Where are you recruiting your recruiters?

You need to pay more attention to who is doing your recruiting. Probably.

I spend a lot of time talking to recruiters, I have a bunch here to manage, I am always looking for another one to hire, most of my friends are recruiters, a lot of my corporate contacts are recruiters, you get the picture. I even recruit recruiters for corporate clients from time to time, although, with the challenges most companies face hiring the people they need in China I am always surprised at how little attention is paid to this crucial position.

Many of the corporate recruiting positions in China are the second lowest position in the HR department and not particularly well paid. Some recruiters are paying their dues, some enjoy the work, and others have been handed a job for which they are not well suited. In this market I advise anyone interested in improving their internal talent to take a long hard look at their own recruiting staff.

I often hear that companies have named hiring the right people as their number one challenge in China. I often wonder,then, why they are not using one of their sales people as a recruiter. Great recruiters are great sales people in that they specialize in drilling down to core issues involved in prospect decision making and they are good at meeting rebuttals with information. This is a personality type that you will most readily find in your own sales department or that of one of your competitors.

AdMark China is often chosen by our clients here because we are experienced professionals who know the market and the positions we work on very well. When we talk to a candidate we are able to connect with him or her on a professional level and, as a result, we have more influence with our candidates. If you are having trouble getting the best candidates it may be because they need to connect with someone at your company who makes a better impression. Your candidates have a lot of options in this market and if you are not doing everything you can to impress them with your company's professionalism and culture you are going to miss out on too many of them.

Your top people have also met with good (and bad) corporate recruiters, make a point of asking who they know. Good recruiters stand out and they will remember. You can also find out who recruited away your employees during their exit interviews. If you keep up with this kind of information gathering you will begin to build a list of recruiters you should be contacting. Keep up with them and treat them like the money makers they are and you may end up with a top recruiting team.

Third party recruiters make excellent internal recruiters, as well, but they make good money and usually enjoy a certain amount of freedom and Independence that you may not be able to offer them so be prepared to pay if you go this route.

Finally, if you are really serious about recruiting, if you really want to hire away the best from your competition and see top line results from the professionals you have hired you should probably handle this function at the highest level your organization can handle. In very competitive markets that are short on talent it is not unusual for hiring mangers, Controllers, and General Managers to be fully engaged in this process.

If you are managing a company here in China or are responsible for the hiring function it might be a good idea to honestly assess if your current recruiters are good enough to get the best.

More resumes, please.

Our number one priority.

I have been on business development meetings all week with one of my consultants here in Shanghai. We have seen quite a few clients and potential clients from the Fortune 500 and I have come to the conclusion that in race to hire the best there are a pretty good number of turtles and too few hares. I wrote a book review for the American Chamber of Commerce’s monthly publication, Insight, of Ed Cohen’s new book Leadership Without Borders (Wiley and Sons.) I mention this because it is the latest article/book I have read that tells me that we are in a global struggle for talent and that “recruiting, retaining, and managing personnel is more important than it was historically.” We are also told that The Economist reported that “62% of all senior human resource managers worry about company-wide talent shortages,” and that “Three-quarters of them made attracting and retaining talent their number one priority.” I am skeptical that it is really their number one priority. The way I see things shaping up in China we are faced with several challenges in finding and getting top talent hired into the companies that need them. The majority of companies I speak with are not having as much trouble finding the talent that they need as they are having trouble affording it. (I have taught the phrase “internal equity” to four people this week.) We spoke to several firms this week who told us they are getting candidates that match their JD’s but they can’t afford them (and can we do any better?) This is a growing problem that many large firms are having a hard time adjusting to. I see a lot of openings that will go unfilled as the candidates who are qualified are already earning more than the positions are paying. The answer to this is not more recruiting though; it is engaging the hiring managers in some frank discussions about what the “right” candidate really looks like. I have run into some similar situations in the past and have found that when the hiring managers are really brought in on the case they will be willing to be flexible in certain areas and often end up with some great, affordable, talent. The key is having recruiters (internal) who know the market and the positions for which they are recruiting. This will allow the recruiters (internal) to engage outside search professionals as partners rather than vendors. Companies will be rewarded by candidates who are able to do the job and fit the budget. Too often in China I come across internal recruiters who are only looking for “more resumes.” These recruiters are usually most comfortable with local agencies that act as resume brokers and add little value to the process. When hiring becomes a priority to these companies they will have professionals with experience in the industry take a hard look at their salaries, job descriptions, and recruiting methods. When hiring is a top priority we will see more senior managers take an interest in recruiting rather than handing this task down the line to the least senior of all HR staff. We will also see improvements when recruiting and retention is a KPI of managers, but don’t get me started…..

