structure. This is how we first met these clients.
That was specially the case for small “start-up companies”, for which competition increased quickly. In the same time, skills and abilities were hard to find. They needed professional recruiting experts to help them improving management team¡¯s quality.

What are the key success factors for non-Chinese multinationals when they start recruiting in China?
First of all, multinational should know that attitude is the vital thing when they start recruiting in China.
Then, they should be prepare to face real shortage of candidates in certain circumstances. Sometimes the war for talent is as fierce as in many parts of the Western countries, although China has a population of 1.3 billion people. Most foreign companies entering into China, have been surprised to find that managers were particularly hard to find.
I think there are four points playing a key role in the success of non-Chinese multinationals when they start recruiting in China:

Get professional recruiting staff in their HR department. That¡¯s very important for a foreign company in China.
Get an effective vendor management system.
Deploy perfect Recruiting tools.
Implement an Internal staffing inspiriting process system.
Is the using of a recruiting technology a good option when recruiting in China?
Yes. Certainly it is.
As skilled managers are in particularly short supply on the Chinese market, attracting good ones can present a special challenge. The truth is that recruiting for any position in China can require a whole new outlook. Usually, recruiters in HR department always aim to decrease costs and increase recruiting quality. For that, an excellent recruiting technology is the vital thing for making the difference and recruits the right staff.
That is why we promote Talent Management Solutions to companies in China.

What is your assessment of the added value brought by recruitment technologies on the Chinese market?
Using Recruitment Technologies, especially when associated with Process Outsourcing, can help recruiters decrease costs and increase working efficiency. For example, in a traditional model, a recruiter has to take a lot of time to filtering resumes from the Internet, mails, job fairs ect. The follow up of candidates¡¯ interviews with line managers is also very time demanding. Recruitment technologies can help recruiters save more time and more money.

What is your vision of the future of recruitment in China?
It is a difficult question: the major fact about our market is its capcaity to change and evolve in a fast fast way. Tomorow can be a totally different thing. Still, I think that in the future, the evolution of the recruitment market in China will be driven by three important sectors:

The quality of candidates
The ability to build efficient recruiting processes,
The ability to integrate technology

Job Hunt

My friends in the executive-search business are all talking about the boom in new jobs. But we all know not every industry is booming, and I know it especially well: One of my company’s regional offices is near Detroit.

Whether the automotive professionals are leaving their industry or getting left by it, the end result is the same: They need new jobs. I specialize in corporate marketing search and consulting assignments; that means many of these corporate refugees end up sitting on the other side of my desk.

It’s a difficult first meeting. I start it with a dose of reality.

It’s almost certain that these professionals will have to change industries. On the agency side, when a company like DaimlerChrysler decides it doesn’t need separate agency teams for Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, two-thirds of the players find themselves on the street. As Ford and GM cut back, the same goes for the client-side guys. There simply aren’t enough marketing jobs in Detroit for all these people.

Unfortunately, with most of the folks I’ve met, automotive is all they have ever done. And while there are exceptions, the hardest thing so many of these executives learn is that much of what they’ve being doing in their careers may not be valued outside of the automotive world.

The problem is exacerbated by the very scope of the auto business. A marketer may move from one nameplate to another and from one agency to another, but once he’s tagged as a “car guy,” it can be very hard to break out.

So here we are. And the job-seeker wants to know: Now what? I have a number of answers. They apply principally to the automotive world, but the thinking and strategy can, if properly tailored, apply to many a marketer at a career crossroads. Here’s how it works.

A job search demands a strategy, a business plan with target audiences and a communications structure. Decide whom you want to reach, what it is that you have to offer that will meet their needs and how much of your time you have to invest in reaching each target. I also believe there are two kinds of resumes: those that help get a job and those that get in the way. For our auto pros, sometimes the same resume is both. Hence, I advocate using a two-pronged strategy.

First, I suggest the searcher think about industries, businesses and companies that might value some or all of what he’s accomplished in his auto career. Look for other businesses that are adjacent to the sale of automobiles, such as tires, batteries, oil or gas. We talk about tearing down what the marketer has done into the functional parts. Rather than considering his career as one that’s about automotive marketing, we think about his experience in local and regional marketing, event marketing or trade shows.

