Archives March 2006

Putting china on your resumé

EXECUTIVES LOOK FOR CAREER BOOST FROM ASIA STINT
By Katherine Yung
Dallas Morning News

Bobby Carter shows all the symptoms of China fever.

Each week, he meets with a private tutor to learn Mandarin. On airplanes, he listens to language tapes. And in his spare time, he reads books about the Asian powerhouse and blogs written by expatriates living there.

China “is really intriguing to me. I want to experience it,” said Carter, 44, UPS’s international sales and marketing manager for the Southwest region.

Although he’s traveled in the region for his job, now he wants to work full time in China, for at least a few years.

“Who would think in our lifetime we would have the opportunity to be pioneers in anything?” he said.

As China evolves into an increasingly important market for many U.S. companies, a growing number of Americans are eager to work there, despite potentially formidable obstacles of language and culture.

`Not a hardship’

Interest in China extends beyond multinational corporations. Increasingly, managers at small and mid-size businesses are volunteering for forays in China, seeking excitement, riches and a career boost.

“It’s not a hardship,” said Louisa Wong-Rousseau, managing director of China for Stanton Chase International, an executive search firm. “People see going to China as a career advancement.”

Though many in China prefer to hire locals, a shortage of skilled executives means expatriates remain in demand, said Lisa Johnson, director of consulting services for Cendant Mobility, a large relocation company.

Many companies award assignments in China to their rising stars, she said. “It’s where a lot of companies’ future is.”

According to a Cendant Mobility study conducted last year, people relocating to China for business reasons are typically married men in their early 40s.

Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, ranks as the top destination for expatriates. But a growing number of them are headed to less well-known places like Chengdu, Dalian and Tianjin.

Americans who have taken the plunge and relocated to China often find the experience an eye-opener.

In November 2004, Nokia Oyj employee Ron Davenport sold his house and two cars in Grapevine, Texas, and moved to a gated community in Beijing.

Now, he is helping develop low-cost phones at Nokia’s product creation center in Beijing.

“The pace is quite frantic,” Davenport, 41, said of the Chinese business environment. “But I am much more sensitive to growth in other parts of the world.”

`Flying in and out’

For Mark Abe, living in China became a necessity. The 40-year-old executive for Plano, Texas-based Electronic Data Systems arrived in Beijing three months ago to help his company win information technology services contracts from Chinese airlines, airports and other air services providers.

“It’s very hard to build those relationships when you’re flying in and out,” he said.

The expatriate from Orange County quickly learned that conducting business in China requires forming personal relationships, not just making sales calls.

“The business models that are prevalent here in China are different from ones in other parts of the world,” he said, referring to the nation’s many state-owned firms.

“Don’t wait,” he advised others considering working in China. “The country is changing so fast. Jump in with both feet and don’t look back.”

Taking on a China assignment does involve some challenges and adjustments.

Chief among them is finding health care that meets U.S. standards, according to the Cendant Mobility study.

An unhappy spouse and children can also cause problems.

Ironically, once expatriates and their families adapt to life in China, the hardest part is often coming home.

Attorney Carter Meyer endured a difficult transition when he and his wife returned to Dallas in August 2004 after living in Beijing and Tokyo for a little more than two years.

“It was hard getting used to it,” he said of the first few months back on American soil. “I missed the food quite a bit. I missed the people.”

Meyer, 37, recently left Vinson & Elkins to become head of a small venture capital firm. But if the right opportunity came along, he would consider going back to Asia.

“On a résumé, it has a lot of credibility,” he said of his time spent in China. And “I appreciate the size of the world a lot better.”

http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/business/14203721.htm

Program Manager(Shanghai,China)

http://ehr.chinahr.com/jobs/job_detail.asp?job_id=20050104000214000155&stat=-1

Job Description:

Company introduction: Our client is one of the world’s largest fabless semiconductor companies, a global leader in wired and wireless broadband communications semiconductors. It provides manufacturers of computing and networking equipment, digital entertainment and broadband access products, and mobile devices with the industry’s broadest portfolio of state-of-the-art system-on-a-chip and software solutions.

