Recruiting in China

China is poised to become the world's leading country for passenger air traffic, and the market has already become an important region for global aircraft manufacturers.

Consequently, recruiting talent in China has become crucial for them to make their businesses more sustainable.

Airbus Group, the France-based aircraft manufacturer, and Tsinghua University will launch the 2015 China Summer University event on Monday, as part of Airbus Group's University Partnership Program.

The event is the first organized in China since the program's launch in 2014.

"Closely cooperating with top-tier universities and building up a good partnership will ensure absorbing more and more talent for our industry in the future," Philippe Pezet, Airbus Group China Vice President Human Resources, told the Global Times in an interview earlier in September.

Pezet made the remark ahead of the Beijing Air Show, which will open on Wednesday.

Recruitment

In July, Airbus signed a framework agreement to set up an A330 Completion and Delivery Center in Tianjin with its Chinese partners. The center will cover aircraft completion activities including reception, cabin installation, aircraft painting, engine runs and flight tests.

The plant is expected to create 250 to 300 jobs over the long term.

The jobs are part of the company's expansion in China as Airbus said it has about 1,550 employees in the country, including those in Tianjin, Beijing and Harbin, Northeast China's Heilongjiang Province.

"We have high standards. We want people who can speak English. We would like to have people with leadership capabilities, and we would like to have people with the potential to grow and to evolve," Pezet said.

A few of the positions will be occupied by expatriates because a certain number of expatriates will be needed to train the new Chinese employees, Pezet said. Still, expatriates will make up less than 10 percent of the workers at the facility.

The average turnover rate at Airbus China was 6-7 percent in 2014, or about half the national average.

But Pezet remains unsatisfied with the figure, which is still far higher than Europe's average turnover rate of 2.5 percent. He said a turnover rate of 5 percent "would be better."

"We are not recruiting people to hold one position for only a few years. We invest in somebody. We will do our best to develop people, to train, to grow. In terms of selection, we are very cautious and very demanding," Pezet said.

In the next two decades, the average annual growth rate for the domestic Chinese market will be 7.1 percent, though it will grow even faster over the next decade at 8.3 percent on average per year, according to a report released by Airbus in December.

The report also said domestic air traffic in China will become the world's highest within a decade.

Mobility

Working for a multinational company means more opportunities to advance, and it is an important measure to keep the talent in the company.

Airbus usually first offers these opportunities to employees who have worked at the company for at least five years.

The overall goal is for 10 percent of the staff to change jobs every year. That could mean simply changing positions within a division or changing divisions within the group, or even changing the country where they work.

"We started at 1 percent, and last year, we did 6 percent. Our objective for 2015 in China is 8 percent," Pezet said.

However, he said there are lots of obstacles to mobility in China, and accepting geographical mobility is a challenge here. Hukou can be one of constraints on mobility, which is something very specific to China. Europe doesn't have the same constraints.

Challenges

Several years ago, multinationals were seen as desirable places for employees. Nowadays, things are different, as State-owned companies are getting more competitive, and those companies are also in the process of instituting a global management style and offering more and more international positions, which pose a challenge for multinationals in terms of recruitment.

"We face some departures, resignations from people who are willing to move to State-owned companies, so it's complicated and more challenging for us," Pezet said, though he remains confident the company can attract more people.

Still, Pezet worries that very experienced talent is still in short supply in China, as the country's aerospace industry employment market is less mature than that in Europe.

"It's kind of a war for getting experienced people due to the pressure and tension on the job market," Pezet told the Global Times.

BEIJING (Caixin Online) — Competition for fresh-faced university graduates is heating up in China’s telecom sector now that electronics equipment giant Huawei Technologies Co. has significantly hiked salaries for certain white collar employees.

The pay decision is also a signal that the world’s largest manufacturer of telecom gear remains committed to an ongoing expansion that encompasses new arenas, such as consumer smartphones.

First-year worker and junior executive paychecks were pushed up by as much as 35% in August following a July 29 announcement by the Shenzhen-based company.

Just a week earlier, Huawei’s biggest domestic rival, ZTE Communications HK:763 -0.13% CN:000063 -2.18% ZTCOY -0.27% , unveiled a new equity incentive plan designed to retain key white collar workers. The company said it would distribute about 103 million company shares as bonus compensation for 1,531 select employees.

Huawei’s pay hikes not only upstaged ZTE’s highly touted incentives program but also brought its salary scale a notch closer to levels offered in the country by foreign competitors including telecom multinationals Ericsson, Nokia NOK +0.25% FI:NOK1V +1.08% , Siemens XE:SIE +0.26% SI +0.12% and Samsung KR:005930 +0.97% SSNLF +2.50%

Probationary salaries for 2014 college graduates hired by Huawei will rise to more than 9,000 yuan ($1,470) per month from 6,500 yuan USDCNY -0.01% . Master’s degree graduates will be offered more than 10,000 yuan a month to start, up from 8,000 yuan, the company said.

Altogether, Huawei said it would boost the companywide payroll by more than 1 billion yuan. Performance-related pay hikes will range from 25% to 30%, depending on the type of work.

Management thus hopes to attract and retain employees in a competitive labor environment where Nokia, Siemens and other foreign companies generally offer new bachelor’s degree graduates at their China divisions between 8,000 and 10,000 yuan per month, said Wei Xiaokang, a headhunter for Beijing-based Offercome, which focuses on matching jobs and job seekers in the Internet industry.

“Huawei’s workplace environment is more intense than that of Ericsson and other multinational companies,” Wei said. “But the pay is lower.”

Huawei has also been fishing for talent in ZTE. Indeed, according to a ZTE source, the Huawei pay increases “drove ZTE (management) crazy” because in the first half of 2013 “a number of people” left ZTE for jobs at Huawei.

ZTE employs an estimated 50,000 to 60,000 people, one-third as many as Huawei.

“Raising junior executive salaries on such a large scale, as Huawei has done, undoubtedly marks a significant change in remuneration policy,” said Wei.

And it’s a surprising change for the company’s labor policy considering the weak business atmosphere in the telecom industry, where of late many companies have been downsizing, trimming costs and reducing product lineups.

Financial strength

Huawei was apparently in a better position to raise wages than its rivals thanks to high revenue growth during the first half of 2013, says Deutsche Telekom International Consulting’s director in China, Fang Honggang.

Privately held Huawei, which releases only sales revenue and net profit margin figures in its financial statements, reported “relatively optimistic… accounts receivable, bad debt treatment and possible risks,” Fang said.

Huawei reported sales of 113.8 billion yuan for the first six months of the year, up 10.8% over the same period of 2012. Moreover, company management forecast a 2013 net profit margin of 7% to 8%.

A Renmin University professor who also serves as a Huawei corporate management adviser, Wu Chunbo, said the company’s first half 2013 net profit was 14.3 billion yuan.

With the company on a sound financial footing, management was well prepared to turn attention to making junior executive salaries more competitive, a Huawei representative said.

The Chinese central government's call to boost domestic consumption has helped to make sales and marketing positions hot in the job market, according to Kelly Services' Salary Guide Greater China 2013 report released in late February.

Although tense competition in the Chinese market has restricted growth of many organizations, the report found that workers who remain in sales and marketing positions can expect to receive a 5 to 10 percent salary increase in 2013. Those changing jobs can expect to receive a 20 to 30 percent salary increase.

In the retail sector, sales, marketing, merchandising, store management, and operations positions remain in demand, although some headcounts were frozen in the first quarter of this year.

The human resources sector is equally promising. Top HR candidates with proven experience across all disciplines are in demand. Candidates who change positions can expect to receive a 20 to 30 percent increase in salary while the average increase for candidates remaining with their firms is over 10 percent.

Meanwhile, positive growth trends of the US automotive industry will be a boon for the Chinese market, which is expected to grow at a steady 8 to 10 percent clip this year. Top candidates will be needed in the industry in R&D positions, which are important for localizing manufacturing and product development.

While some information technology companies' hiring plans will be frozen in 2013 due to the economic downturn, the Chinese IT industry is nevertheless expected to face a shortage of 2 to 5 million workers in the next 10 years. Positions pertaining to the 3G platform, cellphone operating systems and e-commerce are expected to remain in high demand.

"We are happy to report that in spite of some concerns, we are not seeing any significant slowdown in the China labor market," said Nick Lesser, general manager of Professional & Technical Division at Kelly Services, China Operations.

"In fact, we are finding that in addition to steady demand for resources in tier-one cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou, clients are expressing increased interest in expanding their operations all around China," Lesser said.

"The salary ranges in our guide are based on actual transactions between employers and employees, and represent an accurate reflection of the marketplace," he said. "Market-driven salaries are of course crucial, but only by creating a meaningful employer-of-choice culture is it possible to attract and retain talented staff."

Walt Disney Co started a recruitment campaign in China on Tuesday for its new theme park in Shanghai.

A total of 39 positions are being offered on the company's website to support the resort project in Shanghai's Pudong district.

Positions include assistant contract manager, IT infrastructure manager, and employees responsible for administrative management matters, purchasing, and engineering projects.

The resort, which is expected to open in 2015, will have a theme park, two hotels, various dining and entertainment venues, recreational facilities, a lake and transportation hubs.

The total investment is expected to reach 24.5 billion yuan ($3.84 billion) for the theme park and 4.5 billion yuan for the hotels and other facilities.

ChinaHR was up for sale by its largest shareholder Monster Worldwide Inc. (NYSE: MWW) in early November. But so far no company is willing to take over ChinaHR.

According to the company’s third quarter financial report, Monster’s operating revenue in the third quarter has significantly decreased by 10.5 percent and the company suffered a net loss of $194.2 million, of which ChinaHR contributes $233 million - partially offset by Monster’s other more lucrative holdings.

In fact, ChinaHR is not the only online recruitment company trapped in a slump in China. Data from iResearch reveals that three Chinese online recruitment giants – 51job.com, zhaopin.com and ChinaHR.com, all suffered from decreasing visitors for the first time since 2011.

The mostly homogenous services provided by online recruitment companies are losing power to attract clients with the growth of social networking websites.

According to the Global Employees Index published by Kelly Services, 80 percent of Chinese employees visit social networking websites everyday, 21 percent of which are using these networks to look for jobs.

At present, the platform gathering the most global professional talent is the business networking website LinkedIn, founded at the end of 2002 and publicly listed in 2011. Now it hosts 187 million registered users and 109 million unique visitors per month.

The LinkedIn pattern was copied by large numbers of Chinese professional networking websites after its successful IPO, including wealink.com, tianji.com, dajie.com and wolonge.com.

“Among so many professional networking websites, it’s difficult to judge who will win the appreciation of most users at the moment,” said one analyst.

It was reported that the registered users on professional networking websites have exceeded 70 million and is expected to reach 100 million in three months.

The number of Chinese professionals is huge and is rapidly growing with the development of economy. However, the vertical social service platforms targeting professionals are still in the initial stages, said Han Hui, CEO wolonge.com.

Traditional online recruitment cannot solve the information gap between recruiting companies and job seekers, while professional networking websites can provide a platform for them to know each other more and to respect each other

A raft of favorable measures, including expanding recruitment programs, are leading to more foreign experts and expertise, a senior official said at a forum on Monday.

State-owned enterprises directly under the central government have hired more than 1,600 overseas employees, said Huang Shuhe, deputy director of the State Council's State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission.

"International experts have helped these enterprises produce many of the world's leading technologies and products with their own intellectual property rights, and that has laid a foundation that will carry the enterprises forward," he said.

A number of recruitment programs are in operation.

The Recruitment Program of Global Experts is one and through it a research and development group, involved with 15 State-owned enterprises in Beijing, hired 136 high-level experts.

China started the program in 2008, in a bid to attract 2,000 overseas professionals to key projects across a range of sectors from engineering to finance.

Another recruitment program, which started last year, aims to introduce up to 1,000 foreign professionals over 10 years to help spur innovation, promote scientific research and corporate management.

The project has just brought in 94 recruits, according to Zhang Jianguo, director of the State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs.

Professionals recruited by both programs will be entitled to subsidies, research allowances, favorable salaries, residency permits, medical care and insurance policies.

Professor Robert Gilbert, 66, was one of the new recruits.

Gilbert, an Australian who studies nutrition and food science, started work in China in October. He plans to build his own laboratory at Huazhong University of Science and Technology and Wuhan University.

China's emergence as a major global economy has made many foreign professionals shift their focus from traditional talent absorbers, such as the United States, he said.

"I enjoy being in China. It's very comfortable working and living here and I will probably prolong my stay in China when my contract ends in four years," he said.

Although China has been trying hard to attract international professionals, the country is still at the preliminary stage of attracting global talent, according to Wang Huiyao, director of the Center for China and Globalization in Beijing.

Only about 600,000 foreign professionals have work permits in China, while the US annually grants more than 100,000 green cards for foreign talent and nearly 90,000 talent visas, he said.

"We should do more to get global talent, for example by introducing more favorable and convenient visa and residence policies," he said.

Wu Jiang, director of the Chinese Academy of Personnel Science, said the country should optimize its structure of recruitment.

"For example, China only has 10 percent of its foreign experts working in the economic field. It's too low," he said. "We know what kind of talent we need most only after we get a better understanding of the country's talent and industrial structure."

The government should also provide better public services and make its legal environment for talent introduction better, Wu suggested.

More foreigners are employed by or showed a stronger interest in working for China-based companies against a backdrop of the rise of the country's economy and the global expansion of many Chinese firms.

Huawei Technologies Co, the world's second largest telecoms equipment maker by revenue, surprised people last year by inviting John Suffolk, former UK government chief information officer, to act as its global cyber security officer.

Suffolk is one of the most influential foreigners to work with a Chinese company. He works at Huawei's headquarters in Shenzhen, a coastal city in South China's Guangdong province, and reports directly to Huawei's chief executive officer, Ren Zhengfei.

After Suffolk joined Huawei, Omar Khan, former chief product and technology officer of Samsung Mobile, was appointed co-chief executive officer of Beijing-based NetQin Mobile Inc, a mobile security software provider.

Khan was dubbed "the Godfather of Galaxy" after launching perhaps one of the best series of smartphones the Android mobile system has seen yet - the Samsung Galaxy S line.

The trend of more talented foreigners joining Chinese companies is just beginning, analysts said. Yang Haifeng, a telecoms expert who is also chief editor of Communications World Weekly, said the vigorous Chinese economy, coupled with overseas expansion of many Chinese businesses, would create many opportunities for skilled people worldwide.

"Chinese companies can provide them (expatriates) with promising prospects, good experience and, of course, generous salaries," said Yang.

Duncan Clark, chairman of BDA China, a consultancy company that follows China's IT industry, said some companies in China are beginning to "transcend their Chinese-ness".

"In companies, I think we are almost beyond the 'them and us' of foreigners and Chinese. Once a company is founded by entrepreneurs, it doesn't really matter where the founders are from. We are entering the age of the 'multinational startup'," Clark said in an email sent to China Daily.

This new breed of company is far more attractive to expatriates to work for than the traditional Chinese company, he added.

ZTE Corp, the world's fifth telecoms equipment vendor, earns more than half of its revenue from overseas markets. In some developed countries, such as in the United States, about half of ZTE's management team are expatriates, according to Dai Shu, director of corporate branding and communications at ZTE.

Dai said ZTE provides an equal playing field when it comes to promoting talented people. "Sometimes, foreigners have more advantages than Chinese staff because we measure performance largely by the results they deliver," Dai said, pointing out that foreigners usually produce good results because they are culturally more close to clients.

In addition to talented foreigners, Chinese companies are also very interested in taking people who have experience in foreign companies. Lenovo Group, China's largest PC maker, hired more than 40 laid-off employees from its mobile product rival Motorola Mobility Holdings Inc in October.
Chen Wenhui vice-president of Lenovo and general manager of phone research and development, said once Lenovo heard the news, it went to Nanjing Motorola's R&D center immediately.

Former Motorola talent would improve Lenovo's overseas market research ability because Motorola had many long-serving staff with good overseas experience, Chen said.

When the search giant Google Inc said it was shutting down its search service Google.cn on the Chinese mainland in 2010, its Chinese competitors also seized the opportunity to hire the US company's best staff.

A number of Google's senior executives left the company amid rising speculation that Google may further withdraw from the Chinese mainland with its decision to redirect its mainland traffic to Hong Kong.

These included Zhu Huican, the inventor of Google's image search service, who went to Tencent Holdings Ltd as the chief architect of the company's search service, but later he left again, and Wang Jin, who has been working at Baidu Inc as vice-president of technology after he left Google as former deputy director of its engineering and research institute.

For Tencent Holdings Ltd, the biggest Internet company in China by sales, talent is talent, whether it is Chinese or foreign.

"Bringing in foreign talent is quite normal here," said Chen Shuanghua, assistant general manager of Tencent's human resources department, adding that it is not the nationality but ability that matters.

Quite a few of Tencent's employees used to work at major IT companies, including Microsoft Corp, Google Inc and Oracle Corp, he said.

Tencent hired Steve Gray, former executive producer at Electronic Arts Inc. Gray, who led the project for the Lord of the Rings franchise, used to be invited to give lectures at Tencent. After Gray and Tencent knew each other better, he was offered a job at Tencent in 2009 as an executive in charge of game production. Tencent is the biggest online game operator in China.

It's not just research and development that benefits from foreign talent. So does global business expansion. Chen said Tencent's WeChat, a hit messaging application on mobile devices, owes part of its success to the overseas marketing teams that hire local foreigners.

