Archives February 2008

Employment top of agenda in Jiangsu

Providing jobs for the unemployed and university graduates will be this year’s top priority for authorities in Jiangsu province, acting governor Luo Zhijun said in his report to the first session of the 11th provincial people’s congress yesterday.

Luo said the government will create more than 850,000 jobs and re-employ 250,000 laid-off workers to ensure all urban families have at least one person in work.

creating jobs has been high on the government’s agenda over the past five years, he said.

According to official figures, over the past five years, the provincial government has spent 5.16 billion yuan ($717 million) on employment and re-employment. Some 4.9 million new jobs have been created and 2.11 million laid-off workers have been reemployed.

But despite the government’s efforts, 600,000 to 800,000 people lose their jobs in Jiangsu every year, and some 600,000 join the labor force, official figures show.

“This puts great pressure on the government, but we will take an active approach and continue to carry out a positive employment policy to improve the situation,” Luo said.

As in the past, the government will provide free job training for laid-off workers to equip them with necessary skills for new positions, Chen Zhengning, director of the provincial labor and social security department, said.

“We will also take advantage of the rich vocational training resources in the province to organize skills training for high school graduates and unskilled workers,” he said.

The measures will be welcome news for Zhang Xin, a Japanese-language major who graduated in July from the Jiangsu Food Vocational School.

The 22-year-old has been out of work ever since.

“I have submitted job applications to dozens of companies and have gone for a few interviews, but they all said they had nothing for me,” Zhang said.

His mother, who earns 850 yuan ($118) a month, is the family’s sole breadwinner. His 49-year-old father was made redundant when the factory he worked for went through restructuring in 2001. He has held a number of part-time jobs but nothing since the end of last year.

Chen said the authorities are working hard to ease the financial burden on families like Zhang’s.

By the end of last year, 98 percent of retirees in cities and counties were covered by the pension system and 88 percent of people had medical insurance, according to the government’s work report.

Luo said the government will this year spend 200 million yuan ($27.8 million) on upgrading facilities at rural and community health clinics.

Top 10 Hiring Errors

Hiring in China is still the number one issue and solutions are thin on the ground. Research by Deutsch and Remillard, who wrote the book on hiring, found that there are 10 common mistakes that companies should avoid if they hope to achieve success in hiring. This is a complement to our Top 10 Don’ts.

Job Descriptions. Interviewers tended to focus on experience and skills rather than the company’s expectations for the position. This is a strong mismatch which can be solved by taking it a step further. Check out Peformance Profiles.
Superficial Interviews. There was little in the way of checking or verifying of candidate’s experience and education.
Over-emphasis on Resume. Interviewers focused too much on details in the Resume such as education, technical skills, and industry experience.
Initial Impact. Interviewers relied heavily on first impressions to make their hiring decisions.
Historical Bias. Hiring teams used only past performance to predict future results. This was thought be insufficient.
Performance bias. Candidates who ‘performed’ at interview tended to be chosen over real job performers.
Active Candidates Companies tended to bottom feed and only attracted the active job seeker. Passive candidates were not succesfully targeted.
Best Predictors Interviewers tended not to focus on self-motivation, leadership, comparable past performance, job-specific problem solving and adaptability, and these have been shown to be strong predictors of performance.
Understanding Stars. Companies failed to understand the motivation of Stars and did not structure a process around their needs. It’s worth noting that in China, everyone is a star.
Shallow Approach. Companies did not budget sufficient time and resources for a successful search.

Customer Service: Key to Successful Recruiting

Fast and personal customer service is what I insist is core to being an effective 21st century recruiter. Every candidate should receive a personal response customized to their questions and needs. Candidates should be sold positions on the basis of the goodness of their fit in the position and to the degree they exhibit the skills and competencies needed.

Yet, many recruiters are challenged to provide this level of service. Here are a few quotes from recruiters: “I have received almost 500 resumes. Over 90% of these people are not qualified or not what my company is looking for.” Another said, “I have been overwhelmed with candidates. Some fit our needs, but most don’t even take the time to read the job description…I wish I could reply to every candidate, but if I did, I would not be doing my job!”