Location: Shanghai

Responsibilities:

1.Lead project team to execute/delivery the project on time and to interface with customers and also other engineering parties.
2.He/she is also requirement do work on some software development or hardware design.

Requirements:
1.BE, ME or PhD in EE or CE£» Experience in embedded software development/test/debug or hardware design£»
2.Experience in software project management£»
3.Experience in GSM handset SW development£»
4.Self motivate with good communication skills in both English and Chinese£»
5.Experienced in GSM handset project management is a strong plus

* Please send us your complete resume to: topjob_ic009sh@dacare.com

Supply Chain Manager-AP(Shanghai,China)

http://ehr.chinahr.com/jobs/job_detail.asp?job_id=20050104000214000150&stat=-1

Job Description:

Company introduction: Our client is a leading US designer and manufacturer of the latches and access control hardware for some of the most dynamic markets, It provides products to most leading electronic manufacturers and most of the world&acute£»s leading automotive manufacturers. It has a long history of providing superior quality products and customer service while maintaining consistent growth.

Location: Shanghai,China

Responsibilities:
1.Develops, maintains, implements, and trains sourcing engineers and facility material managers
2.Designs and recommends professional training programs aimed at elevating performance excellence and professionalism within the regional and facility material management and supply chain functions
3.Performs long term and strategic planning for Asia Pacific Supply Chain
4.Improves profitability through supplier development, supplier cost reduction, consolidated commodity purchases, supplier lead time reduction, and make-versus-buy administration
5.Coordinates and oversees the staffing, training, and salary administration of the Asia Pacific Sourcing, Supply Chain, and Logistic organizations
6.Monitors and analyzes logistics, warehousing, and customs processes to provide the highest levels of customer satisfaction (both internal and external) utilizing the services of the regional warehousing, shipping and receiving departments
7.Oversee the regional shipping and receiving departments for efficiency and cost effectiveness in accordance with the criteria of the Company scorecard
8.Solicits appropriate forecasting reports and utilizes proper forecasting techniques
9.Organizes benchmarking visits to other organizations (internal and external) to ensure cost-effective operation
10.Oversee regional warehousing and inventory control to maintains accurate and up-to-date stock records

Requirements:

1.B.S. in Business Management, Operations Management, Business Administration or related field
2.Minimum 10 years experience (international experience a plus)
3.At least 3 years in a managerial level role with strong exposure in Supply Chain, Warehousing and Logistics
4.Experience with flow/ lean manufacturing
5.Communication, problem solving, organizational, and planning skills
6.Fluent English communication capability is must
7.Foreign passport holder preferred (to travel in AP frequently)

* Please send us your complete resume to: topjob_log004sh@dacare.com

Automotive Competition: Is China the Next Japan? (GM, F, TM, HMC)

By Evelyn Rubin on Douglas McIntyre

Douglas McIntyre submits: Chinese automotive manufacturers Geely (in photo) and Chery have begun to show their cars at the auto shows and are starting to make the rounds of U.S. dealers. According to MSNBC, Malcolm Bricklin, who helped Subaru and Yugo get footholds in America, is working with Chery to line up retail outlets.

No one seems worried. Maybe the American automotive industry should not be. Maybe the Chinese automotive threat is still too far off.

The Chinese automotive industry is growing at an astonishing pace. According to the People’s Daily, in February, China produced over 528,000 cars and sold 480,000. The Chinese Ministry of Commerce says both figures are increases of more than 50% over the same period a year earlier.

Granted, General Motors Corp. (NYSE: GM), Ford Motor (NYSE: F), Toyota Motor Corp. (NYSE: TM), Honda Motor Co. Ltd. (NYSE: HMC) and others are doing well in China along side the local manufacturers. And, they should. In the U.S. there are more cars that households. In China, there is still only about one vehicle for every 100 households.

The demand for cars and light trucks in China over the next decade will drive down production costs and raise unit sales in a way the industry has not seen since the early part of the 20th Century in the U.S.

It would be foolish to think that the Chinese will not be aggressive exporters as their manufacturing cost efficiencies rise with unit sales.

It’s a good bet that U.S. consumers will be driving Chinese-made cars in the next two or three years. The question is, will these new models go the way of the Yugo, or will they take share the way Subaru and others have?