As part of its recruitment efforts, Tencent has taken a team to the top US universities, such as Harvard and Massachusetts Institute of Technology, every year since 2008 to recruit those with a masters in business administration. Chen said each time Tencent recruits about 10 people, most of whom will be deployed in the strategy and investment divisions.

By the end of this year, the company will have added 5,000 more people, boosting its total payroll to more than 20,000 employees, Chen said. About half of them are fresh graduates from Chinese universities, while the rest are experienced professionals.

Looking forward

Chinese companies are going to seek more international talented people as they embrace the global market. An increasing number of foreigners are considering working for Chinese companies because they believe the experience will add depth to their resumes, analysts said.

About 80 percent of the international talent in Chinese companies work in sales and marketing departments and are not based in China, according to Steve Shen, manager of information technology at Shanghai-based head-hunting company Robert Walters Talent Consulting Ltd.

Chinese companies need local talent to run their businesses in Europe and the United States because Chinese employees are not familiar with marketing procedures in the West and find it hard to explore the local markets.

Slowing economic growth in the West is also providing an opportunity for Chinese companies to lure talented foreigners and more candidates are expressing an interest in job offers from China, a country with three decades of constant economic growth, said Shen from Robert Walters.

The steady economic growth has also put Chinese enterprises in a good position to attract experienced people in the research and development sector.

Although only one in five of foreigners working for Chinese enterprises are R&D specialists, the amount is set to surge in the coming years because Chinese companies are planning to localize product designing and manufacturing in target markets, said Shen.

"China has a lack of experienced and skilled researchers and developers. International candidates with work experience are highly competitive in this area," added Shen.

In addition, as an increasing number of Chinese companies transform from outsourcing manufacturers into retailers directly targeting local customers, they need to build a local team strong enough to power the strategic shift. Locals are often the most suitable candidates.

However, ambitious overseas expansion plans pose a series of challenges to the Chinese headquarters. One of the most stubborn ones is how to manage enlarged overseas branches.

"The cultural difference is a big problem for most of the expatriates working in China and for Chinese companies and it may affect foreigners' careers in China," said Shen.

Chinese enterprises will also need to figure out how much administrative powers should be delegated to overseas directors and how to effectively manage the overseas offices.

Another reason that Chinese offers have become popular among overseas job seekers is because the experience will make their future job hunting easier. Foreign companies are more willing to give jobs to those who have worked in China or for Chinese companies because the second largest economy is appealing to many foreign enterprises as a place to do business.

More overseas workers value the experience of working in China more than their pay, according to Shen.

"A China element in a candidate's resume will award them extra points when looking for jobs with international corporations," said Shen. "We are definitely going to see more foreigners working for Chinese employers as the nation's economy continues to grow."

51job Inc. (JOBS: News ) reported net income of RMB46.4 million or RMB1.67 per ADS for the fourth quarter, compared to RMB6.8 million or RMB0.24 per ADS in the prior year quarter.

Excluding items, non-GAAP adjusted income was RMB52.6 million or RMB1.90 per ADS, compared to RMB13.6 million or RMB0.48 per ADS in the year-ago quarter.

Total revenues for the fourth quarter increased 15.2% to RMB226.0 million from RMB196.2 million in the same quarter in 2008.

For the first quarter of 2010, the company anticipates non-GAAP earnings of RMB0.68 per share to RMB0.78 per share, and revenue of RMB230 million to RMB240 million.

China Career Builder Corp., ("The Company or CCB") (PINK SHEETS: CCBX) a Delaware Corporation, is focused on outsourcing human resource services and staffing services in Hong Kong, China. Today, the company is pleased to announce has signed a Letter of Intent to acquires 49 percents of Issac Search Ltd of Hong Kong. This acquisition is consistent with the company's Strategic Business Plan, designed to build enterprise value through organic growth and select acquisition opportunities. The company is expected to complete satisfactory due diligence in the next Three (3) weeks, and complete the acquisition by the end of Q4, 2009 or early Q1 2010.

"We have been selectively considering strategic alliance or acquisition candidates for some time to achieve CCB's strategic vision. We are confident this acquisition with Issac Search Ltd enhances that vision and provides the elements required to expedite our business model," added CCB's President, Mona Yim.

ABOUT THE COMPANY

China Career Builder Corp. (The Company) through its subsidiary Asian Career Company Ltd. provides outsourcing human resource services and staffing services in Hong Kong, China. The company provides recruitment services focusing on the professional, management, clerical, administrative, IT and industrial market. Its services include screening, recruiting, training, workforce deployment, loss prevention and safety training, pre-employment testing and assessment, background searches, compensation program design, customized personnel management reports, job profiling, description, application, turnover tracking and analysis, opinion surveys and follow-up analysis, exit interviews and follow-up analysis, and management development skills workshops. The company markets its recruitment services through a combination of direct sales, telemarketing, trade shows, and advertising. The company incorporated in Delaware, headquartered in Hong Kong, China.

For further information please refer to the Company's website at www.ChinaCareerBuilder.com

If you would like to receive regular updates on China Career Builder Corp. please send your email request to info@ChinaCareerBuilder.com or contact the company's Investor and Public relations at ir@ChinaCareerBuilder.com .

TAIPEI, Taiwan -- Proficiency in the English language helps create better job opportunities and brings comparatively higher pay for employees in Taiwan, according to the latest survey by an online employment agency. As high as 68 percent of enterprises or organizations in Taiwan include a good command of English among the major criteria when recruiting new employees. They are also willing to offer an average of NT$3,105 more in starting salaries to those with stronger competence in the international language.

The survey by online job agency www.1111.com.tw also shows that companies in the field of trading, product distribution, industrial and commercial services and education, as well as government agencies place the highest priority for English proficiency.

However, only 22 percent of salary earners presently possess credible English proficiency certificates.

A high percentage of job seekers — 67 percent — admit they lost interview opportunities when looking for new jobs because of inferior English capability.

The survey finds that 71.2 percent of employees believe that improved English ability will bring more employment opportunities and better positions with higher pay.

But among the 78.2 percent of employees who still have no English proficiency certificates, 64 percent acknowledged that their current level is still not up to the tests, while 36 percent said they even don't know how to prepare for such examinations.

A representative of the Educational Testing Service (ETS) of the U.S. stationed here said the average TOEIC (Test of English for International Communication) score in Taiwan ranks at eighth place in the Asian region, falling behind China and South Korea.

The general English level of professionals like certified public accountants and lawyers, as well as R&D staff at electronics and other high-tech companies in Taiwan, is below international standards, hampering the nation's overall competitiveness in the world market, he said.

But he also pointed out that the number of people taking the TOEIC certifying test here has continued to increase in recent years, rising to 180,000 in 2008 from about 40,000 in 2004.

This shows that more people in Taiwan have become aware of the important role of English language in their careers.

Another positive development is that the average TOEIC score of marketing staff here has risen above the level of people in similar positions around the world, he said.

The survey of English proficiency and job opportunities, covering 488 employees and 1,465 employees, was carried out islandwide Oct. 1-14 this year.

by Patrick O. Courtois, DaCare Consulting

I tend to receive a recurring misconception about the Chinese labor market from overseas-based clients. This misunderstanding primarily affects overseas-designed provisional staffing budgets as well as the perceived value of quality of China-based recruitment agencies. In short, agencies are perceived to attempt inflating candidate packages for higher fees. While some rogue agencies do, there is a distinctive trend that the cost of Chinese talent is catching up with international benchmarks.

China is an emerging Dragon, Shanghai, a crouching tiger… China is an emerging and developing economy. At least, it is its official status according to the International Monetary Fund's World Economic Outlook Report, dated April 2008 (1). Taking into consideration the measurement criteria, based on statistical indexes of element like income per capita, GDP, literacy rate and such, are calculated against the sheer size of its population, it can only make sense.
Shanghai is, along with Beijing, Guangzhou and Shenzhen the economy’s locomotive. Having the status of “wealthiest” city in China, with a GDP per capita, above US $7,000 for 2007, it is however still far behind any Major European capital (2). To give you a clearer idea, Shanghai’s GDP per capita is below a city like Istanbul, Turkey (3). Once again, keep in mind the size of Shanghai’s population (over 15 million souls) and you can understand that GDP per capita does not necessary reflect the reality of local white collars, which are far from being the majority.

Another interesting piece of information is the Mercer's 2008 Worldwide Cost of Living survey (4), which gives us an idea on the rising costs of living in Beijing and Shanghai, with both cities present in the Top 25. The results, however not entirely applicable to local nationals, as based on expatriate populations, still gives us an insight on a certain reality of the local economy. That is, the gap in cost of living observed between a modern city like Shanghai and other “emerging” one, in China.

Despite all these, Shanghai can still be considered as a “cheap” city, with low business operations related costs, minimal salaries requirements, and reasonable living costs below those of similar sized cities in US or Europe.

The “Made in China” picture of low wages is still relevant today. Compared to wages in the EU or US, employing local nationals is indeed an affordable option. Looking at the table 1 comparison of the median US, UK and Chinese total packages (salary + bonus and benefits) on some common positions, the point is made. At first glance, it quickly illustrates the cost-effectiveness of employing local nationals, considering we are talking about the “median” or average population, of course. It quickly demonstrates that employing the “average” local candidate can still be regarded as a cost-effective solution.

If you pay peanuts, you get monkeys… No offence to anyone in particular, as this applies to pretty much anywhere around the world… But, If you take a closer look at this “average” labor market, as it is the one providing input for most official statistics, surveys and other reports that one can easily find online and, incidentally, the segment on which a lot of people base a provisional recruitment budget upon, you get a rather interesting picture... Simply put, by a fellow recruitment specialist, “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…”(5).

The average candidate has also the shortest retention potential, following a simple logic of job hopping for ever shinier titles and bigger financial packages, thus leaving a city like shanghai with a dramatic employee turnover at around 18 months and a managerial workforce with somewhat arguable overall managerial skills.

If you are the decision maker of one of these multinationals, which are slowly initiating a shift toward management localization by cutting off expatriates’ budget plans, would you really consider handing over the keys to your financial, commercial or product development operations to an average candidate whom, however nice of a person, would most likely fail to properly relate to, understand or even communicate on basic day to day issues?

No money, no honey… On the other hand, you have the candidates which are at the center of what is now known as the “Talent War” (6). These are candidates with bilingual English abilities, 5 to 10 years of solid people and projects management experience, strong overseas exposure, the ability to think in a systemic way, whom are fully acquainted with western reporting systems, can deal with foreign clients with the highest level of service quality, have graduated from top Western universities and can leverage on the added-value of their biculturalism. These are the candidates companies are fighting over for in Shanghai, Beijing or other tier 1 cities, with packages narrowing closer to those in the US or Europe, and sometimes going well beyond.

Figure 2 sheds some light on a more relevant picture of the Shanghai employment market (for top candidates), with key functions such as Finance, HR or Sales clearly aligning themselves on EU/US levels. This “headhunter’s” dream can quickly turn into an employer’s nightmare, if the latter does not properly understand the realities applying to the local market: An overall talented, self-motivated, creative, and experienced manager is a scarce resource in China, and a 28 years old sales manager making above RMB 1 million (EUR 100,000) is common.
Assignments, completed by Orion China, regularly cover positions for Financial Controllers around the RMB 500,000 (EUR 58,000) figure, HRDs in the vicinity of RMB 700,000 (EUR 80,000) and many others, with financial packages often giving a new meaning to the common image of China as the land of cheap labor. You need to face the facts, if you want to buy yourself the next superstar everyone else wants, you will most likely have to fork out a substantial amount for it, at least, more than your competitors.

Money can’t buy happiness…but you can definitely get yourself a top senior HR or Finance candidate, in China, for the right price… Sure, there are no comparisons possible between a Shanghai or Guangdong based factory worker and his counterpart in Europe, the US or Japan. China has and will continue to retain its image of “world’s factory” for years to come, with affordable labor costs and ever increasing quality standards. Nonetheless, good management, talented leaders and high potential profiles come with a high price tag, just like it would, in “Developed” economies.

Companies that will successfully implement localization strategies, in the upcoming years, and leverage on the amazing opportunities this rapidly growing market yields; are the ones currently understanding that quality, experience and skills come at a certain price, in particular in the Chinese economic capital Shanghai is. A solid and ethical executive search firm, with deep networks, up-to-date market knowledge, and experienced consultants, is therefore a partner of choice to prevent your next hiring from becoming a time bomb, in your company’s development plan, or a pricey mishap that may not look great during your next board meeting.

During tough economic times there is intense pressure on all functions within the business to re-think their current approach in an effort to become more competitive and aggressive all while containing cost.

Unfortunately, many recruiters and recruiting leaders choose an opposite path, becoming more conservative in their approach. When markets head south and fear about economic issues grip the populace, consider a counter-cyclical recruiting strategy that sends a clear message to everyone inside and outside your organization that talent truly means something to your organization.

One controversial yet extremely public, effective outside-the-box recruiting approach you might consider is “proximity recruiting.”

You Must Do Internet and Physical Recruiting
Even with the tremendous growth of Internet recruiting, not everyone is actively surfing the Internet looking for a job or combing through their email in anticipation of your generic form letter introduction.

Reaching a greater percentage of the population relevant to your job searches often requires using at least three channels to reach them, one of which should be physical. The underlying concept of physical recruiting is a simple one, just as robbers target banks because that’s where the money is! Recruiters need to target physical locations where a large number of potential hires can be found.

While nearly everyone in recruiting is familiar with the dreaded job fair, there are numerous other approaches to physical recruiting that are far more effective and fun. One such approach is “proximity” or event recruiting. Proximity recruiting at professional events (tradeshows and seminars) is clearly becoming more mainstream, but one location in particular really elevates the visibility of your efforts and qualifies as “outrageous.” The location? Across the street or in the parking lot of talent-competing firms in trouble.

Proximity Recruiting with a Taco Truck
If you have been paying attention to the business press lately, you are probably aware that Internet giant Yahoo! was planning to lay off approximately 1,000 employees worldwide, the greatest percentage of which would come from its Silicon Valley headquarters in Sunnyvale, California.

What you may not know is that despite a multi-year trend of notable voluntary exits by key employees, Yahoo! is still considered by many to employ some of the greatest engineering talent in the industry. This talent is extremely valuable to hundreds of upstarts working on next-generation technologies.

Yahoo!, like many organizations planning a reduction in force, kept its plans secret until the day when the axe actually swung. Because employees knew pink slips were coming, but no real guidance was offered as to who would be impacted, more people were concerned than would actually be cut.

Seizing on that fear and the actual swinging of the axe, Tokbox, an upstart enabling free voice and video calling over the Internet without any software download, engaged a proximity recruiting strategy that some may consider outrageous.

While pink slips were being handed out, Tokbox executives were setting up a taco truck across the street from Yahoo’s corporate campus, offering employees affected (and anyone else that wanted to chat) a hot lunch and information about employment opportunities.

Their approach was a simple one. They leased a taco truck and driver for the day, set up across the street in plain view, and offered a hot lunch to any Yahoo! employee who wanted to talk. Company executives were on hand and the atmosphere was light.

In order not to make anyone overly nervous, the conversations were kept short. While proximity recruiting has become more common in the Silicon Valley, Tokbox’s efforts still garnered a great deal of press both on the Internet and via the mainstream news media, earning them hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of free PR and employment advertising.

Other Proximity or Event Recruiting Opportunities
If you are not ready to offer free food or display a banner, consider additional proximity recruiting approaches:

A van with a recruiting banner. If there was a most commonly used form of outrageous proximity recruiting, it would have to be the use of the recruiting van (usually with a large banner) that is parked within easy view of a large corporate site or a commuter site frequented by target talent. The “banner van” parked across the street approach has been used both in high-tech and healthcare to target firms that are currently going through acquisitions, union problems, and workforce reductions.
The “across the street” bar, restaurant, or gym. Almost any firm with a large number of employees has a bar or restaurant close by where a significant number of the site’s employees go for a drink or meal with a colleague. These locations are packed with employees wearing IDs, who incidentally, often have their guard down. Health clubs and gyms are also great spots to target.
Award events. You’re almost guaranteed to meet the best and brightest at events that offer awards or prizes for excellence and innovation. Not only should the recipients be targets but you should also look at award presenters as both potential targets and as referral sources.
College recruiting approaches. Because college students love to attend events, proximity recruiting should be a major part of your university recruiting effort. Place a “banner van” key across the street from college campuses. Consider recruiting at campus club meetings, at college sports events, at music concerts, on the beach during spring break, and even at both on- and off-campus college poker events.
Conventions. If you’re trying to hire a nurse, it only makes sense to recruit at a bar inside or outside a nursing-related convention, or where nursing continuing education is being offered. Here again you have the advantage of almost everyone having a name tag with their own and their company name on it.
Clubs and groups. If you are seeking individuals with certain skills or attributes, consider recruiting at clubs, societies, or organizations where individuals with these attributes are common. For example, if you’re looking for risk-takers, target rock-climbing clubs. If your search includes disciplined individuals, consider military groups, math societies, and music groups.
Hotels where company events are held. When you think about it, companies do send their very best people to meetings, seminars, and events. Occasionally, corporate events are announced on the hotels marquis for everyone to see, making it easy to schedule your next pub crawl. This time of year, immediately before a firm’s holiday party gets underway, is another time to begin building relationships with potential targets.
Corporate training centers. Many firms send their best employees to corporate training. Because a good deal of corporate training can be long and dull, there is a high likelihood that a large group will go out for cocktails in the host hotel or at a nearby bar. So, if you have large corporate training centers near you, consider them prime targets.
Shareholder meetings. The bar across the street from the location of the annual shareholders meeting will almost always include a number of company employees and leaders. Go before or after the event to make contacts and build relationships.
Miscellaneous. Firms have practiced “proximity recruiting” at other events and sites including wine festivals, home shows, in shopping malls, and at charity events.
Final Thoughts
If you are put off by the concept of boldly “raiding” other firms, you should realize that “stealing” another firm’s customers is already an accepted and common practice. Both sales and recruiting are competitive functions where the most desirable targets have already been captured by your competitors. As a recruiter, your job is to provide your coworkers with the best teammates that can be found anywhere, period.