Candidates, on the other side of the fence, say, “Now, as a candidate going through a very bad dry spell in finding recruiting work, I rarely experience this common courtesy among recruiters who post jobs that don’t exist and fail to follow simple due diligence.” And this: “I’m a downsized corporate executive who has been repeatedly appalled by the way companies and recruiters are treating candidates.”

We all, I believe, want to provide candidates with great service, and we all know that those who have been ignored, dismissed as not qualified, and otherwise treated with discourtesy will not forget and may never recommend our firm to friends or apply again, even when they may be excellent choices.

Every act of discourtesy will eventually be incorporated into the overall reputation that our firms have about people and how they are treated. As they say in the customer satisfaction business, for every customer that tells you they are satisfied, there are at least 3 dissatisfied customers who have said nothing. The same applies for candidates.

So, what does the overworked, overwhelmed recruiter do? How can you provide responsive service in the face of huge numbers of resumes? Here are three tips:

Don’t Post Job Descriptions, But If You Do, Make Them Precise and Specific

I have taken an excerpt from a job description I found on a website that is representative of many I see every day. The question I ask is who, with even a modicum of technical ability and a dash of experience, will not feel qualified for this job? There are no specifics, no details, and no firm requirements. I almost feel that I could apply for this and justify why if asked.

You’re looking for more than just a job in Information Technology. You want a career that challenges your IT experience while giving you the freedom and support to succeed. Look no further than [company name]. Our Professional Services offerings span the entire application life cycle, giving our customers a complete solution and our employees the opportunity to excel on all platforms.
With our technical focus and emphasis on delivery, we strive to hire experienced Information Technology professionals with broad skill sets and the desire and versatility to learn new businesses and skills. We are selective in hiring and serious about retaining those we do hire.
We are looking for candidates with the following attributes:

Oracle Financials experience
Oracle 11i application development experience
Strong PL/SQL
I am sure that this has generated many hundreds of unqualified resumes. Unfortunately, most job descriptions are written this way deliberately so that they will generate a large number of responses. When we lacked technology and reach, this was a marginally acceptable approach. But today, it creates big problems. Most candidates are very concerned with applying for an appropriate job, but how can they really tell from the way descriptions are written? Are the specific requirements spelled out? Are you using technology to screen for these?

We need to focus on a building a new mindset. We do not need mass marketing for most positions, we do not need to generate hundreds of responses to make sure we’ve “covered the field,” and we can’t ignore hundreds of applicants because of our own inadequacies. Many of us have attitudes that would be similar to those of a store clerk who, when overwhelmed with customers, simply walks off and leaves them.

We Need to Use Technology, and Use it Better
The new recruiting tools and systems have built-in tools for communicating, screening, and maintaining relationships with candidates. These candidate relationship management tools are not magical, but they ease the burden and automate a portion of the task. However, the sad fact is that after these systems are purchased, only a fraction of recruiters utilize their powerful communication and screening features. Most recruiters are still focused on the zero value-added backend “administrivia” and don’t see as clear a connection between the candidate experience and the type of response they get from recruiters.

Salesforce.com and all the larger Applicant Tracking Systems can automate the responses candidates get to various actions they take on the website. They can periodically send e-mails and newsletters, and they can be better programmed to send intelligent responses to candidates’ questions.

The bottom line is that all recruiters need to do a better job letting candidates know where they stand in the recruiting process by sending regular updates and letting them know as soon as possible that they are no longer being considered. Even automatic bounce-back responses can be more intelligently written and distributed.

Relationships and Referrals Are Keys to Your Success
I am more and more convinced that posting job descriptions is an archaic process. While I have no doubt that the practice will live on for a long time, it is not the best, cheapest, or faster way to find good people.

Using technology to develop relationships and to communicate regularly with a selected and screened pool of candidates is the key to your real success. By developing and using tools that allow candidates and hiring managers to co-create requirements and refine requirements as needed, more good people will find jobs that fit them better. Posting jobs on job boards and pushing descriptions that seem to have been written by a PR firm out to wary candidates is no longer effective.