Referrals...

In case you have missed it, The Asia Pacific HeadHunter is a great blog, full of information on the region. I found the following posted there as I was trolling for views on the same subject and in this case I couldn't have said it better myself. One of my best clients has been feeding me leads in her industry all week and when I mentioned it at lunch today I was asked the usual "why would anyone give you referrals" question that I hear so often. Take a look at the article, below, and definately take a minute to click on the title of this post to see why I am a fan of this guy's blog... Tuesday, March 20, 2007 Why You Should Give Referrals I had an interesting question the other day from a candidate: "Why would anyone give you a referral when you get paid a huge fee and they get nothing?" I thought this was a great question and one I should really address. Many would be surprised to hear that a lot of people give out referrals. And by far, most referrals I get are from senior candidates. That's right - senior candidates are easily the most open about not only giving referrals of people they know, but also giving what I call "blind referrals". This is when they hand out names of people who they think are reasonably good or worth talking to but aren't necessarily their personal contacts. For senior candidates I think they see their ability to give referrals as almost an example of their strength and knowledge in their industry. It also shows that in their experience, they realize the importance and value of giving referrals as well as the long-term gains. But to get down to the reasons why executives should give referrals: It's all about goodwill, reciprocity, and networking. Goodwill. There's nothing really to explain here. When you help someone, it's a good thing. Becoming a referee for that person, referring that person to a recruiter for an opportunity - in the end, it's all for the benefit of that person - whether or not a new job actually materializes. The fact is, the person you helped is better off by having had at least a chance to consider an opportunity. If you gave a referral to a recruiter, you've no doubt bestowed goodwill to him or her, and as you'll soon see, is a good investment. Reciprocity. The Law of Reciprocation is powerful. I got this from Dr. Robert Cialdini, a widely recognized expert in negotiation studies, who said the power of reciprocation is extremely strong and should be used when presented with a moment of power; that is, when you have just done or given something beneficial to someone. When they thank you, it's up to you to seize that moment of power and respond: "I'm sure you would do the same for me if I needed it." That's the law of reciprocation. As it turns out from Dr. Cialdini's research, people will reciprocate when receiving a gift, advice, or help from someone, no matter how much time has passed from the initial giving. In what ways? Well, if you helped a colleague or former manager by referring them to a recruiter, or offering to be a referee for a potential employer, they may return the favour by looking out for your best interests as well. Networking. This widens and the ties strengthen from you giving referrals. The key is to give to them first. And the easiest way is to refer them to a key person, or give them a referral if they need one for a new opportunity. Hopefully, this answers the question. While it's hard to think past the short-term outcomes, like a referral fee, look to the long-term gains of having a quality relationship with someone in your network who can reciprocate goodwill to you when the time comes. It's an investment that benefits everyone.

Why you must always be closing (part 2)

Even when you think you have closed your hard-to-fill positions you may be in for a surprise. The article below comes from our own AdMark China blog (www.admarkchina.blogspot.com) and illustrates why it is important to know what is motivating your potential hires so that you can structure a package that will beat your rivals.

Chinese Paradox: A Shallow Pool of Talent This article was posted on the International Herald Tribune on April 25, 2006, by David Lague. It discusses the shortage of professional talent which faces foreign business who are hiring Chinese workers.