No matter what you do, you can never successfully recruit a firm’s employees unless the firm that the employee currently works at has already failed to offer them opportunities that are superior to yours. If you are even slightly hesitant about raiding firms like GM, Ford, Chrysler, Citigroup etc. that have clearly failed their current employees, don’t be surprised when you are replaced by a recruiter who is more aggressive, bolder, and more willing to try something new.

Multinational companies' (MNC)'s hiring expectations have largely declined in the second quarter, after sustaining a high level for a long period, but are rising in some sectors, a recently released human resources (HR) report said.

However, most respondents of globally leading recruitment and HR management firm Hudson's survey remained optimistic, saying they considered an imminent recession in China's employment market unlikely.

The global Hudson Hiring and HR Trends Quarterly Report surveyed 718 executives of MNCs in China from sectors including banking and financial, IT and technology (IT&T), manufacturing, consumer, and media, public relations and advertising.

It said overall hiring expectations in the emerging market are declining, with 52 percent of respondents expecting to increase headcount, compared with 61 percent in both the previous quarter and the corresponding period of 2007.

The report also found 14 percent of respondents in China expected the country would face a recession in the next six months - fewer than in any other Asia market surveyed. In Japan, for example, 41 percent of respondents believed a recession was imminent.

Of those anticipating a recession in China, 73 percent believed it would impact their industries.

At 57 percent, the banking and financial services sector reported the highest hiring expectations - although 12 percentage points fewer than in the first quarter.

Some banks are more cautious in their hiring projections, particularly in the consumer-banking sector, where they haven't yet obtained all required licenses, Hudson's Shanghai General Manager Angie Eagan said.

Employment expectations are rising in the media, public relations and advertising industries, where 55 percent of respondents forecasted headcount growth, compared with 47 percent in the first quarter. Many agencies started hiring after Chinese New Year, when clients had finalized their marketing budgets.

The IT&T segment also reported rising expectations, with 55 percent of respondents saying they will hire more staff - compared with 50 percent in the first three months of 2008. The sector remains buoyant as companies continue localizing IT operations.

Manufacturing companies' expectations increased slightly, with 53 percent planning to increase hiring, compared with 51 percent in the first quarter. Construction of MNCs' new manufacturing facilities in China is mostly driving demand for workers.

Expectations underwent the steepest fall in the consumer industry, plummeting to 45 percent from 72 percent in the first quarter.

Hudson said many companies in the sector have been expanding headcount for a long time and have by now filled most positions, ushering the industry into a consolidation phase.

Recession doubted

Only 14 percent of respondents in China forecasted a recession in the next six months, reflecting the country's economic buoyancy. Responses from China were fairly consistent across industries on the issue, although at 21 percent, those from the IT&T sector were most inclined to expect a recession.

"This may reflect a continuing caution in the wake of dotcom failures, as most companies in this sector are busy and are recruiting additional staff," Eagan said.

Most firms would adopt headcount freezes in a recession, with 84 percent of respondents saying they would use the policy to weather the tough times.

Use of salary freezes was the second most-frequently mentioned recession-survival method, with 35 percent of respondents in China saying they would use the policy - more than in any other surveyed Asia market. Firms in China were also the most likely among those surveyed on the continent to cut training in the event of a recession, a measure 18 percent of respondents mentioned.

Media, public relations and advertising firms were particularly reluctant to cut staff, with just 15 percent mentioning the option. However, they were most likely to freeze headcounts and salaries, at 94 and 48 percent, respectively.

At 33 percent, banks were the most likely to cut staff in a recession, as high salaries are typical in the industry.

Firms in the IT&T sector were most likely to cut training, with 44 percent of respondents mentioning the option. "Technical training can be very expensive in China," Eagan said.

HR challenges

As in the other surveyed Asia markets, "hiring the right staff" and "retaining talent" remained the most critical challenges.

Across all sectors, 48 percent of respondents said recruitment was the greatest challenge, while 27 percent said retention was.

Compared with other surveyed markets, respondents in China most emphasized recruitment over retention. The country also had the highest percentage of firms identifying recruitment as the greatest challenge and the lowest identifying retention.

At 65 percent, the media, public relations, and advertising sector had the most respondents identifying hiring the right staff as the greatest challenge. The market for talented professionals with relevant experience has remained tight, especially at senior levels.

Retaining talent is a major concern for the banking and financial services and the manufacturing sectors. In the banking and financial services sector, 30 percent of companies identified this as their most critical challenge, as did 28 percent in manufacturing. Currently, companies in both sectors are focusing on retaining high performers with specialized skills.

It’s a slow news day - besides that whole one-year-to-go thing - and while we were tempted to run with this story from the Shanghai Daily, the better angels of our nature prevailed and instead, we decided to republish an excerpt from our popular “Common mistakes and misperceptions when investing in China - and how to avoid them” China Briefing issue from July of last year.

Common mistakes when using Chinese staff to set up or run your company

Putting them in control of everything

Yes, it may be very useful to have that ever-so-nice-and-efficient local Chinese person help you with all aspects of setting up your China operations, including all business licenses, offices, bank accounts, handling all documentation and so on. The language and bureaucracy are almost unintelligible and you’re a busy corporate executive. But wait; is it normal business practice anywhere to have one person in control of all aspects of your country operations? No, it isn’t, and with very good reason.

Their abilities may not stretch as far as international competencies

Although they may in fact be honest and helpful, the way in which foreign companies have to be administered in China, and the reporting structures they have to go through, are very different from those that Chinese companies have to adhere too. In reality, foreign businesses in China face far more scrutiny than Chinese companies do. If your employee, good as they are, is not familiar with the regulatory aspects concerning operating and maintaining an international office or business in China, chances are there will be issues your company will immediately be out of compliance with. That can and does get expensive. Additionally, there are circumstances where the employee may deliberately keep the company out of compliance – to obtain benefits or other leeway later if any argument arises against their favor later on.

Having one person in control of all your corporate documents and/or banking

Very common. The risks are obvious. You can lose all your abilities to operate the company overnight if he/she decides to walk out of the door. Plus all your money.

Insertion of family and friends into your supply chain
This is very common. You need to audit your purchasing and sales departments regularly to ensure employees are not placing orders with companies owned by friends or relatives that are then charging your business at rates well over the market odds.

Setting up of parallel businesses

In one particularly nasty case we were called in to investigate, two Canadian-Chinese were hired, having worked for the parent company overseas for several years, to establish a China manufacturing entity. This they did, however the China business never was able to attain anywhere like the projected sales, and had to be continuously funded from the parent to tide it over. A variety of “market conditions,” “competitor pricing” and so on were given as excuses. When, just before a new US$1 million investment was to be injected into the China entity, the parent decided just have a quick look-see internal audit – things started to become clear. The two trusted employees had established a mirror company, with similar sounding Chinese name to the international brand, and had been diverting all orders to that business instead. “Local competitive pricing” indeed. From a business the staff themselves had established to compete with their employers.

Common mistakes when hiring expatriate employees to set up and run your China entity

There are problems with expatriate staff as well. Especially, (and unfortunately) often with personnel in professional services.

Hiring lawyers with no China experience

Expensive, and not really much point, especially if their Chinese language capabilities are minimal. However, many look good, and although their firms may have a China presence, what about their individual presence in China? International lawyers are great at international work – cross border structuring and so on – but far too many of them profess expertise in areas of China practice they are neither qualified or experienced to be dealing with. Are you looking for a salesman selling his firm, or proper advice? Really, if you need to hire a lawyer with China experience – go to a firm that has the real thing. That’s what they are there for, and China has had private lawyers now for 15 years - Google their names to see how well known they are.

Hiring personnel On their language skills alone

Well, everyone has to start somewhere. But a new kid just out of language school is still a new kid out of language school, and will have no experience dealing with the “China issues.” Don’t expect miracles. And two years in China does not an expert make. Young graduates do have skills of course, but don’t weigh them down too much with managerial responsibilities before they have had time to adjust them to a commercial business environment and have found their feet around your business. A management development program designed to maximize on their language skills yet introduce them to your business will reap greater rewards both for you and for them if you treat them with continuing educational attention.

The China guys

Expats of note are those who really know their way around, and can steer you away from all the problems. They will have a good grasp of the language, and may well have settled down with family here. You cannot survive in China without knowing how to get on, and this is a matter of experience as well as possessing inherent patience, tenacity and people and communications skills. They are available – interestingly at this time, many of the established multinationals are localizing and expatriate engineering and other talent is perhaps more available in China than ever before.

For more on the common mistakes and misperceptions when investing in China, check out the 2006 July/August issue of China Briefing.

The call centre employees in India are the most frequent job-hoppers among their Asian peers with an average job tenure of as low as nine months, a new survey says.

According to an annual report for the Asian contact centre industry released by callcentres.net, the average job tenure of call centre agents in India is the lowest at 11 months, while it is even lower at nine months for those having left their jobs in the past one year.

Identifying attrition and hiring as their top challenges for 2008, call centres in the country are now focusing on financial incentives and other rewards in their bid to retain the right talent, said callcentres.net, a leading Asian research firm focused on contact centres and outsourcing industries.
Absenteeism on decline
The study found that absenteeism or sick leave in the Indian call centres has declined to an average of nine days per annum this year from 15 days in 2007, but employee tenure is still a major issue.

Stating that the average tenure of nine months in India is the lowest in the region for those having left jobs in past one year, the report said that comparable figures at other places are 22 months in Philippines, 20 months in Malaysia, 18 months for Singapore, 17 months for Thailand and 12 months for China.

The study also found that smaller call centres in India, or those having less than 100 seats, have lower average agent tenure of 10 months, as compared to the larger centres where the tenure is close to 15 months.
Human resource management
"This may suggest that larger centres are recruiting agents from smaller centres, or that they are able to provide greater investment in human resource management, thereby holding onto agents for a longer time," it noted.

"The average age of workforce in contact centre is far below 30 years. This age group takes up a job in call centres for earning quick money. They don't look at it as a serious career," callcentre.net President Catriona Wallace said.

However, close to 70 per cent of Indian contact centre agents who left their jobs in the last 12 months chose to work in another contact centre, instead of leaving the industry altogether. This compares with 50-76 per cent of agents deciding to leave the industry in countries like Singapore, Philippines, Thailand, China and Malaysia.

The study said that Indian players have identified their primary challenges for this year as employee attrition, recruitment, training and implementing new service channels.
Career planning
"Indian contact centre executives are attempting to improve human resource management results by offering financial incentives, reward and recognition programmes and better career planning for agents," it noted.

According to the survey, the contact centre managers named financial incentives and recognition programmes as the most successful strategies implemented in the last 12 months.

For retaining employees, 37 per cent of contact centre managers ranked monetary incentives as a major tool. Besides, 22 per cent managers said reward and recognition programme helps retaining candidates and 18 per cent termed career planning as the most effective tool.
Salaries
The study said that a 32 per cent increase in manager's base salaries also demonstrated that the Indian contact centre industry recognised importance of rewarding a good leadership.

Other evidence of an increased focus on managing human resources was an increase in the average number of days of training an experienced agent receives, which has risen to 14 days this year from 11 days in 2007 for an agent who had been with the centre for over 12 months.

Every day, I get calls from frantic and sometimes frustrated HR people. “Can you find a government sales specialist in Seattle? How about a sales manager in California? Is there a metalworking sales specialist in Detroit?”

Unfortunately for everyone involved, the questions come easier than the answers. In fact, the panorama of industrial supply distribution has changed dramatically over the past eight years, especially within the sales arena. Boeing relocated, China infiltrated, 9/11 happened and the experienced industrial people made like rabbits and high-tailed it for safer havens [read: other industries]. Add the proliferation of non-compete agreements to the brew and we have ourselves the perfect storm for industrial headhunters, HR personnel and sales specialists.

The problems are compounded by disinformation emanating from the various media mavens. They manipulate statistics to create news and cause fear with talk of rising unemployment coupled with a labor shortage caused by millions of retiring Baby Boomers. But what’s really going on?

As someone who has been recruiting within the industrial supply sector for more than 20 years, my feeling is that there are still plenty of good times ahead, both for larger and niche players. Here is what I tell clients who ask about the industrial supply industry from the perspectives of talent retention, recruitment and the hiring process:

Talent Retention: From the inside out
• The company that offers options to cross train, interchange jobs and relocate for career advancement has the decided advantage. The cost to the company is more than made up for by successful internal promotions which yield measurable and quantifiable results.
• Positive buzz generated by in-house staff and associates that transfers into the marketplace can be a corporate “Gatorade infusion” of energy and enthusiasm for the entire company. It will attract new talent from within the industry as well as adjacent industries.

The recruitment process: Communication is the key
• Once the need is determined and the funds are provided within the corporate budget, companies want positions filled yesterday. The pressure to hire is immediate and burning. Therefore, every day that the job goes unfilled builds up cost-of-vacancy, which can be very expensive.
• In the vast majority of companies, the hiring process is plagued by delayed responses to resumes, indecisive management follow-ups and poor feedback from line management interviews to the HR departments or the outside recruiter. If these hiring companies ever determined the actual cost-of-vacancy caused by these delays, there would be a great outcry from senior management.
• The faster a company moves within the interview/hiring process, the better the rate of hiring and retention.

The hiring process: Close the deal without delay
• Open your doors to any trainable, sales-oriented individual who understands and believes in relationship sales. That means thinking as broadly as possible as to industry experience. Some companies put their salespeople people through rigorous training.
• Give feedback to every candidate within 72 hours of receiving their resume. This shows you care and mean business.
• Set up a phone interview with either a manager or HR rep within five days of receipt of a candidate’s resume.
• A face-to-face interview should be set up within one week of the phone interview. Thereafter, whatever necessary steps, including tests, background checks or reference screens, should be set up in a similar time frame.
• The completion of the interview/hiring process to the offer phase should take no more than five or six weeks. Add to that at least two weeks for a start date and you have a two-month process. That’s the way to make a strong impression on any candidate.

These are best-case scenarios. It might take longer to unearth the hero/heroine. You might need a recruiter with the right synergy, who can help you avoid many of the potential pitfalls. They can serve as the first line of offense to promote your company, its objectives and its culture — and prepare the candidate for each step in the process.

Whatever you decide, if you stay the course with a proper timetable, you can maximize your chances to make that strategic hire.

* Mainland executives lead the talent contest
* Talent wars tougher than Europe
* Multinationals only compete long-term by sharing know-how
* Chinese companies going global need leadership due diligence

SHANGHAI, China--(BUSINESS WIRE)--A growing pool of extremely talented Mainland Chinese executives are gaining internationally competitive compensation as the best in class among all nationalities, according to The Boyden Report – Exploding the Myths in China released today by Boyden Global Executive Search. The report is based on interviews with senior executives of Chinese and multinational subsidiary organisations.

“Mainland companies are beginning to pursue international ambitions and attracting Chinese executives back from Western companies, where global exposure has been gained in a local context,” says Charles Bien, Managing Director of Boyden China. “The combination of a Chinese culture, internationally competitive remuneration and the chance to learn best practices is very powerful.”

The report explores eight commonly held myths about business in China including:

The Chinese Economy as a Threat
China vs. India: Zero Sum Game?
One China, One Market
Human Resources Best Practices
Chinese Returnees
“War for Talent”
One Country, Two Systems
Proprietary Technology
Following are highlights of the report:

Learn How to Ride the Tiger

The opening myth of report examines the fear among Western Companies that the rapid development of the Chinese economy is a competitive threat. Respondents explain how this prevents multinationals benefiting from the significant advantages China has to offer. “The Chinese have an expression: ‘learn how to ride on the tiger’s back,’” says Mr. Francis Yuen, President of Trane Asia in the report. “Western companies need to realise that you should never try to fight the tiger—learn to leverage the tiger.”

HR: Organisational Landscape and Competitive Advantage

Interviews with Mainland and multinational executives found that China’s Organisational Landscape is far more heterogeneous than many Westerners appreciate. Most respondents agree that Chinese companies tend to lag behind multinationals in making human resources part of their strategic planning. Businesses that do focus on HR strategy gain a notable competitive advantage.

“We adopted many HR policies from the legacy of China business across our international operation including the legacy of the IBM PC division,” says Reid Walker, Lenovo’s Vice President of Global Communications. “Our new performance management system is based upon many of the ‘pay for performance’ practices of our original China operation. These practices helped Lenovo grow from a small start-up to a leading global multinational.”

Local Market Knowledge is King

The general consensus is that it is a mistake to focus on returnees for international perspective in China operations. Senior executives interviewed believe returnee managers are helpful in the short-term and for transitional periods, but they have often adopted a Western perspective that doesn’t always fully embrace or comprehend the Chinese perspective. Companies in China need managers with local market knowledge, including an ability to communicate well with key officials and understand regional business practices.