For plenty of people, however, this approach can only go so far. It’s then that I suggest thinking about the nonresume world, which means the personal network of friends, contacts, peers, superiors and acquaintances everybody has. There are probably people who know you and your work so well, they don’t care about what your resume says. These are the folks who can see how you may be successful in a role that has nothing to do with your previous titles and experiences, in a role you may never have thought of.

It always surprises candidates to learn exactly how many people are actually in their network once they think about it. Friends, neighbors, vendors, folks from church or clubs or associations you’ve been part of. Whatever happened to your college roommate or that favorite professor? Make a list of everybody.

Then I have candidates segment the list into three groups: Those who will take your call without question, those who will need a little reminder of how they know you and those who are indirect contacts, people with whom you’ve had some professional contact.

Next, start calling. Begin with those you know the least so you can practice your technique. Don’t presume someone can’t help you just because he works in a totally different industry. You may not know that your contact’s brother-in-law happens to be an HR exec at a company that’s perfect for you.

These skills will, alas, probably be needed for quite some time. The auto business is in a downward spiral and it’s not clear how or when it will pull itself back up. No doubt, some marketers think their own industries are invulnerable¡ªbut in this economy, is that presumption wise for anyone?

Perhaps an old saying about careers suffices: If you’re really good, you’re always looking.

Ed Tazzia is managing partner at Gundersen Partners, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a global executive search and management consulting firm. Contact: (248) 258-3800 or edtazzia@gpllc.com.

America¡¯s Job Bank Gets Laid Off

The Labor Department sent a notice to state officials earlier this year saying the benefits of America¡¯s Job Bank “no longer outweigh the costs of operating and maintaining this system. Therefore, AJB will be phased out during the next 18 months and cease to be operational on June 30, 2007.”

The notice argued that maintaining and improving the site no longer makes sense “given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector.”

That logic rings true to Peter Weddle, recruiting analyst and executive director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites industry group. Weddle says the Labor Department is wise to shutter America’s Job Bank because it replicates services offered by a range of private-sector sites. These include sites targeted at lower-wage and blue-collar workers, says Weddle, whose association includes the major job boards CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com and Yahoo HotJobs.

“Why should the government duplicate what the private sector is providing already?” Weddle says.

But shutting down America¡¯s Job Bank will be a major blow to employers and job seekers, says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of job-site consulting firm CareerXroads. Crispin says the site has been a way to aggregate all the job postings of some 2,000 state employment offices around the country, giving smaller, local employers the ability to broadcast their jobs nationwide for free. And the AJB site is often used by lower-skilled people who turn to state employment offices, he says. Those people may have to rely on a fragmented network of state job sites or private-sector job boards that will not have all the job listings that employers currently give to America¡¯s Job Bank, Crispin says.

“We are basically losing a public resource that provides job seekers a more convenient and easy way to identify the employers who were local and had smaller budgets,” he says.

America¡¯s Job Bank dates to 1995, and the free site currently lists more than 2.1 million jobs and more than 682,000 r¨¦sum¨¦s. But it has been criticized as difficult to use. The Labor Department said in a notice that the cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million a year, but that “AJB has not been able to keep up with private-sector job boards or industry standards regarding up-to-date technology.”

The slated closure of America¡¯s Job Bank could force both companies and states to change the way they do business. Idaho, for example, enticed employers to list jobs on its state job bank with the promise that the listings would get on the better-known America¡¯s Job Bank site.

“We¡¯ve used the national distribution of job postings through AJB as a promotion,” says Bob Fick, communications manager at the Idaho Commerce and Labor Department.

America¡¯s Job Bank also has been used by companies as a way to abide by the guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Weddle wrote in an online newsletter last month.