Recruiters have to use social networks, referrals, Internet search, and face-to-face conversation to build trust and establish a relationship with candidates that can be leveraged whenever needed. Unfortunately, face-to-face relationship building is slow, expensive, and clumsy. Social networks allow you do this with much greater ease and gracefulness at a lower cost in time and money.

Base your recruiting on the customer service mindset, go for quality (not volume), and do that by building relationships and asking for referrals. If you are generating hundreds of responses to a job posting, you are doing something terribly wrong.

Follow-up: Foxconn Promises To Pay Security Guards Before Spring Festival

February 1, 2008
Foxconn has told local media that with the coordination of the Shenzhen Labor Department, it has reached an agreement with the security guards who asked for more pay and will pay them before the Spring Festival holiday.

Foxconn says that the security guards’ request for back-pay was caused by some misunderstandings. A rumor that Foxconn will dismiss all securities guards had made the guards uneasy, and the salary the guards are receiving right now has already included the back-pay, but the security guards were unaware of this, according to the company. Foxconn says that it is reviewing its salary structure and revising it according to the Labor Contract Law in China.

Foxconn claims that it has signed an intercession letter with the security guards and will compensate them for the extra work hours before the Spring Festival based on the business accounting of the labor department. However, Foxconn has not disclosed the accounting results of the labor department.

Foxconn has also made a response to the report that it has put one of the security guards under house arrest, saying that the person was actually transferred to work at another factory of Foxconn under his own decision.

On January 29, more than 200 security guards of Foxconn gathered at the gate of company to ask for more payment for their extra work and another 40 went to Shenzhen Municipal Labor Department to appeal for help.

Survey: 2 in 5 Chinese employees consider themselves underpaid in 2007

BEIJING, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) — More than 40 percent of employees in China were unsatisfied with their salaries in 2007 amid rising costs of living, said a latest online survey.

Covering more than 8,000 people of various professions nationwide, the survey was conducted earlier this month by www.zhaopin.com, one of China’s leading job-hunting websites.

When the respondents were asked to rate their degrees of satisfaction on salary, 21.5 percent ticked 70-100 points representing “very satisfied and satisfied,” 36.4 percent chose 60-70 points indicating “an average degree,” with the remaining 42.1 percent opting for 60 points below to express their strong dissatisfaction.

Only one fifth of the employers have taken financial measures to increase employees’ income to reduce the effect of price hikes in the past year, according to the survey.

Most respondents said they hoped their salary could be raised this year, with 30 percent of them hoping for a 20 percent increase, 36 percent for a 50 percent rise, and 21 percent for a doubling of their salary.

At the same time, more than half of the people surveyed said they were looking to change jobs.

The consumer price index, a major gauge of inflation, is likely to climb 4.7 percent in 2007, Yao Jingyuan, chief economist of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said in late December 2007.

Multinationals in China face sharp rise in salary demands

SHANGHAI — Multinationals in China face more serious challenges than anywhere else in Asia, paying more to attract talent but facing the region’s worst turnover levels, a survey said Thursday.
Across all sectors of China’s roaring economy, 32 percent of employers said job seekers expect salary increases of at least 20 percent over their previous position, a report by human resources firm Hudson said.

Yet despite higher salaries, Chinese employers have a harder time than anyone else in Asia holding onto people, with 13 percent of firms reporting turnover rates of more than 20 percent of staffing levels.

“Employers are having to give both the highest salary increases and the largest bonuses in the markets surveyed in Asia,” said Angie Eagan, general manager for Hudson.

Hudson surveyed the expectations of 737 executives in China for the first quarter of the year.

In regards to higher pay it concluded: “This strategy does not seem to be working, as they are also facing the highest staff turnover rates.”

Media, public relations and advertising were especially vulnerable to losing employees, with 56 percent reporting a turnover rate of more than 10 percent, and 27 percent of companies averaging a turnover rate of more than 20 percent.