“Just as it is very difficult for companies to expand or market nationally in China, it is hard to move executives from one province to another,” explains Brian Renwick, Managing Director of Boyden China. “The logistics of moving people can be as challenging as the logistics of moving goods.”

Talent Wars Worse Than in Europe

Senior executives interviewed for the report concurred that there is as big of a war for talent in China as in other markets, and perhaps even more so in China. Opportunities and salaries are rising fast in China and labor costs are going up. Competition for managers changes in relation to the competitiveness of the sector or industry.

“The war for talent is very fierce in China,” said Bengt Hamsten, Former CEO of MAN Truck & Bus China; Professor, Mechanical Engineering, Chongqing University. “If anything, the talent wars are worse than in Europe.”

Change programs tend to include a comparison of the company’s values with an individual’s perception and preferences. Companies should view the recruitment of a key executive as a microcosm of change. The rapid pace of development in China means that companies need to hire with a view of how a role will evolve in the near future.

The Boyden View for Multinationals in China and Mainland Companies

For multinationals in China, the overriding challenge to overcome is fear of sharing their know-how and intellectual property with their subsidiaries. If they fail to do this, Chinese competitors will soon outperform multinational subsidiaries, and the advantages of having operations in China will be lost. Boyden’s Brian Renwick explains, “The potential shift in manufacturing jobs is having greater global benefits in quality of life and access to goods. Mature economies have a rare chance to transform themselves through the opportunities offered by China.”

The challenge for mainland Chinese companies with global ambitions means focusing on executive talent during the due diligence phase of an acquisition.

“For Chinese companies wanting to expand overseas, understanding the management culture and the executives they are buying is as important as financial due diligence,” says Boyden’s Charles Bien. “Assessing the senior executives in an acquisition target enables Chinese companies to gain a greater understanding of the real value of the deal.”

About Boyden World Corporation

Boyden is a global leader in the executive search industry with more than 70 offices in 40 countries. Founded in 1946, Boyden specialises in high level executive search, Interim Management and Human Capital consulting across a broad spectrum of industries. For further information, visit the firm’s website at www.boyden.com.

About The Boyden Report

Other reports in The Boyden Report series include The Boyden Report: India – the Sun Rises on the Indian Executive (3Q 2007) and upcoming The Boyden Report: South America (1Q 2008).

By Han Dongfang

From a legal standpoint, the protection of workers' rights in China is systematically improving, with the government adding another major component, the Labor Contract Law, to its already substantial canon of labor legislation at the start of the year.

Since the promulgation of the Trade Union Law in 1992 and Labor Law in 1994, the government has regularly introduced new legislation and regulations designed to protect the rights and interests of workers.

However, while the interests of workers are increasingly enshrined in law, their rights on the factory floor remain precarious and are

routinely ignored or violated by management. The cause of this apparent contradiction is not hard to find: put simply, workers in China still do not have the right to collective bargaining.

There is a labor union in China, the All China Federation of Trade Unions (ACFTU), which could potentially represent workers in collective bargaining with management. The ACFTU, however, is first and foremost a servant of the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) and therefore an instrument of the party-state - representing labor and protecting workers’ rights is secondary.

ACFTU chairman Wang Zhaoguo freely admitted in a speech in December 2006 that China's unions "cannot blindly copy union models in Western countries". The ACFTU sees itself as a "bridge" between labor and management, not merely as an advocate for labor. As such, it does not actively defend workers' interests in negotiations with management but seeks to facilitate a compromise between the two sides.

The ACFTU's approach may seem attractive on paper, but in reality it has categorically failed to protect workers' rights and interests. Take the minimum wage for example. Because there is no freedom of association or genuine collective bargaining in China, employers can get away with paying the minimum wage to all employees regardless of the profits they make or the productivity of the workers.

Indeed, in the vast majority of enterprises across China today the minimum wage mandated by law has become the basic flat wage paid by employers by default. In other words, the minimum wage regulations designed to protect workers' interests have become the legal foundation of management's exploitation of labor.

China's Trade Union Law mandates the ACFTU to represent workers' interests in wage negotiations. Since, however, in the majority of enterprises, ACFTU branch union officials are appointed by or in some other way beholden to management, they would not dare raise an effective challenge to management on behalf of the employees. There is a mechanism - the "collective consultation and collective contracts system" - developed by the government and ACFTU over the past two decades, through which workers' demands for higher wages can in theory be discussed.

Yet because there is no genuine collective bargaining between labor and management, most of the collective contracts that the ACFTU has announced do not represent the workers but are rather the results of a "collective contracts production line". These mass-produced contracts are typically copied from the provisions of relevant labor laws and regulations and are of little or no help to workers on the factory floor.

There are also strict rules and regulations covering work hours and overtime. However, because of the excessively low wages paid by employers, workers very often cannot earn a living wage by working eight hours a day. Because they cannot bargain collectively, individual employees will certainly not dare to ask for a pay rise on their own. Their only option is to ask to work longer hours. In the majority of incidents where employees work long hours, it is because they requested it, and as such, the labor bureaus - who are supposed to monitor breaches of work hour regulations - are powerless to intervene.

The Labor Contract Law has numerous provisions designed to protect workers' rights and enhance job security. One key provision is that workers who have been employed at the same enterprise for 10 years or more will be legally entitled to an "unlimited" labor contract, which should guarantee them adequate financial compensation should they be made redundant.

Many employers have panicked on learning of this provision and urged, bribed or coerced long-serving employees to take early retirement or voluntary redundancy. The most noted example of this tactic was the move by Huawei - the former state-owned enterprise and now privately owned telecommunications conglomerate based in Shenzhen - to persuade about 7,000 employees who had been with the company for more than eight years to resign. In return, the employees received a lump sum of one month’s salary for every year of employment, plus one additional month’s salary, and were allowed to rejoin the company on a short-term contract.

Huawei's reaction to the new legislation was rational in a system where laws are largely theoretical and all the power inside enterprises resides with management. China's numerous labor laws are like swords suspended above the heads of factory owners and managers. They can all see the swords but none of them can really be sure what will happen if one falls.

Huawei's management could not be sure if the Labor Contract Law would hurt them or not, and so they did everything in their power to minimize the potential damage. Management had the power to persuade long-serving employees to give up their contracts, so it did. Yet again, a new law - intended to protect workers - instead led to the violation of workers' rights.

The Huawei case begs the question: do the workers really want long-term contracts or is this just something that legislators and concerned academics think they want or should have? In the Huawei case, if the workers had the right to free collective bargaining, this situation would not have arisen. Even without a new law requiring employers to give employees unlimited contracts, workers and management could have sat down together as equal partners, raised their concerns, made their demands and ironed out their differences at the bargaining table.

If the employees wanted unlimited contracts, their representatives would be empowered to negotiate a deal with management on the issue. If workers did not consider unlimited contracts to be of great importance, they would not place it on the negotiating table.

With a collective bargaining system in place, workers would no longer walk into the "dead end" of rights protection that exists at present. Workers and employers would in addition both be able to improve their "fire prevention" work. An effective collective bargaining system would lessen the risk of labor disputes igniting into conflagration and allow both labor and management to focus on prevention, rather than trying to put the blaze out after it had already erupted and most likely caused irreparable damage.

China Labor Bulletin has closely monitored the workers' movement in China over the past decade and has repeatedly noticed labor disputes that could have been prevented or resolved through a system of collective bargaining escalate into strikes, public protests and demonstrations simply because the workers had no other outlet.

Over the last few years, disputes over the non-payment of wages, low wages, forced overtime for little or no additional pay, unsafe working conditions and the lack of benefits, have all developed into mass protests. As a result, what should have been a simple matter between labor and management became a complex and very costly public matter.

Had an effective collective bargaining system been in place, the dispute would most likely have been resolved within the enterprise and the local government could have avoided expending its time and resources on trying to bring about a peaceful end to a dispute that had already gotten out of hand.

In terms of developing a collective bargaining system, the new Labor Contract Law comes at a good time and occupies a favorable position in China's legislative landscape. It is a propitious time because both those in the central government in Beijing and ordinary workers across China now agree that - after three decades of accumulated tension between labor and management - something has to be done.

If the situation continues in which management routinely exploits labor and violates workers' rights with impunity, workers, as in the past, will increasingly resort to protest and even violence in order to seek redress, and this will benefit no one.

The law occupies a good position because it effectively builds on China's existing foundation of labor legislation and regulation. In particular, the Labor Contract Law stipulates that it is the employer's responsibility to sign a collective labor contract with the employees' representative. If the ACFTU and its branch unions can grasp the opportunity presented by the law, it is probable that after a couple of years of finding their way and gaining experience in negotiations with management, the creation of a genuine and effective collective bargaining system in China will no longer be a problem for the unions.

The big push for collective bargaining should come from grass-roots unions. Right now, the vast majority of the so-called "unions" at the enterprise level are controlled by management - they do not speak for the workers nor do they really listen to the higher-level unions that are supposed to supervise them. If the workers, however, can democratically elect their own union leaders, and those leaders can effectively represent the employees in negotiations with management, the union will not only gain credibility and the trust of the workers, it will be much more willing to listen to and benefit from the expertise and skills offered by the higher-level unions in terms of organizing and negotiating with management.

Thus, by developing collective bargaining at the grassroots level, the enterprise-level unions will both be transformed into a representative labor organization and once again become a functioning part of the ACFTU. In short, therefore, a collective bargaining system can, at the fundamental level, both protect workers' rights and provide the ACFTU with an excellent opportunity to rebuild itself as a genuinely representative trade union.

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

China began its current economic journey back in 1979 with a very low base but it has managed no less than an economic miracle in the equivalent of only two generations.

The country has attracted among the highest rates of Foreign Direct Investment (FDI) in the world. This year’s figure is up 14% in the first 11 months alone, and is due to top US$65 billion for the whole of 2007. Although foreign-funded companies account for only 3% of China’s industrial base, they account for over 50% of the exports, and the vast majority of the high-tech exports. They also have a disproportionate influence on the overall economy in that they contribute about 20% of the total tax revenue.

Any shift in FDI can have serious repercussions for staff hiring, retention and motivation in China as FDI is somewhat of a predictor of hiring demand in the short to mid-term. In addition, constantly achieving peaks of investment and growth creates an expectation in the market of more of the same. China’s FDI peak may have been reached so we should look to what is happening in the general economy and consider the possibility that the economic growth might slow down a little next year. This would only be normal prudent behaviour.

FDI Peak - The reasons for any possible decline in FDI are many and varied, but they basically stem from an increase in costs that accrue to manufacturers in China.

It’s not just salaries. Prices have gone up in China for land as the government has regained control over the allocation of land for industrial purposes. Local officials had been asking for land prices below the actual market value of that land as they competed with each other for FDI, any FDI. Prices have doubled in the last few years as the government’s effort yield fruit.

Inflation - The ugly inflation monster has finally reared its head in China, and it has teeth. Base prices for foodstuffs and other contributors to the CPI have gone up to the extent that November’s inflation touched down at a shade under 7%, the highest figure in 11 years.

The causes are many and varied but they reflect the downside of a fast growing economy, one that not really slowed down since around 1993. Look to an increased focus on this issue by internal staff because this hits where it hurts, in their pocket. It’s not actually your company’s problem but you will be seen as the solution. The new labor law won’t hurt their efforts here.

Government Policy - The Chinese government is currently trying everything in its power to slow down the Chinese economy. Most Prime Ministers or Presidents would cut off their right arm to be in this position but it’s not inherently stable.

Actions taken include taxes on stocks and housing purchases, restrictions on land availability and prices, reductions in the VAT rebates for exports, an increased focus on the environment with mine and power plants closures, and tightening of overall economic policy. These measures have not had the desired result but with the global economy expected to slow they might all kick in at the same time.

If you are looking at hundreds of job requisitions right now you might get what you wish for next year ie. a softening job market that is biased more in your employer’s favor. Don’t hold your breath though.

Shift to Services - In mid-2006 the Chinese government announced that the FDI figures for 2005 were to be revised because US$11.8 billion of investment in the banking, insurance and securities sectors had not been included in the figures. Previous investment in this area had been so low that it had not been on MofCom’s radar, and the sudden increase had taken them by surprise.

This comes off a base of investments that are lower in value than previous years, and this is evidence that China is moving away from high-value capital investments as it moves towards a more service oriented economy. If you are in the service sector you already know about the war for talent among service firms, but you should know that this war is extending out to non-service firms. Watch out for banks that want your operations staff, never mind your finance and HR people.

Shift to Inner Provinces - I don’t have specific figures for the investment in China’s Inner Provinces but the fact of that increase is undeniable. From a low base of about 2% of the total FDI, the Inner provinces get a guesstimated figure of somewhere in the region of 4% now. The overall goals of the shift are writ large and include efforts to promote the development of the Western and Central regions, eliminate regional disparities, consolidate the unity of ethnic groups, ensure border security and social stability, and promote overall social progress

Before opening up in 1979 China had roughly balanced the income per capita in all of the provinces in the country. Admittedly, it was an equally low income per capita figure but it was roughly the same all around the country. Since then there has emerged a huge split in income figures between the prosperous East Coast, the Gold Coast, and the impoverished Inner Provinces. In response to this the government has invested heavily in infrastructure and urban development in these Inner Provinces over the last few years, and the results have been forthcoming.

If you currently manage HR for a factory on the East Coast you should be looking forward to the time when you will have to move the plant to the West. Especially if the plant is low tech.

Even if you are in the high-tech area you might still have to move.

Operations - The coastal provinces in China offer excellent logistics and access to a good base of technical and managerial skills.

But more and more companies are finding the East Coast crowded and over invested. Competition for staff and resources is intense but the option of moving West is not always on the table because the professionals that you need to run a modern plant are not necessarily there. Neither is the logistics or the market for the final products.

This increases the churn in factories and offices in the East Coast, and is likely to get worse because the West is still not proving that attractive. The FDI keeps coming into China and the bulk of it is invested in the East. Don’t look to any likelihood of an ease in hiring and retention soon.

India - Yes, the country is an infrastructural nightmare, and yes, China is very much easier to work in. But India is coming up and there is no denying the preference in MNC headquarters for a balanced approach to their FDI. Putting all their eggs in one basket called China is not the way they would choose to invest.

Up until recently there hasn’t been much choice in where to locate a stamping plant or a EMS plant but India is looking more and more attractive. It’s not likely to affect industrial FDI in a big way soon but the country is slowly developing a strong internal market that will draw in plants just to be inside the Indian tax zone. Many companies have set up in China for exactly this reason.

For HR staff you can look to opportunities to cover a broader base of countries within your portfolio. In all likelihood companies will still locate their Asia Pacific HQ in Shanghai, so this could offer you chances to travel to exotic India. This is not a problem, it’s an opportunity.

Next Steps - One of the big fears that I hear expressed in China is the possibility that China will not get to the next level. What this means in the real world is that costs rise but the new jobs don’t arrive to replace the lost ones in production.

If you look at what India is good at you might have cause for concern. They don’t do production as well as China but they are very strong in software, technical consulting and design. The worst case scenario for China is that it gets left with the production of basic products like car parts and packaging, while India gets all the high value work in product and systems design. Consider this issue if you are currently charged with hiring people for a design centre in China. Ask yourself if the failure to hire the people you need is a fatal flaw in your company’s strategy, and whether you will be able to find the people you need some time soon?.

The answer will tell you a lot about the career you can expect to have in that company.

By Isabelle Chan, ZDNet Asia

commentary Market reports show that employers are using financial incentives to retain their staff. That's almost welcome news.
Who doesn't want their salary to increase? But I hope employers are not offering better pay only as a counter-offer when an employee resigns.

Understandably, businesses have salary bands, and they need to keep their hiring costs in check. But there are companies which avoid paying salaries that commensurate with a candidate's experience and the job responsibilities, and for these employers, they should know that it works in their favor to pay a fair and competitive salary at the onset. Why wait until an employee announces his or her intent to leave to offer a raise?

But it often isn't about the money, as one ZDNet Asia reader pointed out in response to last week's commentary. It is the total package that counts, by that I mean salary, plus challenging work, a competent and understanding supervisor, great coworkers, and opportunities to keep learning and to move up the ranks.

Recruiters say finding good talent and keeping them is a challenge. I will not argue with that, but I believe more can always be done, and earlier rather than later. In fact, I believe employers can take proactive steps to preempt resignations and to give their staff a reason to stay, way before their staff even start to entertain thoughts and offers of employment elsewhere.

In most cases, bosses should generally have an idea--even if it is vague--of what his or her employee is seeking. And they don't need to wait until the annual year-end appraisal to find out. Supervisors can conduct midyear or quarterly reviews, or simply chat with their staff over coffee. It doesn't have to be a formal setting. Supervisors can find out a lot more about a particular staff, and if he or she has personal or work issues, if he or she didn't see it as a formal review session.

Of course, there are other factors like work culture and environment that come into play, too. Hell, even how good the restroom smells could help sway some people into staying or leaving. A friend once told me how quickly she made up her mind about a potential job, even before stepping into the interview. She decided, almost immediately, that she couldn't possibly work in a place that had filthy restrooms.

Okay, not everyone will give up a perfectly good job opportunity just because the toilet smells of pee, but that's a non-financially motivated reason for employers to think about.

With younger and more tech-savvy men and women joining the workforce, one area that HR departments might want to start thinking about is their policy on Internet use, if there is one.