“Because this site was operated in conjunction with state employment agencies and open to all U.S. citizens, posting an opening there was a de facto commitment by the organization to consider any qualified person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion or sexual orientation,” Weddle wrote. “The openings may have also been posted on other job boards or on the employer¡¯s own Web site, but as long as candidates from America¡¯s Job Bank were considered, the government was (usually) content that the company had made a conscientious effort at compliance.”

An alternative for demonstrating a good-faith effort at EEOC compliance, Weddle wrote, is posting jobs on a variety of sites, including general-purpose employment sites and “diversity” sites such as those that specialize in candidates of a particular race.

The notice sent to state officials said that during the past two years, the Labor Department’s Employment and Training Administration had reviewed and evaluated the ongoing viability of maintaining a national job site. “Since the launch of AJB, the number of private-sector Internet-based job boards (Career Builder, Monster, Yahoo! Hot Jobs, etc.) has proliferated, calling into question the need for a Federal government-sponsored job board,” the notice said.

The notice, titled “The Phase Out of America¡¯s Job Bank,” also said: “The cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million per year, with a current operating budget for maintenance-only of $12 million per year¡­ . The cost to maintain AJB and constantly upgrade the foundational technology and make improvements to the site is no longer justifiable given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector.”

The notice said the Labor Department has developed an initial transition plan “to ensure that states and other entities, which currently utilize the AJB platform as part of their suite of services, are able to plan and make changes accordingly.”

It also indicated that the federal government could contract with a private-sector employment Web site to create some kind of national job board in the future.

“The (Labor) Department recognizes there will be a periodic need for a national job board due to unique circumstances, such as the recent dislocations related to the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast,” the notice said. “It is the Department¡¯s assessment that it will be more cost effective to contract for this type of service with the private sector on an ¡®as needed basis.¡¯ ”

In addition to the notice, the Labor Department also sent state officials a set of questions and answers about the phase-out.

Workforce Management received copies of the two documents from Ted Daywalt, president of private-sector job board VetJobs. Daywalt said he received them from a contact who works in the U.S. Labor Department, and that the documents were sent to state officials. Daywalt declined to identify his contact.

The U.S. Labor Department confirmed the documents were authentic and sent to state workforce administrators in March. In a statement, the department also said a conference call on the subject was held with state workforce administrators on March 17. The department did not respond to a request for further comment.

Although the demise of AJB amounts to a headache for Idaho state officials, it is a relatively minor one, Fick says. Of greater concern, he says, are cutbacks in federal grants for programs such as unemployment insurance and workforce training. “It¡¯s another problem, but in a long list of problems,” he says.

In Crispin¡¯s opinion, the loss of America¡¯s Job Bank adds to the economic insecurities faced by many Americans, and is likely the result of political lobbying.

“It¡¯s simple greed on the part of job boards and newspapers who have always feared that a free site will hurt them,” he says.

Weddle, though, says he had no knowledge that the decision to close America’s Job Bank was based on any lobbying. He also noted that there still are other free job-posting sites, such as Craigslist.

Weddle gives the government credit for launching the site more than a decade ago and helping to spark the online job board field. “It was so successful that it spawned a $2 billion industry,” he says.

4th Chinese private enterprise summit opens in east China

HANGZHOU, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) — The fourth Chinese Private Enterprise Summit, the largest of its kind in China, opened Saturday in east China’s Zhejiang Province.

More than 3,000 private entrepreneurs both at home and abroad attended the two-day summit held in Hangzhou, the provincial capital.

With the theme of “Innovation, Credibility and Harmony”, the summit had a series of forums on innovation, real estate development and Chinese private entrepreneurs.

“Weakness in innovation and enterprise management now hinder the development of private enterprises in China,” said Jiang Zhenghua, vice-chairman of the National People’s Congress Standing Committee, China’s top legislature, at the opening ceremony.

Chinese private enterprises should make use of the opportunities in globalization and nurture their own brands on the basis of good management, he said.

The summit was sponsored by the Private Economic Studies Centerunder the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhejiang Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce, and Zhejiang Private (Non-Governmental) Enterprises’ Association.

A key sector in the province’s economy, private enterprises hold 90 percent of jobs and 70 percent of the gross domestic product in Zhejiang. Enditem