Limited career progression was also a major issue, mentioned by 22 percent of respondents, also more than any other market in Asia, Hudson said.

“With the current buoyant market, employees who feel that they are not progressing in their career fast enough know that they can obtain other job offers fairly easily,” the report said.

Employers also expect to pay much higher year-end bonuses this year. Across all industries 66 percent of respondents say they plan to pay bonuses of more than 10 percent, the highest figure for any market surveyed in Asia.

Moreover, nearly 24 percent propose paying bonuses of over 20 percent.

Adding to the bottom lines were strong expectations for expanded staff.

Mandatory Salary Increases for China?

By Frank Mulligan – Accetis International, Talent Software & Recruit China

There are looming clouds on the horizon in China with definite signs of wet weather, and not even the remotest connection to the presence of bears.

Self-inflicted rain.

The Chinese Ministry of Labor and Social Security is apparently working on a new law that encourages employers to pay higher salaries. It has not been announced as specifically mandatory, with compulsion for employers, but the fact of it’s consideration is problematic, to say the least.

The logic behind the move is that there is increased inflation in China, and this must be offset with salary increases. The fact that this would feed further inflation seems to have escaped everyone’s notice. No specific details are available but what is confirmed is the linkage between these salary increases and the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

I strongly suspect that this measure is intended to impact the lives of manual laborers but even if it is not a threat to your average Chinese professional in the immediate term, it will be in the medium term. Higher worker salaries mean that China becomes less attractive as an FDI market, and eventually there has to be a spillover effect on professional jobs.

The impact would include factories that don’t get built; factories that don’t expand; factories that actually reduce worker numbers; and those factories that would have come to China but are moved to cheaper countries. Never mind the effect on retail or hospitality establishments that depend so heavily on manual labor. In all these scenarios fewer professional managers are needed to manage the workforce, and that’s not a good thing in a country with so many new workers coming onstream.

It is also odd that this salary increase law, for want of a better term, should be considered at a time when the world’s economy is drifting, if not actually heading to recession. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the pace of the world’s economy will slow significantly in 2008; in fact they cite an inevitable slowdown. Yesterday they warned that restoring world financial markets was going to be a complex and protracted task.

It could be a bumpy ride in China this year. Let’s hope for as few bears as possible.

Salary.com(TM) Reports Record Financial Results for Third Quarter 2008

WALTHAM, Mass., Jan 31, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) — SLRY | news | PowerRating | PR Charts — Salary.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SLRY), a leading provider of on-demand compensation and talent management solutions, today announced financial results for its third quarter of fiscal 2008, which ended December 31, 2007. Third quarter revenue was $9.2 million, an increase of 52% from the third quarter of fiscal 2007 and 8% sequentially.

Cash flow from operations was $2.3 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2008, compared to $1.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2007 and $1.5 million in the prior quarter. Year-to-date operating cash flow was $5.4 million, compared to $2.0 million in the same period in the prior year, an increase of over 170%. Total deferred revenue was $20.9 million at the end of the quarter, an increase of 36% year-over-year and 14% sequentially.

Kent Plunkett, founder and chief executive officer stated, “Q3 was a solid quarter, highlighted by record revenue, expansion of our customer base, and continued strong cash flow generation. In the third quarter we expanded our product offerings with enriched data sets for our compensation management solutions and we added key competencies to our talent management solution, which gained additional traction in the quarter.”

China drafts code to regulate salaries

?BEIJING, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) — The Ministry of Labor and Social Security is working on a draft regulation to encourage employers to implement salary rises, a move that is being seen as a way to lessen the effects of rising inflation.

The regulation is designed to help develop a mechanism to facilitate a healthy and rational increase of employees’ salaries, an official said.

The draft will be submitted to the State Council for review soon but the source did not release specific details.

Qiu Xiaoping, a senior official with the ministry, said the consumer price index shall be taken into account when salary levels are set.

“The government can not force companies to increase salaries. We hope to find a decision-making system that involves all parties in this issue through the regulation,” he was quoted by Beijing-based financial weekly China Times.