According to a recent survey conducted by Sophos, one in seven respondents "bring their Facebook addiction to work". Slightly over 37 percent of the respondents only visited the site once or twice a day, 8 percent admitted using it up to 10 times a day, and 14.8 percent, or one in seven, confessed to being logged onto Facebook almost permanently during their work day.

The Sophos report goes on to warn businesses of the potential productivity implications for businesses that allow their employees to access Facebook during office hours.

Graham Cluley, senior technology consultant at Sophos, said: "The results show that more than one-fifth of these Facebook users are actually Facebook abuses. They're seriously struggling to tear themselves away from the Web site when they should be concentrating on their job--disturbing news for all organizations that are still allowing employees uncontrolled access."

With such statistics suggesting that more employees are loafing at the workplace, what should employers do? On the one hand, businesses are told to build a tech-savvy workplace and look toward new media for ideas, as that's where new market opportunities lie. On the other hand, there is now this potential issue of employee loafing.

I believe it goes back to the issue of placing trust in employees to do their job. Focus on the key performance indicators, and if they meet their deadlines, exceed their targets, and continuously offer new ideas, it's a win-win for both employee and employer. Reward those who exceed expectations, show a can-do, will-do attitude, and are willing to learn.

According to Hudson's fourth-quarter report of employment trends in Asia, low employee tenure is a problem for employers in China, Hong Kong and Singapore, with one-third of employees leaving within two years.

Google was voted No. 1 on Fortune magazine's "100 Best Companies to Work For" list, and it is its unique culture that catapulted the Internet giant into this top position, not so much the perks and benefits alone. Google achieved another milestone this week. Its shares crossed the US$700 mark for the first time, ahead of analyst expectations.

So, tell me, is money the answer to Asia's recruitment and business challenge?

Many companies are still getting their heads around Web 2.0 and how they can use the real interaction it brings, to engage more effectively with job seekers and potential employees. There are some great sites, notably the new Microsoft site but in reality the vast majority of companies have struggled to grasp the Web 2.0 concept. Well all the geeks in geek land have come up with the next level if interaction - Web 3.0 aka The Semantic Web. In simple terms it means information that is understandable by computers without human intervention - enabling computers to perform more of the boring work involved in finding and sharing information on the Web.

So what will that mean to anyone who uses the web to recruit (nearly everyone!!)?

The search engine spiders that find web pages based on certain keywords will gain an understanding of natural language. They will be able to read the pages rather than simply respond to given words and so will be able to deliver more targeted contextual jobs. There will also be software applications that we will all have called Intelligent Agents that will make decisions online for you without the need to ask you first. As an example; a job board wants to send you the jobs that it thinks fits your criteria, but first it has to 'communicate' with your intelligent agent. Think of the intelligent agent as your personal PA - if it doesn't think the job is for you it simply won't tell you about it!

So, this creates an interesting future problem for companies, as they have to 'sell' their jobs on two levels - firstly to get past your non-human intelligent agent, and secondly to appeal to the emotional real human, namely you!! So for recruitment advertisers of the future, just simply writing adds 'appealing to your emotions' will not get past your new PA! This will get all you SEO specialists thinking hard now, won't it!!

Obviously, Web 3.0 is a little way off, but companies can start to think about some of the forthcoming challenges of the SEO, by looking at your current way your company brand is perceived by job seekers and future employees. Balance the rational and emotional messages you are giving out to them, and realise that to be a recruitment success in the future, these new PA's will make more decisions than the candidates will!!

In the fast paced hiring environment that we have in China right now, just having a career website will not make you a winner.

Not even close.

Research around the world shows that the United States has moved towards a near-complete adoption of online hiring among mid to large size firms. That¡¯s almost 100% of all serious competitors. In other countries the figures are lower but not significantly so. China also lags but again not seriously.

So at the same time as we are experiencing rising salaries and skills shortages in many industries in China, your competitors are beginning to adopt technologies and systems that improve their ability to source and evaluate good people. That makes it even more critical that companies in China use the web to compete for candidates attention.

Using some form of online hiring system can deliver a strong employment brand that attracts people, with an integrated approach that keeps them in inside your process. Your new Careers@ website is only the first part of this process and it no longer gives the advantage that it used to. ¡®First mover¡¯ advantage in this area was lost at least 4-5 years ago. But if you have not built one already you would need to start now.

First Steps

Your starting point could be to just list current vacancies in China but it would not be so complicated to include other countries.

An easy second step would be to provide pages on your company, its mission, its values, the culture, or some profiles of existing employees. You could also take this a little further and videotape existing staff. This is normally done in the form of a ¡®Day in the Life¡¯ series but you can do it any way you want.

The third, and hardest step, is to map out the hiring process that you want, and build an automated system to run it. This application is generally called an Applicant Tracking System(ATS) or a Talent Management System(TMS). Most of the Fortune 500 companies already have such a system but there is still time to gain advantage.

The opportunity to regain the advantage comes from the fact that a majority of companies are still using onlline hiring systems to just automate the existing, and bureacratic, hiring processes in their company. In China this is still very much the case because many of the international systems are adapted to the US and cannot support the unique environment in China.

But the real advantage of these online hiring systems is to redefine your hiring process so that you can maintain confidential relationships with excellent people in your industry or market. Over a long period of time. This would enable you to work toward just-in-time hiring and to focus on candidate quality, not quantity.

Many, many companies in China have not done this yet so it is still possible to take the lead, and get ¡®First Mover¡¯ advantage.

Based on information gathered from several sources, it appears that clinical trial subjects in China are recruited in a limited number of ways, starting with heavy reliance on the investigator to tell appropriate patients about the study, followed by the use of posters and fliers in waiting rooms at accredited clinical trial sites.

Hospitals in the major cities, such as Beijing, Shanghai, Ghangzhou, Chongqing, and Nanjing, tend to be very large by Western standards, many with more than 1,000 beds, reflecting the centralized nature of healthcare delivery in China. As a result, doctors in those institutions are extremely busy, seeing as many as 50 patients most mornings.

Yet, while working at that harried pace, some doctors, especially those seeking to increase their clinical trial workload, remember to discuss clinical trials with patients. Yue Wei, vice president and medical director of Beijing MedSept Consulting Co., a CRO, says, “Doctors generally discuss the opportunity to participate with patients. That is the common way.”

Stefan Astrom, Ph.D., CEO of Astrom Research International, adds, “[Doctors] recruit patients from their regular patient pool. There is an abundance of patients and it's very attractive for them to participate in trials as they may receive new treatment, extra patient care and free medication.” In addition, patients generally do not see the same physician each time they visit a clinic, so the promise of seeing the same physician over the course of a clinical trial may spur interest...

Posters in the waiting rooms may make patients aware of ongoing trials but, according to Shanghai Pharma Engine, a Chinese CRO, patients rarely initiate discussions about them and generally look to the doctor to start this type of conversation.

Notification by physicians and posters may be the key modalities used to recruit subjects, but evidence suggests that other tools are used, as well, but to a lesser degree. A recent article referred to the use of newspapers to advertise about clinical trials.

Representatives of Union Clinical Research Services, Ltd., a Beijing-based company handling clinical trial management at Peking Union Medical College Hospital, explained to a 2005 U.S. delegation (see next section) that various types of electronic media, namely television and radio, are used. The general sense, however, is that electronic media is rarely used.

Sandy Matzek-Cole, one of the delegates, explains, “It’s not clear how frequently these modalities are used, and their use seems to be random rather than as part of an organized recruitment campaign.” Dr. Wei of Beijing MedSept adds, “A few use websites, but ads hardly ever appeared in the media. It’s mostly print-style posters.”

The limited advertising in China seems to be done in accordance with GCP Guidelines, whereby written approval for subject recruitment material is required by an independent ethics committee (IEC). Lisa Sun, clinical process manager for AstraZeneca Pharmaceutical Co. in Shanghai, says IEC approval for patient recruitment advertisements is routine in China. Furthermore, she explains that the names of the sponsor and the product cannot appear in the ads, “only the indication and/or target group as well as the contact name of the hospital or institute.”

Is compensation to study volunteers allowed in China?

GCP Guidelines allow for compensation of study volunteers, provided this information appears in the informed consent document, which has the written approval of the appropriate institutional review board (IRB) or ethics committee (ICH-GCP Sec. 4.8 and Guideline 7 of CIOMS). So, technically speaking, compensation is permitted in China.

In practice, however, there appears to be conflicting opinion on whether compensation is permitted. Some believe that compensation is provided to subjects participating in Phase I studies, but not in subsequent phases. Dr. Astrom says, “Healthy volunteers in Phase I studies are compensated according to international practices. Patients in Phase II, III and IV studies are never compensated, except occasionally for travel costs.”

Similarly, representatives of the Peking Union Medical College mentioned to the People-to-People delegation that generally, patients are not compensated for participation.

By contrast, James Fan, M.D., of Protech Pharmaservices Corp., a CRO, says, “According to No. 43 items of GCP issued by SFDA on 2003-09-01, the sponsor must pay compensation and insurance to patients or volunteers.”

In addition, guidance for medical device studies found in “Provisions for Clinical Trials of Medical Devices,” Chapter 2, specifically states that compensation for study volunteers is permitted, encouraged even, and that information about compensation is to be presented during the informed consent process.

Excerpted from Anderson's book International Patient Recruitment Regulatory Guidelines, Customs and Practices.

There is a severe shortage of senior managers in China.

By Jorge Perez Izquierdo

China is characterized by rapid change and economic growth. Yet, this massive country with a population of 1.3 billion has a perplexing shortage of talented people that threatens the future growth of foreign and domestic companies.

According to the latest Manpower Employment Outlook Survey released in September 2007, hiring intentions in China fell to the lowest level in more than a year. Shortages are the most severe among senior managers. The 2006 Manpower Talent Shortage Survey indicates a greater need for managers and executives in China than in other countries.

Multinational corporations have a distinct advantage in competing for talent in China, as nearly 75% of Chinese employees would prefer to work for wholly owned foreign companies rather than joint venture companies or wholly owned Chinese companies, according to Manpower research.

Successfully working in China requires using special human resources techniques and practices, which stem from understanding the unique Chinese culture and values as well as the country's working practices.

Based on our experience in China, Manpower has developed a Workforce Optimization Model, which consists of five practical strategies for successful employee attraction and retention.

Create a learning organization. Quite simply, teach employees something new every day. This may include giving employees projects that go beyond their current job responsibilities. Learning is a priority for Chinese employees because they are acutely aware of the limitations of their educational system and anxious to acquire marketable skills.

Appoint competent leaders. Key skills for managers are coaching and communication. This is because managers in China are highly respected authority figures that must be able to clearly explain company strategies while linking employees' personal goals to business objectives. Chinese employees also respond best to hands-on leadership and appreciate having a role model to demonstrate what is expected of them.

Build an appropriate organization and culture. It is critical for companies to appreciate and respect cultural norms and practices. These include encouraging a simple management structure and articulating the company's values. To provide credibility, managers must live and breathe the company's values.

Provide competitive compensation and benefits packages. The tight supply of managers in China means frequent salary reviews may be needed to keep up with the market rate. But while salary is important, it's not the only factor. Companies may want to consider offering other benefits such as tuition reimbursement, housing allowances, insurance and long-term incentive plans.

Select the right people. Employers need to anticipate what they'll require of employees in the future to ensure that job descriptions are realistic. Employers that are open, honest and patient with candidates during interviews are more likely to find employees that share their values. Given the rapid change in China, skills such as adaptability are just as important as experience for most roles.

The potential rewards are tremendous for foreign-owned companies that develop an employment strategy that fits the culture and values. This is because the preference of Chinese workers to join a foreign company may also spill over into preferences for products and services made by those companies. Companies that can turn cultural differences into a help rather than a hindrance have the potential to enjoy boundless growth.

HONG KONG: Hiring by multinationals in major Asian markets is likely to accelerate in the fourth quarter, notably in Japan, a survey by executive recruitment firm Hudson shows.

Sixty-five per cent of managers at multinationals in Japan said they expected to increase recruitment in the fourth quarter, according to the survey released on Thursday, up from 60 per cent in a survey taken three months earlier.

In China, 64 per cent of respondents plan to increase headcount this quarter, up from 60 per cent in the previous quarter; in Hong Kong 54 per cent of managers expect to add staff, compared with 49 per cent in the last survey.

The survey by Chicago-based Hudson Highland Group Inc covered responses from 2,500 managers at multinational companies across industry sectors in China, Hong Kong, Japan and Singapore.

Expectations in Singapore remained unchanged from the previous survey, with 54 percent of managers seeing a need to hire more staff.

Fast economic growth has led to a shortage of executive talent in Asia. More than a third of employees in Hong Kong and Singapore leave a company within two years, according to the Hudson report.

In China, 52 per cent of staff leaves within two years, and 30 per cent of job candidates there are demanding salaries of more than 20 per cent above what employers are willing to pay, the survey shows.

Duncan Mavin, Financial Post
Published: Thursday, October 04, 2007

In China's red-hot recruitment market, business professionals are desperate to get ahead of the competition, with qualifications and overseas experience among the most sought after resume credentials.

'Returnees,' Chinese workers who have spent several years honing their business skills abroad, often have their pick of the best jobs, as does any Chinese executive with foreign training.

It's a trend that is leading to a wealth of opportunities for Canadian organizations able to provide the right kind of training.

At Toronto City Hall in August, for instance, twenty-eight Chinese executives became the latest graduates of the Canadian Securities Institute.

The business students from Guangfa Securities, a full-service securities firm based in Gaungzhou, China, graduated from a two-month course organized by CSI in conjunction with the Securities Association of China.

Hundreds of financial professionals from China have participated in CSI's executive style training programs in the past couple of years.

But it isn't the only organization to spot the opportunity.

Ads for the University of Western Ontario's Richard Ivey School of Business are impossible to miss in Hong Kong, where they are plastered all over subways and other prominent places.

The Ivey school has a modern campus in Hong Kong -- with a high-profile location in the heart of the Hong Kong Convention and Exhibition Centre -- and another office in Beijing, as well as alumni associations in Shanghai and Hong Kong.

Schools from all over the world are catching on fast, says Pete Fiaschi, the head of international marketing at Newcastle College, a vocational school in the northeast of England that focuses on the business of arts, tourism and sports.

Toronto-born Mr. Fiaschi spends most of the summer months travelling through China, including to relatively unknown cities such as Fuzhou or Qingdao, recruiting 200 or so Chinese students whose fees are a significant source of income for the school. In July, he set up permanent regional offices in Beijing and in Dalian, in northern China, to deal with the growing competition for Chinese students.

CSI, too, has a permanent office in Beijing and is about to open a Shanghai office. It also has partnerships with Chinese universities, including the Central University of Finance and Economics in Beijing, and the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics.

There is competition among foreign training providers, says Ms. Wilton. In particular, many of the big foreign banks and securities firms offer training courses, as do the international consulting and accounting firms.

CSI is betting its North American perspective plus its access to trainers from a variety of real live businesses gives it an edge over some more academic institutions as well as companies that can only provide insight from one industry.

Offering courses jointly with the Chinese regulator also helps build credibility, which will lead to deeper inroads in China, says Ms. Wilton.

MONTREAL -- Companies are increasingly hiring through social networks such as Facebook, turning websites meant for friendly banter into effective recruiting tools.

Talent seekers are finding that these online services, where members mostly share vacation photos and discuss weekend plans, have a terrific asset - it's full of people and they talk a lot.

Look at consultant giant Ernst & Young, which created a Facebook community showcasing the company with flashy videos and a Q&A section. More than 9,500 people are part of this group.

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Font:****The group for Southwest Airlines, where one will find an ad for software engineers, boasts more than 50,000 members.

Even the CIA is luring aspiring spies on Facebook.

It gets people talking.

Robert Neel, a recruiter in Washington D.C. and blogger for Jobmatchbox.com, puts the Facebook allure in terms of numbers: "If you follow where people are online, the vast majority are on MySpace and Facebook, and it's increasing."

At last count, MySpace had more than 115 million users. Facebook clocks in much lower at 31 million. But recruiters are preferring the latter since it's a little cleaner, more organized, and the members more mature than MySpace, which found favour with bands and teens.

And since Facebook members volunteer tons of personal information, its search function can be a virtual gold mine for recruiters, Neel said.

"You can search for people by skills or by company or by job title," he said. "It takes you straight to the candidate."

As the ease and low cost of social networks becomes more apparent, innovative companies are finding creative ways to promote their brands. It costs nothing to create a Facebook group or to have employees who are members spread job openings among their contacts.

One of the more promising uses of Facebook is through applications. These are mini programs, made by anyone, that users can add to their profiles for free, expanding the functions to their once-static profile pages.

Popular applications involve movies and sharing music, but job-related ones are picking up. One application from website Jobster sends users alerts whenever a new position opens in the company and area of their choice. Big names like Nike, KPMG, GE, Merrill Lynch and Boeing have signed up.

Taleo Corp., a talent-management software maker in Dublin, Calif., is about to release its own application for recruiters. The application will make it so when a headhunter advertises a job, the post appears on the Facebook news feed of all their friends. But to use this application, a company must be a Taleo client.

"For smaller companies who don't have big brand, sourcing candidates is their No. 1 pain," said Jason Blessing, general manager of Taleo's small-business division. "And there are a lot of college students in Facebook. It's rich in talent. It's a good place to give customers a presence."