Douglas A. McIntyre is the former Editor-in-Chief and Publisher of Financial World Magazine. He has also been president of Switchboard.com, which was at the time the 10th most visited site on the web, according to MediaMetrix. He has also been on the boards of TheStreet.com and Edgar Online.

China Needs People!

Foreign firms invest $1 billion a week in China but they lack creative managers who are willing to take risks.

Reasons For Lack of Talented Managers
1. Success often depends more on loyalty to the party than business acumen .

2. There aren’t many MBA programs in China.

3. Chinese talent is 1st-generation. They don’t have role models. Their parents worked for state-owned firms and were too bureaucratic. Entrepreneurial types are too unrestrained.

4. The Confucian heritage emphasizes rote learning and hierarchy. That might explain why Chinese managers are cautious about taking the initiative. But maybe living in a police state has something to do with that, as well.

5. The one-child policy doesn’t grow team-players. [Are only children loners?]

No Marketing Talent
Local Chinese are good technically and in administration. But there is no experience in marketing.

“You find yourself micro-managing more than you’d like…. If the tasks are across departments, or if it means working in a team or trying to relate to others, they still have a long way to go.”

The biggest issue – Retention
In 2004, 1 in 10 execs changed jobs in Shenzhen. 1 in 12 in Beijing. That’s a nationwide employee churn rate of 11.3%, up from 8.3% in 2001.

Some smaller firms see a 30% turnover.

Compensation Rates
Middle Manager, foreign firm (in Beijing or Shanghai): $27-32K (base plus bonus)
Senior Managers: $46-54
Top execs: 80-90K

Salaries Rising
Avg annual salary increases for mid-level and senior managers: 6-10%.
Accountants’ salaries: rising 14% / year.

Standard Perks: Bonuses, long-term incentives, free housing, meals, a mobile phone, car. Also: more holidays, mat and pat leave, more frequent job rotation and share options.

Employers also make Big Contributions to China’s National Security Fund. So, workers cost double their basic pay.

Attractions: Chinese employees will join a company for good training.

Alternate Strategies
Overseas Chinese are filling some jobs. But they’re expensive and don’t know the local market.

Non-Managerial Labour
1. South Chinese economy is growing and moving into higher level work.
2. Firms can’t find skilled labour.
3. They can’t find cheap labour. (What does “cheap” mean in China?)

Some companies are relocating to cheaper inland cities.
Some will outsource to Vietnam and Cambodia.

Problems with HR Strategy
Business plans aren’t taking the lack of talent or the cost of recruiting and retaining talent into account.

From the Economist

how returned overseas chinese viewed by locals?

Post from blog.bcchinese.net

received a mail:

I’m a chinese girl who was born and raised in *** (an european country). I’m coming this *** to work in Shanghai, and I’d like to know how chinese people consider people like me, I mean huoqiao ren. Are we considered as strangers, even if we look like asian, and talk chinese ?

returned overseas chinese are still regarded as “chinese” and therefore a “zi ji ren” (people of our side), no matter what passport they hold. however there are some changes in recent years. overseas chinese are no longer seen to hold those advantages over the local chinese in fields such as language, skills or working experiences, in fact, the trend is that many executive search firms favor local talents over those returned from overseas because of their extensive experiences and knowledge of china.

interestingly, the chances are greater that local chinese got frustracted in socializing with overseas chinese than with foreigners. i don’t understand why. but in general, returned overseas chinese can fit into shanghai quite well, and they are viewed as a member of shanghai and chinese community.

good luck to you!

http://blog.bcchinese.net/bingfeng/archive/2005/08/16/32031.aspx

Execs see China as place to boost career

By KATHERINE YUNG / The Dallas Morning News

Bobby Carter shows all the symptoms of China fever.

Each week, he meets with a private tutor to learn Mandarin. On airplanes, he listens to language tapes. And in his spare time, he reads books about the Asian powerhouse and blogs written by expatriates living there.

China “is really intriguing to me. I want to experience it,” said Mr. Carter, 44, UPS’ international sales and marketing manager for the Southwest region.

Although he’s traveled in the region for his job, now he wants to work full time in China, for at least a few years.