BEIJING: When Grace Li started a recruiting drive through China's elite universities and technical colleges late last year, she soon turned up about 500 potential employees for her client, a U.S.-based scientific services company.The company was seeking as many as 150 graduates with basic or advanced degrees to staff a research and development laboratory that it planned to open in China this year.After careful screening, about 100 candidates were offered jobs to start in June. About 70 accepted.The drawback was that most of them also accepted offers from two or three other prospective employers and still had not decided which job to take.For headhunters like Li, competition like this is now commonplace as China's headlong economic growth outpaces the supply of qualified professionals and managers."It's become a very big problem," said Li, client partner at Corporate Resources International, a Beijing-based recruiting agency. "Just because people accept your offer doesn't mean they will join your company."This talent crunch is now hurting many multinational companies, which last year invested a combined $60 billion to fund expansion and new ventures in China.Local companies are also suffering as they try to grow and meet the challenge of foreign competition.And, while experts warn that shortages of cheap labor threaten the dominance of China's powerhouse manufacturing industries, the lack of qualified graduates could derail longer-term plans for a transition to producing higher-value goods and services."We are not ringing the alarm bells yet," said Andrew Grant, the Shanghai- based managing director in China for the management consultancy McKinsey."But unless China starts moving now, this problem will become more acute."Despite turning out more than three million graduates a year, Chinese universities and colleges cannot keep up with demand from an economy that has been galloping ahead at nearly 10 percent a year for most of the past two decades.Employers complain that many graduates lack the skills and experience necessary to start work immediately, particularly for foreign companies."It is not just a question of numbers," said Gao Yang, the Beijing-based executive director of the nonprofit business education group Junior Achievement International, China. "There is a gap in communication between demand and supply."A recent McKinsey report, titled "Addressing China's Looming Talent Shortage," said surveys had shown that fewer than 10 percent of Chinese graduates across a range of technical and professional disciplines would be suitable for employment in foreign companies.Not surprisingly for a country with huge outlays on construction and infrastructure, the report found that China had about 1.6 million young engineers and that plenty more were being trained. About 33 percent of university students in China studied engineering, compared with 20 percent in Germany and 4 percent in India.Compared with their peers in Europe or North America, however, most of these students had little practical experience in working on projects or in teams.The report said this was largely the fault of an education system that emphasized theory over practice.To view the entire article at its original location click on the title of this post.AdMark China is committed to finding for our clients the best possible talent as quickly as possible. Contact us at info@admarkchina.com or at +86 21 6288 9292.

Throw away your salary survey!

Your salary survey is probably wrong. I just got another salary survey in my inbox. It was very well done and probably took a great deal of time to create. It is also very misleading. The salary surveys that I see being created and distributed, and sold, give the impression that you can pay what is being paid in the market right now. This is the case only if you are looking for average employees. You are looking for top talent. The fact is, however, that if you are reading this blog you are not looking for average employees. The average employee in China does not speak English, he does not work in a foreign firm, he does not think outside the box, understand western reporting structures, go to a top university, or have a chance of getting hired into your firm. (When is the last time a hiring manager asked for a "really average candidate?" You are looking for the cream of the crop in China and you are going to be very frustrated if you use a salary survey to create your budget. I recommend that you call a recruiting firm like AdMark China (8621-6288-9292) and ask a consultant what you will have to pay. We know because we are on the ground talking to candidates every day. One thing we do at AdMark (www.AdMarkChina.com) to ensure that our clients are aware of current market demands is provide them a Real Time Report of the market as it relates to the positions they are trying to fill. This report compares your position criteria in terms of compensation, years of experience, and responsibilities to what companies of similar size and type are offering. We provide you with a profile of the talent market as it is right now. The RTR enables you to modify your search criteria to meet present market demands without wasting time or missing out on candidates. It helps you make the decisions you need to to get talent on your team without running afoul of a budget that was created using a salary survey that is not applicable to your needs. Call your recruiter to find out what you need to pay for your team members, if he doesn't know maybe you should get a new recruiter.