By Ames Gross and Andrew Connor, Pacific Bridge, Inc.
April 2007
Published on the SHRM Global Forum

Introduction

In 2007, Chinese universities will produce nearly 5 million new graduates. It is estimated that 30% of these will not find jobs appropriate for their educational background. It was no surprise that a December 2006 job fair in Beijing attracted close to 30,000 candidates. Students stood in line from the early morning hours and swarmed into the Beijing Convention Center when the doors opened at 8 AM.

Companies attending job fairs in China often end the day with literally thousands of resumes. The challenge for HR Managers is to find excellent, qualified candidates among the masses and retain them. While new graduates are plentiful and eager to work, skilled middle-managers are harder to find. In a country where many middle managers’ résumés proudly list the English language as a skill, there are very few individuals with a true understanding of Western business practices.

With a 2006 GDP growth rate of around 10%, foreign direct investment of $72 billion last year (more than 12 times that in India), and the fourth largest economy in the world, China is here to stay. In order to compete, it is crucial for Western HR teams to be familiar with recruiting and retention in the Chinese context.

Recruiting in China

Charles Browne, CEO of DuPont China says, “There is really high-quality talent in the market. The difficulty is that all businesses – including top Chinese companies – are recruiting from the same pool.” Indeed, the central theme of recruiting in China in recent years has been the development of strategies to deal with the talent shortage. Talented managers and executives who are in high demand are generally already happily employed by their companies. Talented managers who have already been headhunted and switched jobs multiple times have a good sense of their own value and can demand inflated wages.

Sourcing Options and Recent Trends

There are three main types of candidates available for recruiting in China: expatriates, returnees, and locals. Each group has its own advantages and disadvantages. Companies should consider the way in which each type of candidate fits in with the company’s specific needs and the overall dynamics of the organization.

There are currently more than 150,000 expatriates working in China, not including students and diplomats. Exapts with key technological knowledge or who know the country’s corporate culture are often appropriate choices for foreign-invested enterprises (FIEs) in China.

There are also significant drawbacks to hiring expatriates in China. First, expats are very expensive and they generally expect compensation packages exceeding those they would receive in their home country. Expats in China are generally paid two to three times as much as their local counterparts in similar positions. Second, expats may have difficulty relating to the Chinese workforce and may have difficulties with the language barrier. For these reasons, many FiEs in China have been reducing the number of American or European expats working for their companies.

A desirable alternative to Western expats is Asian expats. These are generally ethnic Chinese from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Singapore or other parts of Southeast Asia. These expats may be less expensive (than a Western expat) and have a better understanding of the Chinese language and Asian business practices.

Returnees are another popular option for foreign firms. Chinese returnees are bilingual, bicultural Chinese individuals who have lived, studied and worked in the US or other Western countries and wish to return to their home countries for good job opportunities. These individuals are generally more familiar with the West and generally speak fairly fluent English. They may also have family or friends still living in China, whose connections are valuable for doing business in China.

Returnees, however, may have difficulty relating to the mainland China work environment. Having become accustomed to a Western lifestyle, coming back to China to work may seem like a hardship to some. HR managers should also be wary of those returnees who are not willing to make long-term commitments or have trouble assimilating with their local colleagues. Many overseas Chinese are interested in working in China for a few years, but not for a career.

An alternative to returnees is locals. The supply of young, local candidates with college degrees in China is massive. Local Chinese bring with them ambition, knowledge of local customs, and often connections to local organizations and government bodies. Locals also have lower salary requirements. An excellent salary by local standards will be significantly lower than that expected by an expat or returnee. However, local pay is on the rise quickly.

While many Chinese go jobless after graduation, graduates from China’s top schools often have four or five job offers even before finishing school. Competition for these candidates between both local Chinese companies and FIEs is fierce. Similarly, skilled middle managers are extremely sought after. The so-called “Cultural Revolution Generation,” which was of college age in the 1960s and 1970s, is severely lacking in skills. Most institutions of higher learning in China were closed during this time and people of this generation were sent to the countryside to work in agriculture. When economic reforms were introduced in the 1980s, this generation had a lot of catching up to do.

Recruiting Strategies

In the past two years, internet recruiting has become increasingly popular in China. At the end of 2006, there were an estimated 137 million internet users in China. This was an increase of around 23% from 2005, and the number is expected to continue growing. Job boards such as 51job.com, chinahr.com and zhaopin.com receive thousands of visits daily. 51job also publishes an extremely popular print edition that is dedicated to job classifieds. Local versions are available in many Chinese cities.

Multinational companies in China often find it most successful to post jobs in Chinese rather than English, even when seeking a candidate with English language skills. Job postings should include information on language requirements (supplying a minimum TOEFL score for English is helpful), education requirements, and job location.

Campus recruiting is also very popular in China. For undergraduate studies, Peking University (Beijing), Fudan University (Shanghai), and Tsinghua University (Beijing) are considered the top three schools in the country. Peking University is best known for its applied sciences and law courses, and was ranked the best university in Asia by The Times (UK) in 2006. Fudan University is strongest in the social and physical sciences, while Tsinghua University is often referred to as the “MIT of China.”

Recruitment at these and other top tier universities in China is extremely competitive. In fact, many FIEs in China send their top executives regularly to speak at university campuses and network with students. GE China’s CEO, for example, is known to have personally visited Fudan University six to eight times annually to bring the GE name to the attention of top students there and inform them of GE’s benefits and training programs.

According to the Financial Times, the world’s 11th best MBA program is also now located in China. The prestigious China Europe International Business School (CEIBS) was founded in Shanghai in 1994 as a joint venture between the Chinese government and the European Commission. The school’s classes are taught by both Chinese and foreign professors. Classes are taught in English only. CEIBS is not alone in China. Many top American business schools, including MIT Sloan, Wharton, and Kellogg also have collaborative programs with business schools in China.

Job fairs are also taking China by storm. Annual job fairs in China’s major cities draw the largest crowds, as described in the introduction to this article. Many cities also host “fixed” job fairs. These are regular events that occur on a fixed schedule, often on a daily or weekly basis. The Guangzhou Recruitment Fair, for example, hosts at least two job fairs per week. Fixed job fairs are sometimes comprehensive, but often focus on a specific industry or specialty each week. In Beijing and Shanghai, there are some job fairs designed specifically for foreign companies.

Retention in China

For HR managers in China, recruiting is only half the game. With the hot job market in China in recent years, it has proven as difficult to keep talent as to attract it, even for large FIEs. Successful HR strategies go well beyond simple benchmarking of compensation and benefits. They also work to integrate international HR practice with the Chinese culture and mentality.

Compensation Standards

HR Managers worldwide know that in order to keep talent, they need to pay the going wage or higher. In China, determining the going wage can be difficult. Blue collar workers in Beijing, Shanghai, and Guangzhou generally earn salaries well above the national average. Comparable jobs in second tier cities such as Tianjin or Dalian may pay 50% less. Professional and management salaries are also significantly higher than the national average wage. Professionals in accounting, finance, and management can earn anywhere from $20,000 to $100,000.

For a clearer understanding of the variance in white collar wages, even within a single city, we will examine current trends in Shanghai for accounting executives. Here, a local Chinese who has graduated from a good Chinese university and has five years of accounting experience at a state-owned enterprise (SOE) would likely receive an annual salary of only around $6,000. Someone with the same qualifications, but with experience at an FIE instead of an SOE might earn two to three times as much. Headhunting and poaching of top mid-level executives with five years of accounting experience at foreign ventures in China may drive salaries to $20,000 or $25,000. Ten years of experience (instead of five) is likely to bring this individual’s salary up to $40,000. Fluent English would likely further increase this individual’s salary to $50,000 or $60,000. Finally, a returnee with five years of experience working in the West in addition to five years of experience at an FIE in China may command a salary of $90,000 or more in China today.

Two types of bonuses are common among FIEs in China. Performance-based bonuses are a relatively new concept in China, but have been welcomed with enthusiasm by the younger generation of workers. Annual bonuses are traditionally paid by SOEs around the time of the Chinese Lunar New Year (usually in late January or early February). This trend is also often followed by FIEs. Annual bonuses, however, do not typically exceed one month’s salary.

Housing Benefits

To the new generation of Chinese professionals, housing is of primary concern. Under China’s Communist “Iron Rice Bowl” system, basic housing was automatically provided to employees. Today, a wide variety of housing options are available for rent and purchase in Chinese cities. Young Chinese professionals are eager to live in modern, convenient accommodations. Good housing benefits increase retention.

Many cities in China have mandatory housing contribution funds, to which firms must contribute at least 5% of employees’ salaries. As is often the case in China, however, general practice varies significantly from official regulations. Many FIEs issue housing allowances directly to employees rather than contributing to the government fund. In 2005, although most FIEs had some kind of housing scheme, less than 40% reported participation in the government schemes in Beijing and Shanghai.

Rent reimbursement and help with home loans are both common forms of housing assistance in China. Large FIEs are also building their own state-of-the-art condominiums, which they sell to their employees. For example, Motorola China has built hundreds of condominium units since 1998. Motorola sells these to its employees with relatively small down payments and affordable monthly mortgages. The company requires employees to withhold money from their base pay for housing expenses; it then matches this amount.

Housing prices in China vary widely, with housing in large cities being exponentially more expensive than in smaller cities. Housing suitable for most expats can be more expensive in Beijing or Shanghai than in many American cities. The housing market in some large Chinese cities has increased by 30% per year. In 2007, a modern 2 bedroom apartment convenient for expats or Chinese professionals in Beijing would likely rent for 3,900 to 9,600 RMB per month (about $503-$1,238). In Shanghai, prices for the same unit range from 6,700 to 12,000 RMB (about $864-$1547).

Training Programs

Training programs can help FIEs in China reduce turnover. Young Chinese professionals are attracted to the training opportunities that foreign companies can offer. Popular types of training include foreign language, business writing (both English and Chinese), public speaking and presentation skills, and job specific training (IT, management, sales, etc.). Many FIEs in China are realizing the advantages of hiring young, motivated staff and training them to be professionals.

Many large FIEs in China have established their own training facilities. These programs have proven effective in building company loyalty and increasing retention. GE China, for example, maintains a 42,000 square foot training facility in Shanghai, its second largest in the world. The facility is located at GE China’s Research and Development Center, allowing participants in the training program to also have first-hand access to the company’s R&D initiatives. The Carrefour Chinese Institute, also located in Shanghai, and Wal-Mart China’s regional training centers are other examples of successful internal training programs.

Smaller FIEs generally cannot afford their own training facilities, but training should remain a key element of retention strategy. Many of the MBA programs listed in this article offer executive MBA classes. Many foreign companies in China find that sending their executives to these programs enhances job performance and increases retention rates. Dale Carnegie Training and other similar programs focusing on communication, leadership, and presentation skills are also available for multinational companies in China.

A major advantage for FIEs over SOEs in terms of retention is the ability to offer overseas training programs to employees. The prospect of overseas training can be an incentive for employees to stay at a company. Those who perform best may be given the opportunity to go abroad for training.

Career Advancement and Job Titles

Career advancement is crucial to retention in China. In the past, with guaranteed lifetime employment, job performance was not important for promotion. Today, the most talented individuals in China are very demanding in terms of career advancement. The younger generation in China’s private sector is not willing to wait for promotions based on years of experience. They expect to be rewarded immediately for their accomplishments.

One surprisingly simple, yet effective way to reward performance in China is through job titles. The Chinese are generally very sensitive to their titles. The title of “director,” for example, seems much more impressive than “manager.” Some FIEs have established the practice of assigning a standard title in English and a more important-sounding title in Chinese. This allows for adherence to the company’s global HR policy while allowing the employee to feel accomplished among his or her peers.

Performance Reviews in the Chinese Context

Performance reviews were not traditionally found in Chinese SOEs. FIEs have introduced this concept to China during the past two decades. Chinese employees generally like to have their work evaluated, and this has become a strong drawing point for foreign firms.

Reviews at FIEs in China are generally conducted in a similar style to those in the US, with a written review and meeting with a supervisor. In terms of content, however, Western-style reviews may not work well. Very capable and talented Chinese employees may score badly on a performance review with inappropriate criteria. Risk taking, for example, is often not an appropriate attribute on which to judge Chinese employees. Culturally, the Chinese are not natural risk-takers. Similarly, evaluating Chinese employees on their problem solving skills may be unwise. The Chinese method of problem solving can be quite different, though equally effective as a Western strategy. From a Western perspective, however, the method may seem non-intuitive.

Boss-Employee Relationsihips

Strong relationships between boss and employee are important in any corporate setting. In China, they can be one of the keys to retention. In general terms, boss-employee relationships in China are deeper and more complex than the same relationships in the US. The Chinese see their company as part of an extended family. There is a strong desire to fit in as part of the corporate culture and it is very important to make Chinese employees feel “liked.” Organizing social events such as parties or other types of celebrations helps Chinese employees bond with their employers and colleagues.

Because the manager is often seen almost as an older sibling figure in the Chinese context, he or she is also expected to be available to give advice on personal matters. In exchange for their hard work and loyalty, Chinese employees may expect personal favors from their managers. This should not be considered rude or unusual. It is simply a way for employees to show that they are part of the corporate family.

The Chinese term guanxi, or “connections,” is extremely important for HR Managers in China to understand. It is often used to refer to personal relationships between business people. To the Chinese, earning respect and trust is considered the first step to business interaction. In some circumstances, it makes sense to hire an individual who has been recommended by another employee. This type of inside connection strengthens the bond between the new employee and the company from the start. The new employee will also be less likely to leave the company so as not to hurt the reputation of the recommending friend.

An understanding of the concept of “face” in the Chinese context is also key to reducing turnover. The Chinese are particularly sensitive to preserving trust and authority. In business relationships, it is essential to do nothing to openly offend or unnecessarily criticize a Chinese business partner, especially in front of his or her colleagues. It is important in China, for example, not to pit employees against one another. Posting comparative sales figures publicly in the office could cause employees to lose face. Promoting one employee without somehow commending or promoting others in the group may also cause loss of face. This phenomenon is much more intense in China than in the West, and can lead to rapid staff turnover if not handled correctly.

Conclusion

While China has much to learn from the West in terms of transparency and standard business practices, the West also has much to learn about China. HR is the single biggest challenge for many foreign companies that want to be successful in this Asian economic powerhouse. HR managers must not only stay abreast of current regulations and standards, but must also be keenly aware of the driving force behind business – the motivations and mentality of the workforce.

By now, the perils of securing online data with little more than user names and passwords should be well known. Monster.com learned that lesson late and the hard way, prompting last week's disclosure that the Web jobs board will spend millions of dollars to improve its security.

Monster Worldwide Inc. recently discovered that con artists had grabbed contact information from resumes for 1.3 million people — and likely many more, since Monster now says this was not an isolated incident. Files were pilfered not only from Monster.com but from USAJobs.gov, the federal-government career-listing service operated by Monster.

The stolen information is not by itself ultra-sensitive, since resumes generally do not include Social Security numbers, financial data or account information.

But contact information can be lucrative for online criminals, who used what they got from Monster to craft "phishing" e-mails that go after such sensitive data.

The affair could serve as a warning to other businesses that operate online. But if the past is any guide, many will shrug off this episode.

"You're going to see this happen again and again and again," said security analyst Bruce Schneier, chief technologist for BT Counterpane. "I assure you, every other company didn't say, 'Wow, look what happened to Monster, we have to fix our problem.'"

Blame many factors. For one, upgrading security can be expensive, and many companies are reluctant to shell out for improvements until they've been viscerally reminded of the need for it.

"How do you justify a $10 million security budget when nothing happened last year?" said Mark Rasch, a former federal cybercrime investigator now with FTI Consulting Inc.

Another problem is that companies are hesitant to put up blockades that can annoy legitimate users.

"We're all accustomed to a straightforward and easy experience," said Dennis Maicon, executive vice president of Digital Resolve, a unit of Landmark Communications Inc. that sells automated fraud-detection systems. "We want to do things quick, we don't want to jump through all kinds of hoops to say, 'Hey, it's me,' because a good portion of the time, it is you. A company like Monster has to maintain the customer experience."

That balance can shift, of course, if regulations require more stringent security. Many financial institutions and insurance companies have adopted extra measures like Digital Resolve's authentication technology as a result. It lets customers sign on in a straightforward way but scans for anomalies (the user is signing on from, say, Ukraine all of a sudden) that might indicate an unauthorized person has stolen the password.

After the Monster breach was disclosed by researchers at Symantec Corp., Monster pointed out that its network security had not been broken. No one hacked in, after all. Rather, the criminals obtained legitimate keys to the system — most likely by phishing or guessing passwords belonging to recruiters with access to Monster's tens of millions of resumes.

Yet the chance that someone would co-opt legitimate access to a network should itself have been considered a security flaw.

In one of the most infamous incidents, data-gathering giant ChoicePoint Inc. found in 2004 that criminals had posed as honest-to-goodness customers and filched information on 163,000 people. ChoicePoint ended up spending about $30 million fixing the situation, including $15 million to settle charges from the Federal Trade Commission that its standards were weak.

It's unclear how much of a hit Monster's breach will cause the company, which already has been struggling. A month ago it announced layoffs of 15 percent of its work force. The stock is near 52-week lows and a key finance executive just departed.

To respond, Monster has said it would spend at least $80 million on upgrades to its site, which now include security changes. Among them: closer monitoring of the site and limits on the way its data can be accessed.

Patrick W. Manzo, Monster's vice president for compliance and fraud prevention, said the company had already been exploring several of the steps.