Bobby Carter of UPS, who hopes to work full time in China, learns Mandarin from Lei Zhang.
“Who would think in our lifetime we would have the opportunity to be pioneers in anything?” he said.

As China evolves into an increasingly important market for many U.S. companies, a growing number of Americans are eager to work there, despite potentially formidable obstacles of language and culture.

Interest in China extends beyond multinational corporations. Increasingly, managers at small- and mid-size businesses are volunteering for forays in China, seeking excitement, riches and a career boost.

“It’s not a hardship,” said Louisa Wong-Rousseau, managing director of China for Stanton Chase International, an executive search firm. “People see going to China as a career advancement.”

Though many in China prefer to hire locals, a shortage of skilled executives means expatriates remain in demand, said Lisa Johnson, director of consulting services for Cendant Mobility, a large relocation company.

Many companies award assignments in China to their rising stars, she said. “It’s where a lot of companies’ future is.”

According to a Cendant Mobility study conducted last year, people moving to China for business reasons are typically married men in their early 40s.

Shanghai, China’s most cosmopolitan city, ranks as the top destination for expatriates. But a growing number of them are headed to less well-known places such as Chengdu, Dalian and Tianjin.

For example, Dallas attorney Ryan Greene recently accepted a job with EnterHealth China LLC, which manages two hospitals in the Chongqing area. The firm aims to become a leading provider of health care services in China.

Mr. Greene, 34, already has an apartment leased and furnished for him in Chongqing. Initially, he plans to spend half his time in the southwestern Chinese city and the remainder in Dallas.

‘Industrial revolution’

After three trips to China, he has developed an admiration for the Chinese people’s work ethic and culture. “In the next five to 10 years, everyone is going to be going over there,” he said. “I want to be on the leading edge of that transition.

“What’s happening there is so amazing,” he added. “It’s the industrial revolution in early 19th-century America all over again.”

Americans who have taken the plunge and moved to China often find the experience an eye-opener.

In November 2004, Nokia Oyj employee Ron Davenport sold his house and two cars in Grapevine and moved to a gated community in Beijing.

Now, he is helping develop low-cost phones at Nokia’s product creation center in Beijing.

“The pace is quite frantic,” Mr. Davenport, 41, said of the Chinese business environment. “But I am much more sensitive to growth in other parts of the world.”

For Mark Abe, living in China became a necessity. The 40-year-old executive for Plano-based Electronic Data Systems Corp. arrived in Beijing three months ago to help his company win information technology services contracts from Chinese airlines, airports and other air services providers.

“It’s very hard to build those relationships when you’re flying in and out,” he said.

The expatriate from Orange County, Calif., quickly learned that conducting business in China requires forming personal relationships, not just making sales calls.

“The business models that are prevalent here in China are different from ones in other parts of the world,” he said, referring to the nation’s many state-owned firms.

“Don’t wait,” he advised others considering working in China. “The country is changing so fast. Jump in with both feet and don’t look back.”

A few challenges

Taking on a China assignment does involve some challenges and adjustments.

Chief among them is finding health care that meets U.S. standards, according to the Cendant Mobility study.

An unhappy spouse and children can also cause problems.

“Make sure your family really wants to come,” said Mr. Davenport, who moved to Beijing with his wife and two of his three daughters. (The oldest daughter lives on her own in the U.S.)

Mr. Davenport said his wife and daughters are thriving in Beijing because of their outgoing and independent personalities. His middle daughter has found a new hobby, snowboarding in the nearby mountains. His youngest, a second-grader, is studying Mandarin.

Once expatriates and their families adapt to life in China, the hardest part is often coming home.

Attorney Carter Meyer endured a difficult transition when he and his wife returned to Dallas in August 2004 after living in Beijing and Tokyo for a little more than two years.

“It was hard getting used to it,” he said. “I missed the [Chinese] food quite a bit. I missed the people.”

During his time abroad, Mr. Meyer traveled throughout Asia. In China, language didn’t prove to be a huge barrier because most of the professionals he met spoke English.

And to their delight, he and his wife were able to save a lot of money but still live comfortably, with help from a driver and a housekeeper.