Hiring Managers: Read This

I don't like to poach too many articles for my blog but the one below is a must-read for any hiring managers who want to know how to succeed in China. It touches on two ponts that must be made very clear to hiring managers in China: 1. Hire great candidates when you have the chance. James Rice does and he has been in this market for 16 years. I do not know James but I am going to back his decision making ability in this market. If you do not have the head count, get it. If you need a bigger budget, get it. China is extremely competitive, if you are not you should not be surprised at what you get. 2. Your employees want training, your employees are going to leave in two years. Everything in China is a negotiation - trade training for retention, use pay-back periods, defer training opportunities to meet retention and succession plans (you do have these and they are written and you have shared them with your managers, right?) Shift your retention focus to increase the typical retention by one year. You will save money, lower turnover, and your company will make more money. I talk to too many HR managers who bemoan their turnover but refuse to focus on the fact that they move every two years. Keep it real. Go fpr realistic goals and if all of your people are claimng that they are leaving because of training opportunities, give them some options.

Hiring Top Talent in China Takes a Boss Who Likes to Coach By Carol Hymowitz From The Wall Street Journal Online Any company that wants to succeed in China -- and the list grows longer every day -- needs to understand what matters even more than an understanding of distribution networks and good relationships with government officials: executives on the ground who truly enjoy coaching their employees.

Whether they work in Beijing, Shanghai or Guangzhou, executives at multinationals who stay behind closed doors and rarely offer performance feedback or advice are bound to fail. That's because the local hires they need to run their offices and plants will be seeking out bosses who will help them advance their careers. With China's economy growing so rapidly, multinationals and private and state-run Chinese companies are competing fiercely for talent. Young, educated Chinese from top schools with a few years of work experience often have their pick of entry and midlevel jobs in sales, marketing, finance, government relations and manufacturing. They can also command much higher salaries now than they could a few years ago, though they're still paid far less than expats. Money, though, isn't necessarily their top priority when weighing offers. In a recent study of several dozen Chinese managers it was found that "money is a less important reason to change jobs than the potential to grow and have a close working relationship with an immediate boss." James Rice, a Tyson Foods vice president and the company's general manager in China, understands this sentiment and has made mentoring part of his job. A 16-year veteran in China, he previously worked for Dannon and Kimberly Clark. One of his current sales managers first worked for him as a secretary at Dannon and, with Mr. Rice's coaching, advanced to management. He quit Dannon when Mr. Rice moved to Tyson last May. "I didn't want to poach [from Dannon] but he was going to take another job anyway, so I asked him to work for me again," says Mr. Rice. A few weeks ago, he recruited a young manager with an MBA degree from the University of North Carolina by promising training and promotion. The manager was weighing another offer from a multinational, and Mr. Rice didn't have a specific opening for him. But he was determined not to lose the chance to hire him. "He's very smart and speaks perfect English, and we're growing by more than 20% a year so it makes sense to hire ahead," says Mr. Rice, who plans to expand Tyson's China-based operations through acquisitions. "I pitched him very heavily on what I'd do to work with him and help him grow his career. I told him that for the next 12 months, he'll be my assistant, going with me wherever I go -- and then he'll get a line position," Mr. Rice says. Stella Hou, who manages the compensation measurement practice for Hewitt Associates in China, is often a personal counselor as well as a career coach to her 30 employees. In the U.S. and Europe, "managers don't feel they should trespass into employees' personal lives, but Chinese employees often expect their bosses to do that," she says. She spent hours listening to an employee vent anger and grief when her marriage fell apart. Young recruits, many of them products of China's one-child policy, also often require coaching on how to gain independence from their parents. Mr. Rice has had to tell some prospective employees that their parents aren't welcome to sit in on job interviews. And when an intern in Ms. Hou's office talked constantly about how much his mother takes care of him, co-workers began counting the number of times he invoked his mother's name and then subtly suggested he change that habit. "He'd say, 'my Mommy bought me this shirt,' or 'my mommy made me this meal,' " says Ms. Hou. "One day he brought her up 25 times." She prefers hiring employees whose parents live in provinces far from Shanghai or who went to boarding school at young ages. "They've been less pampered" than only children who have had their parents' and grandparents' undivided attention, she says. For their part, Chinese employees, especially those in their 20s and 30s, don't want to stay in any one job for more than a few years. They are looking for training and frequent promotions, and they're willing to job hop to advance. Among the companies that has benefited is Beijing-based Sohu.com, one of China's main Internet portals. Founded eight years ago, Sohu.com, which now has 1,400 employees, has wooed hundreds of upwardly mobile young Chinese from multinationals. Andy Zhao, a group leader in human resources at the company, formerly worked at McDonald's, where he advanced from trainee to store manager over a six-year period. But then he quit, because his boss, he says, "was too vague" about his chances for future promotions. He says he likes Sohu.com's innovative culture and his "caring bosses," who encourage him to "make fast changes every day." But he adds that how long he stays there will depend on "whether I can keep growing and changing."