"What this incident has brought sharply into focus is that this is an issue that needs to be addressed immediately and not something that you can look at with a phased approach," Manzo said Friday.

Some of Monster's newer practices may already be in place at rival online job boards. For instance, both CareerBuilder.com, which is owned by newspaper companies and Microsoft Corp., and Yahoo Inc.'s HotJobs say they limit the number of resumes that one user account can access over a given period. (That is of limited effect, however, if fraudsters corrupt multiple accounts, a common pattern.)

CareerBuilder spokeswoman Jenny Sullivan added that her site has software that monitors for excessive or otherwise unusual usage patterns. Last week, CareerBuilder began "scrubbing" Social Security numbers and other sensitive information out of postings left by job seekers, though Sullivan said that step was in the works even before Monster's breach.

The unavoidable truth about computer security, though, is that such steps can slow but not stop online fraud. Gartner Inc. security analyst Avivah Litan advises job-seekers to use a separate e-mail account for career queries and publicly post only basic contact information, nothing more than what could be found in the phone book.

"Assume nothing's safe," she said.

On the Internet:

Monster.com's security page for users:

http://help.monster.com/besafe

China is a red hot market for Cisco, which saw its second-half sales in Hong Kong grow more than 35% from a year earlier, reports the South China Morning Post. But the country is suffering from a lack of experience managers to lead the hi-tech firms - including Cisco - that have set up facilities there.

Businessweek is reporting on Cisco's answer to the problem - grow managers from within by instituting "management kindergarten" programs. Businessweek cites Cisco's Shanghai research center, where the average age of workers is 27, as an example of a unit that is offering such a program.

Quoting Jan Gronski, managing director of the Shanghai facility, and her No. 2 Chris Dong, Businessweek writes:

Gronski and Dong have opened "Cisco Clubs" at three Chinese universities, giving students a chance to work with Cisco engineers. For those on staff, Gronski runs management seminars every Thursday. He schools young managers on everything from giving presentations and decision-making to speaking their minds.

Some readers of the article think that Cisco will still churn out inexperienced managers. But what's the difference between this program and other "management trainee" programs offered by companies in the west?

HES Global Hospitality Executive Search has opened an office in Beijing to service the hospitality sector in China's capital city.

The new office is located at the Wanda Plaza, in Chaoyang District, with view on some of the longest and most established hotels in Beijing, and currently at least four other five-star international hotels opening within a perimeter of 500 meters.

According to Rene J.M. Schillings, director for Greater China and Singapore of HES Global, this move is only the next logical step to further capture the market in China, which is needy for experienced Chinese hoteliers and China-experienced expatriates.

HES Global Greater China has an office in Hong Kong, from where it serves its clients outside of Greater China, and another outlet in Shenzhen.

Employers in China who are fretting about surging salaries on offer to talented staff may be encouraged by evidence that employees are looking for more than a fat pay packet.

While job-hopping is rampant amid a talent shortage, there are growing signs that many mainlanders would be happy to stay with an employer if staying meant career development and a good working environment.

“Clearly the China market is hot and people are changing jobs for better pay. But pay is not the be-all and end-all,” said Gary Burnison, chief executive of U.S.-based recruitment firm Korn/Ferry International.

“People want to feel they are treated well and that they belong.”

In China, people often leave a company because they cannot get on with their immediate boss or feel they have no role to play, Burnison said.

Now some companies are making employee relations a big priority.

Nanfang Lee Kum Kee, maker of sauces and health products in Guangdong province, has introduced a “happiness index.”

Any time a manager meets a member of staff he’ll ask how happy the employee feels on a scale of one to 10. “If the number drops the supervisor needs to find out why,” said Sammy Lee, managing director of Nanfang.

“We want to make sure everyone is happy.”

This approach may be unusual in China but Nanfang enjoys a staff turnover rate of less than 10 per cent — in manufacturing where turnover rates of 50 per cent are not unusual — and was voted among the 10 best employers in Asia this year by global human resource company Hewitt Associates.

“Pay is not the key issue,” said Lee. “You’ve got to pay the market rate if you want to be competitive, but you also have to encourage staff to engage in their work and be happy.”

In a Hewitt survey, conducted every two years, career prospects replaced pay this year as the top motivation for employee engagement at 154 foreign and local companies in China.

“Compensation is critical in attracting staff but in terms of retaining people in China other things such as working environment, training and career opportunities become more important,” said Heather Wang, head of human resources for General Electric in China.

As a global company, GE can offer long-term careers in a variety of industries and countries but says it faces a challenge in developing staff quickly to keep pace with business expansion in China.

“We want people in China to get to the next level a year earlier than we would in more mature markets,” Wang said.

Career development requires investment in personal skills because Chinese workers often are held back by a rote-learning-based education system that stifles creativity, employers say.

GE says its China leadership program puts more emphasis on training in negotiating skills and working on projects outside an employee’s normal sphere of business.

A survey of multinationals by Korn/ Ferry shows a lack of innovation and creativity as the biggest challenge to finding leadership talent in China, after lack of international experience and poor ability to adapt to Western corporate culture.

Lee at Nanfang advocates “invisible leadership” that forces staff to take initiative.

He says he probably spends more time on the golf course, where he can think about strategy, than at work; delegates staff to deal with his e-mails; and does not possess a Blackberry or a computer, even in the office.

If the company is entertaining clients or holding events, staff decide how it will be organized.

“In most companies managers make the decisions and employees follow. We try to turn that upside down,” Lee said.

NEW DELHI: Engineering and technology firms in the United Kingdom are turning to India, China and South Africa to fulfill their skills requirement, a latest survey has said.

In the UK, 48 per cent of the companies in the sector have recruited people from overseas in the last 12 months to cover specific skills shortages, a survey by Institution of Engineering and Technology said, indicating a major chunk of this was carried out in India, China and South Africa.

UK firms are turning to countries such as India, China and South Africa to plug the skills gap," it said.

The survey cautioned that the skill shortage is unlikely to improve in the short or medium term. This is likely to drive the companies to countries like India where cheap labour is available.

Proportion of companies that are expected to face difficulties in recruiting adequate qualified engineers, technicians or technologists over the next four years had risen to 51.8 per cent in 2007 from 40.2 per cent in 2006, said the survey, which took into account 500 respondents.

"The engineering and technology sector is vital to the future prosperity of the UK's economy and an increase in skill shortages puts the future growth, success and competitive advantage of many businesses into serious doubt.

"The UK desperately needs to increase the pool of engineers and technicians to meet the demand," IET Director of Professional Operations Paul Jackson said.

The IET survey builds on information from 2006 and shows that although sector is growing, only 56 per cent of respondents believed they would be able to recruit enough people into engineering and technical roles this year.

The survey also found more than 70 per cent of companies in the UK are struggling to recruit experienced or mid career level staff, which could threaten growth and competitiveness.

It revealed that recruitment of women in the UK has remained static with just seven per cent of the engineering and technology workforce represented by the fairer sex.

The proportion of women in the sector would remain the same for the coming next four years as well, IET projected.

IET provides a global knowledge network to facilitate the exchange of knowledge and ideas and promotes the positive role of science, engineering and technology in the world.

Hong Kong, June 28: Multinational companies in China have a hard task hiring people with leadership skills while in India they face unreasonably demanding fresh graduates, a survey shows.

The fast pace of business expansion in Asia's two emerging economic powerhouses has created a talent shortage and a host of challenges for employers.

"Staff are impatient and there are a lot of jobs out there," said Shalini Mahtani, chief executive of Hong Kong-based Community Business. "If companies are not providing good career opportunities, staff will leave."

Community Business, an organisation promoting corporate social responsibility, conducted the survey in Shanghai and Mumbai with Schneider-Ross, a UK-based business consultancy.

Pay is still important as staff in China have no qualms in leaving a company to pick up a higher salary elsewhere, according to the survey. In India, employers say younger professionals are demanding excessive compensation packages, inflated job titles and immediate opportunities for overseas assignments.

One multinational talked of a fresh graduate who came for interview saying he had four job offers on the table and how could the company better that. Such demands were not unusual, the company said.

Pay is talked about openly in India and employees are liable to switch jobs if they know that their fellow graduates from business school are earning more. This makes it difficult for companies to reward good performance, survey participants said.

In China, competition for staff is so acute that one company reported losing a junior member of staff to a local company that more than doubled her salary and offered a position for which she did not have any experience.

The survey interviewed 25 senior managers and HR directors at foreign companies in Shanghai and Mumbai and conducted a focus group in each of the two cities.

A lack of leadership skills among staff poses a real challenge in China and many employees there leave a company because of the attitude or behaviour of their boss, survey participants said.

Western multinational companies are no longer routinely seen as the preferred employer, as staff in both countries often see local companies that are expanding globally as a better opportunity to gain visibility and climb the career ladder. Multinationals now are having to approach second and third tier colleges for staff.

Diversity in the workforce, whether by gender, generation or culture, is also difficult to implement because local managers either are not sensitive to the issue or business is growing so fast they have no time to focus on it.

In India stereotyping of women is still common.

"There's an assumption that women will get married and they'll leave the workplace," said Mahtani.

In China, poor leadership skills means companies often have to bring in expatriates.

People with disabilities are largely unrepresented in both markets, according to the survey.

Long working hours are another problem, particularly in India where colleagues in different timezones expect staff to be available at irregular hours, the survey showed.

Foreign companies with disabled Chinese on the payroll will qualify for tax rebates from next year.

The maximum tax rebate per disabled worker will be 35,000 yuan (US$4,550) a year. Meanwhile, salaries of disabled workers will be exempted from employees income tax.

Companies whose work force comprises more than 25 percent of disabled workers will be eligible for rebates on both income and value-added tax, according to the new policy announced by the Ministry of Finance and the State Administration of Taxation (SAT).

Those with less than 25 percent of disabled employees will only get income tax rebates.

China has issued a series of preferential tax policies since the 1980s to promote the employment of disabled people.

But a SAT official said that current policies had left many private and foreign companies out in the cold, unable to qualify for tax rebates.

The new policy, which will apply nationwide from next month, is aimed at "creating a favorable taxation environment for fair competition and promoting employment for disabled people," the official said.

Statistics show that China has nearly 83 million disabled people, with only 22.7 million in employment and about 8.6 million officially listed in unemployment statistics.

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It's a brave new world for China's software firms as they come of age

WHY China? Even two years ago, Ben Wang had to answer the question every time he tried a sales pitch for software service contracts from overseas clients.

These days, instead of answering the question, Wang asks the questions as he meets executives from scores of companies every month, all keen to outsource software work to his company.

"China is becoming a top destination for software outsourcing," says Wang, CEO of Beijing-based Beyondsoft Co Ltd. His company, started in 1995 with only four people, now has an army of 2,000 engineers, providing outsourcing services for tech giants such as Microsoft and IBM.

China's fledgling outsourcing companies are now expanding rapidly, trying to woo multinationals scouting for low-cost information technology (IT) talent. By trying to pry open the US market, they now aim to become international players like their successful counterparts in India.

But they are not the only ones driving China's IT outsourcing dreams. Leading IT services companies such as US-based EDS and India's Satyam have mapped out aggressive expansion plans in the nation. Some are even looking at acquiring local players to speed up the process.

"It's a critical time for Chinese outsourcing companies," says Wang.

"We will either grow into giants or will be gobbled up by a giant."

Unlike their Indian cousins, Chinese outsourcing companies usually made their first millions in Japan rather than Western countries like Britain and the US.

In 2006, China's software outsourcing companies raked in US$1.4bil in revenues, up more than 40% compared with a year earlier.

And 60% of this revenue came from the Japanese market.

Yet, compared with the US and Europe, the Japanese market is still a small pie. According to IT consultancy IDC, North American and European markets accounted for 75% of the world's US$320bil IT service and outsourcing market. And these two markets are expected to expand more than 60% annually in the coming years, almost twice the speed of the Japanese market.

With the US market firmly in their sights, Chinese outsourcing companies have kicked off an acquisition spree, trying to gain access to it.

In March this year, Beijing-headquartered hiSoft Technology International bought out Envisage Solutions, a California-based IT consulting firm that boasts a client base of biggies such as Novell and General Electric.

Despite their ambition to go global, Chinese outsourcing companies are facing increasing competition in the neighbourhood. As salaries for software engineers keep rising in India, the world's leading outsourcing giants are now eyeing China's universities as the new sources of low-cost software talent.

Tata Consultancy Services, one of India's most powerful IT outfits, established a new outsourcing joint venture in Beijing with Microsoft and two Chinese partners this February.

The company expects the venture to increase its headcount in China tenfold to 5,000 by 2010, and help it become one of the biggest players in China.

Two months later, India's fourth largest software exporter Satyam kicked off a global delivery campus in Nanjing, capital of East China's Jiangsu Province as part of its efforts to increase its number of engineers to more than 3,000 by 2008.

"The labour cost in China could be 15% to 20% lower than India's," Satyam chief executive officer Rama Raju said during the opening ceremony of the Nanjing centre.

"Besides organic growth, we are also studying the possibility of acquiring local companies to speed up our expansion."

HONG KONG, June 12 (Reuters) - A new employment law in China will increase labour costs for foreign companies and restrict their flexibility in hiring staff, Australian law firm Minter Ellison said on Tuesday.
However the law, expected to go into effect in January, will also make it easier for companies to make large-scale layoffs in certain circumstances, such as bankruptcy.

The law is partly aimed at protecting employees in the private sector, lawyers say, and keeping up with changes in the labour market as a result of China's rapid economic expansion.

Thirty percent of new jobs in the country are now in service industries and private enterprises have replaced state-owned enterprises as the major employers.

"The greater part of the workforce is now employed by private enterprises and that brings a fear that those organisations don't necessarily have the interests of workers at heart," Pattie Walsh, an employment lawyer at Minter Ellison, told a conference in Hong Kong on Tuesday.

Foreign companies, which have flocked to China to tap into the country's booming economy, have favoured fixed-term employment contracts for local employees as laying off staff in China is difficult.

But under the new law, all companies will have to pay compensation at the end of a fixed contract and will have to allow employees to switch to an open-ended contract after twice renewing a fixed contract.

Lawyers also say probationary periods will be less effective because an employer will have to show evidence that an employee has failed to perform during probation before they can dismiss them.

"That means a company will have to monitor the employee during the probation period much more closely and will need to set criteria or an appraisal system so they can prove that an employee is not fulfilling the role," Walsh said. "This will put more pressure on the employee selection process to get the right people in."

Some analysts say foreign companies are being targeted in a drive to increase unionisation and U.S. retailer Wal-Mart Stores Inc and fast-food chain McDonald's , which has been accused of breaching minimum wage laws, are among companies that have moved to set up branches of state-backed unions.

Walsh said an existing employment law, introduced in 1995, is not always enforceable because it applies differently depending on the region and is often ignored in favour of local practices.

A final draft of the new labour contracts law is expected to be published within weeks and lawyers expect it to become effective on Jan. 1, 2008.

Many employees in China are working without formal contracts but the new law will require every employee to have a written contract drawn up within a month of starting work and companies will be liable to pay compensation if there is no contract.

Companies will however have more flexibility to lay off large numbers of staff in the event of bankruptcy, production difficulties, relocation to prevent or control pollution and changing economic circumstances.

Walsh said this indicated Beijing was bowing to pressure from companies to enable them to take difficult decisions when they go through tough times.

The law will also modify a "non-compete" clause, enabling a company to stop a senior member of staff or some other employee with confidential company information from joining a competitor within two years of leaving the company by providing compensation. Under the existing law the term is three years and is not restricted to senior staff and other special cases.

The terms of compensation will be agreed between the employer and employee when the employee first joins the company.

Lawyers said the "non-compete" clause helped companies protect their intellectual property and was a step ahead of some other jurisdictions.

1) Automated sourcing and candidate mining should be used.. Spiders, bots, search engines etc..
web spiders should be programmed to crawl, retrieve, and upload candidates into the applicant tracking
system based on both current and future needs.
Infogist , Talenthook , AIRS OXYGEN, comes to mind.
I heard of horror stories on someone sitting in the headoffice making the decision on what tools should be used.
Rather have inputs from actual users.

2)Better use of the new recruits. As they are the trusted sources for their ex-colleagues.
Its not about bombarding them with Employee Referral program message rather recruiters should take the
time out (just take them for lunch) and network with them.

3) Companies are doing exit interviews but never follow up. Does your recruiter gets a feedback why the hire left?

4) Ex Employees and contractors (who worked through third parties) who turned the offer down in the past or left the company. These candidates already know the firm, the culture and might be a easier hire.

5) A culture and environment must be created and a strategy in place to source passive candidates. Sourcing should be based on future needs rather than current or immediate needs. . This process must be a constant building of proactive pipelines of passive candidates.

6) Try new methods of sourcing like job networking sites, podcasting, blogs ,bountyjobs , jobster,
virtual recruiting etc. etc. Reach out to niche sites as many allow you to do free promotion for you.

08/06/2007
By Frank Mulligan - Recruit China

From the beginning of July to the end of August is generally a bit of a lull for hiring in China. Senior managers are away on holidays and budgets have yet to be developed.

If you have recently introduced some form of online hiring, the efficiencies it generates may leave you at a loss what to do with the extra time on your hands. Even if you haven¡¯t introduced online hiring you will still have free time on your hands. Perhaps it¡¯s time to undertake some preparatory tasks for the rush in September!.

