Recruiting in China

Firms anxiously seek those with global expertise
Susan Fenton, Reuters
Published: Monday, May 26, 2008
American-born Thomas Kwan's career has taken off since he moved to China to work as the country manager for a U.S. health products company.

"If I'd stayed in the U.S. I wouldn't have had the same opportunity for advancement," said trilingual Kwan, 46, who was brought up in a Cantonese-speaking household in Virginia and also speaks fluent Mandarin and, of course, English.

"The U.S. is still a Caucasian-dominated society," added Kwan, who now lives in Shanghai.

Job fairs in China are one way for companies there to try to fill a void for managers with both Chinese language skills and international exposure.

China's rapidly expanding economy has created a seemingly insatiable appetite for Chinese-speaking managers.

Yet even though three million university graduates enter China's workforce every year, multinational companies are finding it hard to find local talent to meet that demand.

Companies that are successful in luring top-notch recruits are at an automatic advantage in the race for a piece of China's $1.3-trillion US consumer market.

But competition for good quality hires, especially experienced managers, is fierce.

Companies in China will need 70,000 middle and senior managers over the next five years, according to executive search firm MRI Group, but they are unlikely to find them.

"We'll be lucky if we can identify 50 per cent of that number," said Erica Briody, director of MRI China.

Since last year, Pricewaterhouse Coopers has posted Chinese recruiters in the United States, Britain and Australia to scout for graduates at university campuses as they seek to keep pace with business growth in China by recruiting 3,000 people a year.

They are targeting Chinese students studying abroad, as well as experienced foreign professionals with a Chinese heritage, such as Kwan.

"The economic boom in China means the talent needs are demanding. We are building a talent pipeline for the future," said Angela Jiang, a PricewaterhouseCoopers recruitment manager based in New York and responsible for finding U.S.-based talent for the firm's China operations.

Recruiting qualified Chinese-speaking managers is crucial for firms, especially multinationals, as they seek to capitalize on business opportunities in the world's fastest growing major economy.

"Multinational companies are looking to China to grow their organizations," said Briody.

"If they can't get the talent, their expansion plans will be limited. Ultimately they can't be competitive."

A report by the McKinsey Global Institute in 2005 said fewer than 10 per cent of China graduates who applied for jobs at multinationals had the right skills and qualifications to work there. Poor English was the main shortcoming.

The Asian Development Bank in its 2008 Asian Development Outlook says the skills shortage is aggravated by China's failure to produce the right kind of graduates rather than too few.

Chinese graduates may be well versed in theory but often lack practical problem-solving skills, analysts said.

"While the root cause of China's skills crisis lies in the leap in demand for skills, the education system has failed to keep pace," the ADB said in the report.

Kwan, who has been in China for four years, says his understanding of Chinese culture is as invaluable as his linguistic abilities when it comes to managing his China team.

"Here, I am bicultural. I understand that Western culture and Chinese culture are different and that Chinese don't normally speak out," he said.

"A lot of expat managers fail in China because they don't understand that Chinese don't tell you what they think."