About 12 provinces in China have announced their own rules on the salary issue and labor departments in 27 provinces began to ask employers to deposit a certain amount of security to ensure they do not delay payment.

These efforts have effectively reduced the number of cases in which salaries have been paid in arrears, the ministry said.

But many employers have not increased salaries for years and employees, especially blue-collars, still earn less than they should, Qiu said.

China, whose economy is driven by low-cost labor, has made efforts to protect the rights of employees. A new labor contract law took effect on Jan. 1, imposing tighter controls over employers’ rights to hire and fire staff.

Regional expertise is a priority in China

By Rolf D. Cremer

Published: January 28 2008 05:59 | Last updated: January 28 2008 05:59

Before the mid-1980s, there was virtually no management education in China capable of preparing managers for a new, market-oriented, and increasingly international business environment.

There were no business schools in the western sense, and the MBA was practically unknown.

The business departments of local universities lacked both the quality and the quantity of faculty to offer credible programmes, and they lacked faculty capable of working with senior executives in an EMBA or executive education programme.

Meanwhile, the foreign MBA providers in China did have faculty, and brought them into the country. Their lack of in-depth knowledge of China and lack of real involvement with management did not hinder enrolment because at the time, there were no adequate substitutes.

During this initial stage, the emphasis was almost exclusively on teaching, and foreign providers using western teaching methods. Their market-orientated course enjoyed a competitive edge over rival programmes offered by domestic institutions.

But China’s MBA business has changed fundamentally during the past five years.

The number of domestic universities approved by the Ministry of Education to offer advanced business education programmes has quickly increased.

Today more than 100 universities have been approved for MBA degrees. They offer around 250 MBA and EMBA programmes, roughly 40 of which operate in co-operation with, or as host to, a foreign provider.

During this growth, China’s management schools have become much more competitive. The financial and administrative ability of the leading universities in recruiting internationally qualified faculty has increased.

The economic rise of China has attracted back the so-called “sea-turtles”, Chinese graduates and faculty with world-class management degrees and teaching or research experience. China’s potential students are now better prepared than ever before.

Employers now also realise the limited value of degree programmes and executive education courses that lack China-relevant content and context.

The time of importing management programmes and faculty into China is now coming to an end. Business schools in China are re-positioning themselves.

China is no longer a passive recipient of knowledge and know-how, but is developing into a power centre for influencing management teaching content and research methodology. In this respect, the world of education mirrors the rising influence of China on world affairs.

The success of China’s re-positioning over the next decade or two within the business education arena depends on three factors.

First, a handful of China-based business schools will need to emerge as an internationally-recognised elite – on a par in performance and reputation with the world’s leading schools.

At present, this is not yet the case, even though a small number of leading Chinese schools are prominent within the country, and are highly respected.

The rise of these schools into the elite will be led by the School of Economics and Management at Tsinghua, by the Guanghua School of Management at Peking University, and by the China Europe International Business School (CEIBS).

Second, China-based schools will need to align themselves with practical priorities of business.

At present, Chinese and foreign faculty in China are reluctant to commit their research to the region.

With one eye on the faculty market in North America and Europe, they consider publication in leading international (that is, US-based) academic journals as necessary for career development.

But with abundant and exciting research opportunities, good funding sources, and an emerging group of elite business schools in China itself, the future will bring greater alignment with the region.

Third, China-based faculty will need to emerge as leaders in education and research.

This will reduce the passive import of knowledge into the Chinese classroom and will gradually alter the world perception of business. The challenge for education will no longer be: “How can we teach (and sell) western knowledge and know-how to Chinese students in China and abroad?”

Instead it will be: “What can we learn (and apply) from the sustained success of China’s economy, and Chinese businesses?” This development may be hindered by the need to change the Western mindset to embrace the goal of learning from China, rather than lecturing to China.

Co-operation between the leading Chinese business schools and their international counterparts is an important means to overcoming this obstacle.

Rolf D Cremer is dean of the China Europe International Business School