"Multinationals in China should..."

Shaun Rein, founder and Managing Director of China Market Research Group, based in Shanghai, had the following acticle published in for Forbes Magazine: "How Multinationals Err In China." The article arises from interviews Shaun's company recently conducted with senior executives of multinational corporations (MNCs) and it focuses on three common human resource (HR) mistakes MNCs make in China.

He raises some valid points but I find that he is painting the picture of the market here in some pretty broad strokes. The article is worth a read and you can get it on Forbes.com by clicking the Title of this post. Whle the majority of his reasoning rings true with me his assertion that companies here need to "implement uniform pay packages," is unsound in my opinion. I spend hours per day singing a completely different song: if you want to compete in China you must have a creative and flexible compensation and benefits plan that is going to allow you to recruit the top-talent you need so that you can increase the number of high level Chinese executives who get promoted through the ranks. The companies that do this are able to get the best. My clients use a number of tools to do this, signing bonuses, deferred compensation models, savings plans, children's tuition payments... The point is to be creative and to make room for the best availbale candidates in your organization rather than creating salary bands and uiform pay packages that will hinder recruitment.

From the article: The executives interviewed are of the view that "the No. 1 impediment to [their company's] growth in China is finding the talent they need to scale their businesses" and Shaun is of the view that these companies are, at least to a certain extent, responsible for this problem: As China shifts from manufacturing to a service-led economy, the demand for skilled labor is heating up. The lack of white collar workers has created a mercenary class of executives who bounce from job to job seeking wage increases of even just several hundred dollars a year. Many multinationals follow misguided human resource strategies that intensify the problems. The companies that implement the right HR strategies and focus on three key areas will be able to attract and keep the right executives needed to turn their China operations into humming profit centers. The mistakes Shaun describes and his solutions also apply to small and medium sized foreign companies (SMEs) doing business in China. First mistake: Glass ceiling. Two-tier pay systems undermine the morale of Chinese workers who want to climb the corporate ladder and cause top mainland talent to prefer to work for domestic Chinese companies, where they do not feel discriminated against. China Market Research Group exit surveys with Chinese workers leaving multinationals indicated the main reason they had left was their feeling they lacked a clearly visible career path with their company. "The majority said they would have stayed if they felt that the company appeared to be 'interested in developing their careers.'" Multinationals doing business in China should implement uniform pay packages, increase the number of high level Chinese executives who get promoted through the ranks and develop clear career paths that Chinese employees know they can follow. Second Mistake: Ignoring Need for Work-Life Balance. China's baby boomers have experienced 30 years of uninterrupted economic growth and they are "incredibly optimistic" about their career paths. In interviews with Chinese between the ages of 21 and 28 in Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou, the overwhelming majority responded that a "balanced life" was the most important consideration in job satisfaction, ahead of a good salary and job security. Companies need to understand that paying high salaries is no longer enough to keep executives from jumping ship. Third Mistake -Ignoring education and training. Chinese employees need and want continuing education and training options. An online survey revealed that 90% of Chinese between the ages of 18 and 28 stated they wanted access to continuing education and 41% said considered continuing education the best way to raise salary packages and realize their professional and financial goals. Foreign firms must develop training courses that give employees the business skills they need: Some of the most successful multinational companies in China, like L'Oréal (LRLCY) and Starwood (HOT), have implemented rotational training programs that give Chinese employees the chance to spend time working in other countries. Overseas training is one of the most prized benefits Chinese employees mention in our surveys. Offering top workers the option to spend six months in France or the U.S. is a smart way to build company loyalty and develop the business savvy currently lacking in many Chinese executives.