Mr. Meyer, 37, recently left Vinson & Elkins to become head of a small venture capital firm. But if the right opportunity came along in the future, he would consider going back to Asia.

“On a résumé, it has a lot of credibility,” he said of his time spent in China. And “I appreciate the size of the world a lot better.”

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/bus/stories/032106dnbuschinawork.296484f.html

China’s draft labor law worries foreign firms

By UNITED PRESS INTERNATIONAL
Published March 21, 2006

BEIJING — A proposed Chinese labor law has foreign companies worried that China is giving power back to the state-backed trade union.

According to a draft of the Labor Contract Law, released late Monday, the union would have to be consulted about mass layoffs and approve companies’ rules for employees. It also would have the right to negotiate on behalf of workers through collective bargaining, the South China Morning Post reported Tuesday.

State media said the National People’s Congress had invited public comment on the draft law for next month, after the full text was posted on the NPC’s Web site.

Companies claim the proposed law marks a step backward for China’s economic reforms by taking away flexibility in hiring and firing.

The law requires companies to pay a full year’s salary to employees departing under “non-compete” agreements, a level far higher than in Western countries.

The planned law also sets the length of probation for new employees and requires companies to make severance payments to workers on fixed-term contracts if their contracts are not renewed.

Criticizing foreign companies for failing to install unions, state media have threatened to draw up a blacklist. Companies also must hand over a mandatory payroll tax to the union.

http://www.wpherald.com/storyview.php?StoryID=20060321-101225-2734r

Firms recruiting in China find few fits

By RALPH JENNINGS

BEIJING (Kyodo) Japanese companies trawling for new hires at the second annual Beijing job fair have found few skilled applicants among the latest group of graduates.

Employers taking part in the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China’s second annual weekend job fair on March 11 at Beijing Normal University said they found few good matches.

They want people with technical skills but many job-seekers were Japanese language specialists with little work experience.

“People who understand technology don’t know Japanese, and the people who understand Japanese don’t know technology,” said a Chinese sales official at a Chinese branch of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

The job fair drew some 800 people — fewer than the 1,000, hoped for — from about 100 universities. A total of 33 companies participated, taking resumes and holding brief interviews with the job-hunters.

Companies collected an average of about 20 resumes each. Of those, three or four might have the qualifications for open jobs, recruiters said.

“The feeling isn’t that good, because they don’t meet our needs,” said Wang Huan, an account manager with the Beijing branch of Hitachi Information Systems (Shanghai) Ltd.

She said she wanted mostly experienced workers, not the college students who came to hear about Hitachi’s 15 job openings in Beijing.

The class of 2006 is a large one, due to a surge in university enrollments four years earlier, and now graduates are finding it more difficult than they expected to find good jobs. The People’s Daily reported recently that 4.1 million university students will enter the job market this year, 700,000 more than in 2005.

Graduates expect to make roughly 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan ($ 373 to $ 621) per month, enough to give something back to parents who paid their tuition as a family investment.

The Japan Times: Tuesday,March 14, 2006

In China, That Ivy League Degree Isn’t Gold

from The Asian Wall Street Journal November 01, 2005

China still is a magnet for ambitious, Western-educated entrepreneurs coming home to start high-tech companies and cash in on China’s economic boom. Take Charles Zhang, the Massachusetts Institute of Technology-trained founder of Web portal Sohu.com Inc., and Edward Tian, who earned a doctorate in the U.S. and once charmed Rupert Murdoch into joining the board of his Beijing telecommunications company.

But this favored class isn’t looking quite so favored, at least in the eyes of venture capitalists looking to invest in China. The trend is largely anecdotal, but for many “seed capitalists” poking around Beijing and Shanghai, slick Westernized returnees are out. Local, rough-around-the-edges entrepreneurs are in.

“The less English you speak, the better,” says David Zhang, a venture capitalist in Beijing with San Francisco’s WI Harper Group. He and other investors say locally trained executives often are more thrifty with cash and better understand local Chinese markets – and businesses that know how to tap them – than people who have been abroad for years.

“A lot of the returnees, actually, they have lost touch with China,” agrees Vincent C.H. Chan, a managing director at Jafco Asia, part of Jafco Co. of Japan.

