Recruiting in China

By Ian Lamont on Mon, 12/18/2006 - 12:28pm
Last week for the Computerworld Weekly I/O podcast, I interviewed James Zhang, vice president of human resources for Achievo. This Silicon Valley company has capitalized on Western and Japanese firms' interest in outsourcing software development work to China, where costs are cheaper. Zhang told me the privately held company has grown rapidly since being founded several years ago, and now has more than one thousand employees in North America, Europe, Japan, and Asia.

However, the competition for talented developers in Asia has led to high turnover in some cities. Achievo's strategy for recruiting and retaining developers in China includes setting up partnerships with universities and training institutes across China, in addition to Beijing and other economic centers, where competition and costs are higher. The institutions that have already partnered with Achievo include:

Beijing ACEIT Training Institute
Beijing Information Technology Institute
Hunan Vocational College of Science and Technology
Shenzhen University
Zhuhai College of Jilin University
While industry-academic partnerships are nothing new, they are a first for some of the institutions approached by Achievo, and also entail alterations to the curriculum for those students who are interested in working for Achievo after graduation. A transcript of a portion of my interview with Zhang follows:

Computerworld: Achievo has a very interesting HR strategy, to find talent in China. You've created a series of partnerships with local training institutes and universities. Can you describe generally how these partnerships work?

Zhang: My plan is to strategically select some partner, mapping [to where] we have operations in China. Because China is so big. You cannot really [depend on] just one university to supply [talent] from North to South, from East to West. People have a different regions, [and] styles, and ... habits, so they probably want to live and work close to their [home] region. We have four universities lined up with us, and we have one training institution lined up with us. Then the schools will specifically tailor some courses for the people who are interested in working for Achievo for the long term. So those students will be having some courses being switched to what we like them to have. And then they will take an internship to come to our company to work for us for several months, [to work toward their] graduation, their essays or final papers. We need to do the interviews to see who will be qualified, and then they will join Achievo. So there's progress, and a program set up.

Computerworld: Why bother doing this? Can't you just put an advertisement in the local newspaper, saying that you are looking for talented people? Or use other channels, like an H.R. agency to find people?

Zhang: Well, the [personnel] strategy needs to match the long-term growth of the company. The company is growing very fast, and doing very well. The university program is specifically targeting entry level engineers, which from cost-competitiveness and also from the supply pool, this will be the best source that we can get candidates.

Computerworld: How many graduates from these training institutes and universities will Achievo be able to recruit in your plan?

Zhang: We are looking for probably several hundred that we will need to hire next year from the university program.

Computerworld: So have you been able to hire anyone so far, or you really just got this off the ground?

Zhang: Yes. I think we have recruited close to a hundred [people] already through two universities and one training institute. And there are two more [programs] that we have set up, and one more [program] that will be finalized in a two-week timeframe.