Salary Secrets

The Transparent Salary Secret in China Most of my candidates tell me they know what everyone else is making in their company. This tends to raise their expectations and makes it difficult for employers to keep up with the market. The employers are relying on information that is obsolete by the time it is published and the candidates are dealing in real-time. One tool they are beginning to use is Payscale.com. Payscale offers “real-time salary reports based on your job title, location, education, skills and experience.” I did a couple searches and found it a bit limited at the moment but it is sure to grow in accuracy as more and more people use it. Another avenue for finding out what your neighbor is earning was featured in an article in China Daily Online, Updated: 2007-02-12 09:41, entitled Salary Secrets Exposed. The article explains how employees are posting their pay slips online. It goes on to say that a search for "pay slip" on China's biggest search engine baidu.com yields almost 1.22 million results. So what? So you (employer) better know what your competition is up to in order to make the best offer that you can to your prospective employees. It would seem wise that you do the same search, look into the same online services, and take a hard look at your own company’s benefits package to see if it is up to market standards. The best packages being offered right now are using a creative mix of signing bonuses, training incentives, performance bonuses, and succession plans to lure candidates into their culture. If you are not it is time that you started.

Better than money?

Competing in a candidate driven market. I have been here before, I have seen salaries rise in a candidate short market and I have seen the companies that are slow to react miss out on candidates and lose good people only to face growing recruiting costs and unfilled jobs. WHile this is a growing global trend it is not the first time this has happened and this is not the first market to go through it. This problem in China is being exacerbated by the fact that the China HR shortage is really beginning to affect every corner of the market. The companies that took the initiative to come here years ago are not being rewarded they are being punished by rising salaries and a hyper, disorganized labor market. They are now faced with internal equity issues that are very difficult to solve. Unfortunately in a hyper market, like China, this issue usually solves itself when current employees leave for higher packages elsewhere. I meet candidates every week who make more that the hiring manager who is looking for them. How do you beat that? Get strategic: It requires a strategic approach to talent management, from recruiting to development, and from training to retention. Employers who are willing to create the right conditions to attract talent and who strive to retain that talent will succeed. Most HR professionals already acknowledge this need for marketing oriented strategies that build a stronger “employer brand” to attract talent. I think a greater value can be achieved through clear succession planning and by offering candidates specific growth targets within the company. Whether they are skills, titles, or responsibilities, job descriptions and management tracks can be altered to be more attractive to top talent. This will require a new approach to the talent market, instead of simply reacting to current staffing needs, employers will need to develop their relationships with their external recruiters and train their internal recruiters to keep an eye on what the competition is doing to attract their own people. We advise our clients to be as pro-active as possible when structuring packages and creating job descriptions for potential hires. Our approach is to take a look at the market first, then work with our clients to create a job description that meets their needs while providing an enticing scenario to potential candidates. This is different in almost every case and it can make a huge difference in attracting the right candidates. Brian Fenerty General Manager AdMark China Brian@AdMarkAsia.com www.AdMarkAsia.com

Always be closing your candidates.

Interview strategies for attracting and landing top performers

“Include a sales segment. Before you begin the interview, allocate enough time to "sell" the candidate on the job. When you're planning your interviews, divide them into time frames or segments for each assessment area and be sure and allocate at least one quarter of the time (in some cases, at least half for "hard-to-sell" candidates) toward convincing the candidate that, if offered the job, they would accept it. If you happen to know their "job acceptance criteria" in advance, it's relatively easy to put together a sales pitch. Remember to ask them at the end of the interview specifically, "Do you have any concerns?" and "Do you need any additional information in order to make your decision?" “