Instead of courting Ivy League graduates with slick business plans, Messrs. Zhang and Chan are plowing money into no-frills Chinese start-up businesses such as wireless-services provider China Broad Media Corp. The company, funded by WI Harper, is the brainchild of Tian Song, an entrepreneur who went to college in Beijing and toiled in the state-owned telecommunications sector there. He says, through a translator, that his only visit to the U.S. was a brief trip to Las Vegas.

Jafco has helped to finance such entrepreneurs as Zhou Hongyi, who founded Chinese Internet search-engine concern 3721 Network Software Inc. Yahoo Inc., intrigued by Mr. Zhou’s technology – it enables people to use Chinese characters to search the Web – bought the company nearly two years ago for US$120 million.

Some returnees may have “studied in a good school,” says Andy Yan, managing partner of Hong Kong investment firm SAIF Partners. But “when they come back, they think they know everything.”

One of Mr. Yan’s favorite home-grown success stories is Hu Xiang, a founder of SAIF portfolio company Mobile Antenna Technologies (Shenzhen) Co. Mr. Hu, 52 years old, is about as far from a polished returnee as one can get in China: He doesn’t speak English and missed nearly 10 years of schooling during the Cultural Revolution that began in the 1960s. Mr. Hu dug tunnels and later was a low-level factory worker, sometimes going hungry.

That Mr. Hu suffered during the Cultural Revolution and had to work so hard for his success, instead of leading a more comfortable life abroad, appealed to Mr. Yan. “We’ve been through so much,” says Mr. Yan, who had similar experiences. “The challenges now don’t seem so big.”

After spotting a business opportunity in supplying locally produced wireless antennas in China – and being inspired by a Chinese translation of “The HP Way” management tome – Mr. Hu started his own company. Mobile Antenna says it has about US$40 million a year in contract sales and makes gear for such Western companies as Lucent Technologies Inc. and Harris Corp. of the U.S. Networking giant Cisco Systems Inc., of San Jose, Calif., is an investor.

To be sure, a significant number of Western-educated Chinese businesspeople will continue to snare funding from overseas venture capitalists. That is particularly true in high-tech fields in which China doesn’t have much local expertise. Returnees also can help implement basic business practices that aren’t always common at home-grown Chinese businesses: the U.S.-educated Mr. Tian, for example, says employees at his first Chinese start-up company sometimes had trouble organizing quarterly earnings numbers on time, or even using telephone voice mail.

Many U.S. financiers have little choice but to continue to deal with China’s English-speaking elite: Most American venture firms don’t have Mandarin-speaking partners on the ground in China.
Still, focusing only on returnees can mean missing out on good deals. And returnees often demand stock options and Silicon Valley-type salaries, Mr. Zhang of WI Harper notes. That can drive up costs and lower profits for venture investors.

Local chief executives often better understand consumer tastes and trends that drive industries like Internet commerce and mobile communications in China, Mr. Yan of SAIF says. A degree from a foreign university is no longer a must; China’s economy is expanding so rapidly it offers many opportunities to learn management skills.

A case in point, Mr. Yan says, is Mr. Hu at Mobile Antenna. Lacking English skills and the resources to go abroad, Mr. Hu eventually earned a degree at a Chinese university. He built a career in academia and at a state-owned electronics factory, moving to the giant Chinese telecommunications concern ZTE Corp. in 1991.

Like many entrepreneurs stuck in big companies, Mr. Hu became restless. In an interview, he says he saw how ZTE spawned a local, Chinese supply chain for telecommunications gear used in fixed-line phone networks. By 1994, he saw mobile-phone use skyrocketing in China and figured the companies building the mobile networks would need a nearby, low-cost supplier of wireless components.

He left ZTE in 1997. Two years later, he started Mobile Antenna with a few partners and about US$370,000. They struggled at first, he says, but gradually improved product quality and won big international firms as customers. The company now has nearly 570 employees and is building a new office in another part of Shenzhen.

He has done well enough to send his daughter to Boston College in the U.S.

– Rebecca Buckman
Staff Reporter of The Wall Street Journal