Dr. John Sullivan, in an article for ERE.net, (an outstanding resource for recruiters and non-recruiters who need to improve their recruiting skills,) wrote the above. I find recently that more and more Hiring Managers are getting tired of being trained in how to interview candidates and it occurred to me while reading the above article that much time is being wasted in this training when it does not include the addition of a sales segment. I recently heard that a Hiring Manager resented the fact that he had to sell his company’s benefits to a passive candidate they were meeting. This is troublesome on many levels and until hiring and retaining are added as a KPIs for managers in China this is not going to change. I don’t try to fix everything at once (not since that Ford Pinto incident in High School, at least) so I usually suggest that my clients use a three-man approach to the interview process. The order is not as important as the execution of this technique which entails using one interviewer to judge the candidate’s technical competency, another to judge the candidate’s soft skills and corporate ‘fit’, and a third to act as the company’s number one fan. Most HR recruiters are very good at the third role but are often asked to play too many of these parts and end up overwhelmed. The candidate ends up under whelmed. This model works with active candidates as well as passive candidates and is pretty quickly adopted by most organizations. It takes a lot of weight off of interviewers, as well, asking them to focus on just one aspect of the candidate and letting them use what they have learned in those interviewing classes. When dealing with passive candidates, those candidates introduced by a head hunter who, while interested in what may be a better opportunity at your company, are genuinely happy at their positions, I highly recommend a sales segment for your interviews. A passive job seeker is one who is currently employed and not actively seeking a new job. He may not be happy in his current job but he is not job hunting and has been introduced to you by your headhunter. For more ideas like these or to engage AdMark in a search please find me at brian @admarkasia.com

Kicking Tires

How to find the best candidate that you can't hire. After three meetings and much salary discussion between a client, a candidate, and myself, I was confronted by a wholly avoidable situation today. The client really wanted to hire the candidate and the candidate was quite keen to join the client but the money was not in the budget. In fact it wasn't even close. How, you may be asking, could I make such a rookie mistake and waste everyone's time? Why, you must certainly be adding, would the client go to all the trouble and put themselves through all the pain of finding the perfect candidate only to come up short at the offer stage? Who, the logical next question, would do such a thing? Well, it seems, the client was fooling himself. He made an age-old mistake when I presented him with the bio and resume of a completely qualified and motivated candidate (as is my habit.) He wanted to "check her out," and see what was out there. He assured me, and thus the candidate, and himself that if she was the right man for the job he could come up with the money. Well, he couldn't and she is not motivated enough to take a job for less than she is making. The repercussions of this are not as severe for the candidate or myself as for the client. I will continue to introduce the best candidates China has to offer to my clients and the candidate will find her next position as sure as I am sitting here. The client is the one who will now judge every candidate he meets for the job against the one that got away. For a while they will all fall short until he realizes that she was a great candidate and he will have to settle for what his budget allows. A better strategy for our client would have been to take an honest look at the budget and meeting only those candidates whose expectations fell into the range. On top of the usual salary questions and discussions of bonuses and internal equity I always provide my clients with the current salary of the candidates I introduce, their expectations, and my input, when necessary. This is to avoid just such a situation and to ensure that the client will be able to successfully hire the best candidate for the job. All that and no car analogies!

China the HR Challenges - IBM Study

IBM recently announced the findings of a new study which concludes that in order for multinational companies to succeed in China they will need to develop strategies that focus more on China's mass markets, and increasingly less on top-tier cities where the competition is fierce and the market potential is maturing. Here is an area of interest to us:

Human Resources Challenges

The study also revealed that multinationals face a severe and growing talent shortage in China. This is a bottleneck to growth that will only worsen as they compete with each other and domestic companies for employees with critical skill sets needed for the mass market. Candidates lacking English language skills and "soft" skills, such as communications and managerial capabilities, were the top two reasons cited by multinational recruiters for the current talent shortage for multinational positions.

In order for multinational companies to grow, survey respondents indicated they will need to build their internal talent pipelines. This includes, for example, developing deeper partnerships with universities and vocational colleges to build and gain preferential access to a pool of talent that can be groomed with the skill sets needed to pursue mass markets.

Despite some marketplace perceptions of a "glass ceiling" limiting Chinese professionals from rising to management positions, multinational companies are reporting high levels of management staff localization, particularly in operational roles such as sales, logistics and manufacturing. This trend will increase as companies seek to scale up operations cost-effectively and gain the local market insight needed to pursue mass markets.

Filed in archive Management by prashanth on March 23, 2007