1.. Do a survey of all top employees and ask them why they accepted the job when they were hired. Also ask them what they think the top selling points of the firm currently are. Add this information into your Talent Management System and itemise the reasons one by one. With this data from this task you will be in a better position to sell your company to China¡¯s professionals when you begin hiring again. Lulls always end.

2.. Do a survey of all candidates who rejected an offer in the past year to find out what the deciding factors were that led them to turn down your offer. Again try to systematise this by organising their reasons into broad areas that can generate metrics.

3.. Develop an online mail newsletter that will keep potential candidates interested in your company and aware of current hot opportunities. Send it out once every three months to opt-in candidates only.

4.. Review hires generated in the past year by collecting on-the-job performance data and manager satisfaction information. Compare this data with your notes during the interview process.

5.. Get into the important operations and sales meetings to learn which roles in the organization will be mission critical, i.e. where a vacancy or delay in recruitment would cause critical organizational failures, such as delaying time to market or compromising product quality.

6.. Search through your online Talent Pool (if you have one) and request additional information from candidates who have not filled out their profile fully.

7.. Isolate the key candidates in your online Talent Pool and separate them out from the others. Devise a system to increase the communications from your company with these selected professionals.

8.. Remember that recruiting is marketing, and build a clear, concise document that illustrates your Recruitment Brand. Use it in all future recruiting. In the ideal world, build this document into your Careers@ section of your website.

9.. Spend time with your line managers to see what behaviours they want more of, and less of.

10.. Develop scripts for phone interviews and build them into your Applicant Tracking Systems(ATS).

In the end there are many tasks that recruiters in China can undertake today to help make their jobs a little easier and to be more productive when the hiring season starts again.

Let¡¯s keep the slow out of the slow season!.

(by Asian Legal online & DaCare Legal)

Over the last year or so the number of clients, both private practice and in-house, seeking to recruit lawyers for their operations in Beijing and Shanghai has seen a steady increase and this is expected to continue throughout 2004. Mainland China is a vast and complex market for most businesses and the position is no different for law firms operating there.

Recruiting the right people for offices on the ground is very difficult and for law firms it is often the case of making the upfront investment in people with the returns on the investment lagging far behind. Not only do language skills play a big part but also experience in the local markets is increasingly important. Beijing and Shanghai are different legal markets and if a client is recruiting for example in Shanghai their clear preference is to have someone already in the local market. The trend in the past has been to relocate people with the necessary skills from Hong Kong and, while this will continue, there will be a developing market in both Beijing and Shanghai for people already on the ground moving firms.

The development of local law firms is also worth noting. The writer on a recent trip to Shanghai met with a number of successful local firms who also face complex recruitment issues. While not an immediate trend, it is envisaged that major local players will eventually seek to recruit lawyers from Hong Kong for their offices in Shanghai or Beijing. The practising rules and CEPA already envisage this kind of movement with the only obstacle being the discrepancy in salary levels.

The Mainland in-house market will also continue to develop at a pace. Of all the legal recruitment markets over the last year, the in-house market has held up well. There is an ever-increasing need to recruit good quality local lawyers for in-house positions with multinationals. There already exists a well-organised in-house lawyers group whose members are being presented with an ever-increasing range of in-house opportunities.

There is no doubt that the legal market in Mainland China will continue to grow - the challenge for everyone involved will be how to attract the right people and how to make a return on the investment involved - there will be no easy fixes in this regard.

Search Firm: DaCare Legal Search
Website: www.dacare-legal.com

Office: shanghai, beijing, china
Keywords: legal recruiting, law jobs, attorney jobs in China

---------------------------------------------------------------------------
Sponsor Link: DaCare Legal Search (China)
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BEIJING--Will globalization someday stick it to the man?

Excessive executive pay has been a hot-button issue in American politics for years, but worldwide factors could one day make it a liability on the balance sheet.

As companies in countries like China and India move away from performing behind-the-scenes functions, they're selling products and services under their own brand names directly against U.S. and European counterparts.

Since high-level executives and other white collar professionals in Asian companies typically make less than their Western equivalents, these companies potentially will have a cost advantage.

How or even whether the differences in executive salary will impact the market remains unclear: multinational companies are hiring their own executives in these regions, too, after all. Nonetheless, the numbers are tough to ignore: engineers aren't the only "talent" that costs less in developing markets. Executives cost a lot less, too.

Shanghai's SunTech Holdings, for instance, has moved from being a bit player in solar panels to becoming one of the largest manufacturers in the world. Most of the company's panels end up overseas, and it can produce those panels more cheaply than American competitors for various reasons. Among them: the company isn't lavishing huge compensation packages on its executives.

"There aren't 10 executives in the company that make more than $200,000," said Steve Chan, vice president of business development at SunTech Power Holdings.

U.S. execs make far more. In a survey conducted by Forbes last year, the magazine found that the average big company CEO made $3.3 million in salary and bonuses.

It trickles down from there. Chinese engineers make about one-third to one-half the salary of their U.S. counterparts, said one executive who runs Asian operations for a U.S. high tech firm. Marketing execs can make about half as much as their stateside colleagues.

"If you have one (marketing manager) that makes about $100,000 in the U.S, you can hire one here for $50,000," he said.

Professional services firms also pay less than U.S. counterparts, said Ted Dean, managing director of BDA, an analyst firm specializing in Asian markets. New college graduates hired by services firms might make $400 to $500 a month, or $4,800 to $6,000 annually. A well-regarded person with years of experience might make $30,000 to $50,000 annually. In the U.S., the same person can graze around the $100,000 mark.

While executive compensation can be absorbed somewhat in manufacturing companies, it can be pronounced in purely white-collar service operations. Panorama Media Holdings, based in Beijing, sells high-resolution photos to advertising agencies, similar to Getty Images and Corbis.

Panorama, though, can sell its products for an eighth the price, according to Wayne Shiong, a partner in venture firm WI Harper, an investor in Panorama. Wherever Getty charges $50,000 for services, Panorama can charge 50,000 RMB (China Yuan Renminbi), or about $6,600.

Panorama primarily sells its photos to Asian advertising agencies. Shiong, though, said that the multinational photo outfits have not reacted to lower their prices for the local market. Additionally, Panorama is contemplating taking out office space in New York to test out the international opportunities.

The Spartan start-up
The pay discrepancy starts during the start-up phase. Founding CEOs of some Chinese start-ups deliberately take low wages to keep costs down, according to Shiong and others. The CEO at a company that's just finished a Series A round of funding might pay himself 500,000 RMB a year, or about $67,000.

Documents filed by Chinese companies with the Securities and Exchange Commission back this up. Focus Media Holding, which specializes in outdoor advertising kiosks, paid $100,000 to its two executive officers in 2004 combined. In 2005, the year the company went public on Nasdaq, Focus had 13 executives and directors and the total pay for all of them for the year was $512,947.

In 2005, the company's four executives and directors pulled in $100,000 combined. The four executives and directors of Trina Solar Limited pulled in $128,039 in 2005. None had severance packages, the filing states.

Compare that to a pre-public U.S. company. DivX, which makes media software, paid its top five execs about $1 million in 2005, the year before it went public. Shutterfly paid its top five people $1.1 million the year before an IPO--only one made under $210,000.

Chinese executives make their wealth in stock options, which U.S. execs get, too. Suntech founder Shi Zhengrong is considered one of the richest individuals in China, with a net worth exceeding $2 billion, according to various studies. Focus awarded 22.5 million in options to executives and employees in 2005. Salaries also rise after an IPO, but generally not to U.S. levels. One reason, of course, is that the cost of living is lower. Someone making $50,000 in China will likely be able to retain a driver and other household help. That's not enough to rent a decent one-bedroom apartment in many American cities.

Conversely, to expand internationally, Chinese companies have to hire U.S. and European executives, who will command U.S. salaries. Suntech's Chan said that will be an issue for his company. In the first few years of the company's growth, the salespeople came out of China. Expanding internationally will also take quite some time.

Victor Canto, chairman of La Jolla Economics, added that many executives in Asian companies will also leap to U.S. competitors to get salary raises. "That will decrease the disparity," he said.

Still, in the end, multinationals of course have some of their higher-level people in more expensive countries, so a discrepancy should be expected.

"Foreign vendors might be able to achieve comparable manufacturing costs, but they still will have a huge R&D lab in Finland," said BDA's Dean.

BEIJING (XFN-ASIA) - China's proposed employment contract law has created growing feelings of uncertainty and pessimism among foreign-invested enterprises, according to a survey conducted by law firm Baker & McKenzie and HR consultants Hewitt Associates .

The draft legislation was submitted to the National People's Congress this week for its third and final reading but the survey found that the majority of respondents had a negative view of the new law.

'Almost no company expects an overall positive impact,' said Susan Derkach, senior consultant at Hewitt Associates, Beijing.

'Over one-half of participants believe that when implemented, the new labor contract law will have a negative or very negative impact on their daily business,' Derkach said.

After he first draft of the law was published last year it prompted 191,000 comments from the public to the government.

This prompted amendments to the second version including changes, such as an increased emphasis on open-term contracts, non-compete and confidentially agreements, training contracts and probationary periods, restrictions on fixed-term contracts, more specific definitions and limitations concerning mass-layoffs.

'Overall, there seems to be a great degree of uncertainty among the participants about the potential implications of the new law on their companies. Similarly, the majority of participants do not seem to be sure how they should prepare for passage of the law,' Derkach said.

'We believe that companies should aggressively pursue the following three actions: a comprehensive review and redrafting of the work force planning process and strategy; a comprehensive audit and redesign of all HR policies, manuals, collective agreements and employment contracts; strategic decisions on employee representation and collective bargaining,' she said.

The new law is expected to take effect from Jan 1, 2008, but implementing it will challenge most companies, other experts said.

'The law as it stands is very opaque and it is unclear as to how it will actually be implemented,' said Andreas Lauffs, head of the employment group at Baker & McKenzie, Hong Kong.

'So far there has been no mention of grandfathering or of any transition period,' Lauffs said.

Further concerns of respondents to the survey related to trade unions and employee representation.

'This could be an issue in the face of recent moves by China's trade federation to unionize some high-profile multinationals,' Lauffs said.

Both McDonald's and KFC recently came under pressure from the state-controlled All China Federation of Trade Unions to cooperate with the formation of unions in their outlets.

The survey showed that almost half of the 436 participants have no employee representation while 89 pct are not covered by a company or industry collective agreement.

'Only a small number of companies seem to have specific plans to address the potential new requirement to negotiate a collective agreement with their workforce,' Susan Derkach said.

Those surveyed included wholly owned foreign enterprises, join ventures, representative offices, non state-owned enterprises and state-owned enterprises.

The Labour Law of the People’s Republic of China (“Labour Law”) is applicable to all employment relationships between individuals and enterprises in China. However, local governments of provinces, autonomous regions and municipalities may, and most of them do, issue detailed measures and rules for the implementation of the Labour Law. Such detailed measures are promulgated based on the Labour Law, with changes and specific details made in light of the local conditions. Thus, when dealing with China labour or employment matters, reference should always be made to the local regulations (in addition to the Labour Law), particularly as regards social insurance benefits and welfare benefits.

The Labour Law requires the establishment of an employment or labour contract (“Contract”) between the employer and employee for the purposes of recording an employer-employee relationship. The Contract is required to be made in writing and must necessarily be based on the principles of equality, voluntariness and mutual consent. If the Contract is not concluded based on such principles or is otherwise in violation of any PRC laws, administrative rules or regulations, the Contract may be treated as invalid in its entirety, or as regards the affected parts only, depending on the seriousness and nature of the violations.

Any dispute over the validity of the Contract or otherwise should in the first instance be referred to the relevant labour dispute arbitration committee (being part of the labour tribunal) for determination, and if the employer or employee concerned does not find the arbitration outcome acceptable, either side may refer the matter to the relevant People’s Court for a judgement to be made.

The Contract should deal with the following:
1. term or duration of the Contract;
2. job description or the scope of work to be performed;
3. labour/employment protection and working conditions;
4. labour/employment remuneration;
5. labour/employment disciplines;
6. conditions for termination of the Contract; and
7. responsibilities for breach of the Contract.

The parties are free to agree on other matters for inclusion in the Contract. It is in fact common to agree on a probationary period, the employee’s duty to observe confidentiality or non-disclosure obligations, non-competition covenants, etc.

The Contract may be terminated at any time by mutual agreement between the employer and employee. Severance is generally payable to the employee on termination of the Contract, save in the case of a summary dismissal or where termination is due to the employee’s resignation.

Where severance is payable, it is calculated with reference to the:
• number of years of service rendered; and
• average monthly income based on the employee’s income for the 12-month period immediately preceding the date of termination (and “income” includes base salary, bonus, subsidy, allowance, commission, etc., paid to the employee).

The severance amount payable equals the average monthly income multiplied by the number of years of service. In most localities, an incomplete year of service is treated as a full year for purposes of calculating the severance.

By Nick Zieminski

China may have plenty of man power, but it could also use some help from Manpower.

U.S. staffing company, Manpower Inc. , is one of a number of business recruiters putting emphasis on the world's most populous country, where a rapidly developing economy is driving the demand for engineers, finance professionals and technology specialists.

China's growth rates of about 10 percent per year, which already makes it the world's No. 4 economy, pushes companies to develop leaders at a faster pace than most other countries.

A McKinsey & Co. study estimates that, within five years, China will need 75,000 executives who have either Western technical skills or language ability -- ideally, both. Only about 5,000 are in the work force now.

"The challenge is not in finding 500 or 1,000 people to man the factory. The challenge is in finding leadership skills and functional management skills," said Iain Herbertson, president of Asia-Pacific for Manpower, which has 350 consultants in 11 Chinese cities. About half its contracts are for information technology workers.

For now, the numbers are relatively modest. Of Manpower's $4.4 billion in second-quarter revenue, the "other" segment -- which includes China, Japan and Australia, as well as Mexico -- reported sales of $577 million. Its operating profit of $15 million was about 9 percent of Manpower's quarterly total.

But the segment is among the company's fastest growing. Within three to five years, Manpower will have a staff of 1,000 to 1,600 in mainland China.

New rules this month allowed foreign companies to own a controlling stake in their local joint ventures if they set up shop in Pudong, the fast-growing financial center in Shanghai.

The move is part of a broader relaxation of rules, which should help draw more companies to China, and will enable Manpower to expand its range of services, Herbertson said.

"Our business is more than doubling every year," Herbertson said in a telephone interview from Shanghai.

Monster Worldwide , which this year raised its stake in ChinaHR.com to 45 percent, may take majority control of the venture by 2008, though the unit is currently losing about $2 million per quarter.

"We don't expect it to be (profitable) because we are at the beginning of the beginning," said Marcel Legrand, Monster's senior vice president of strategy and corporate development. "Profit is not of great interest to us in that particular market -- it's about an investment."

ChinaHR has about 600 staff and 4 million resumes on file, but those numbers will grow as more Chinese go online, Legrand said.

Monster, parent of the world's largest recruitment Web site, followed customers like Procter & Gamble , L'Oreal , and Hewlett-Packard to China, which fits with a goal for international operations to account for more than half of its revenue by next year.

That global expertise, including serving multinationals in other markets, is what differentiates companies like Manpower and Monster from their smaller competitors.

"We can bring to China the best of what happens in Brazil, or what happens in Korea, and they can help us export their best practices," Legrand said.

This week, Monster hired a former Nike Inc. executive, Tony Balfour, to head its Asia-Pacific operations.

He will have competition.

Rival job site Careerbuilder.com on Wednesday said it was entering the Chinese market in an exclusive deal with human resources company 51job Inc. , to link to each others' sites and sell job postings and access to their resume databases.

At executive recruiter Heidrick & Struggles International Inc. , Asia-Pacific operations had faster revenue growth and highest profit margins than either the United States or Europe. The region accounts for 10 percent of total company sales, and China about a fifth of that.

Since rules are different depending on the services offered, Heidrick owns 90 percent of its Chinese joint venture, said Kevin Kelly, who heads Heidrick's European and Asian operations, adding that consumer goods, technology and industrial companies are its main clients.

Financial companies, including investment banks, will need experienced staff starting in 2008, when new rules take effect under China's commitment to the World Trade Organization.

Heidrick's China operations are expected to double within three years, and the company is recruiting Chinese-speakers in the United States and Europe for positions there, Kelly said.

"European and U.S. markets are more mature, so everyone sees China's huge potential for developing or expanding their businesses," Kelly said.

(by Asian Legal online & DaCare Legal)

Over the last year or so the number of clients, both private practice and in-house, seeking to recruit lawyers for their operations in Beijing and Shanghai has seen a steady increase and this is expected to continue throughout 2004. Mainland China is a vast and complex market for most businesses and the position is no different for law firms operating there.

Recruiting the right people for offices on the ground is very difficult and for law firms it is often the case of making the upfront investment in people with the returns on the investment lagging far behind. Not only do language skills play a big part but also experience in the local markets is increasingly important. Beijing and Shanghai are different legal markets and if a client is recruiting for example in Shanghai their clear preference is to have someone already in the local market. The trend in the past has been to relocate people with the necessary skills from Hong Kong and, while this will continue, there will be a developing market in both Beijing and Shanghai for people already on the ground moving firms.

The development of local law firms is also worth noting. The writer on a recent trip to Shanghai met with a number of successful local firms who also face complex recruitment issues. While not an immediate trend, it is envisaged that major local players will eventually seek to recruit lawyers from Hong Kong for their offices in Shanghai or Beijing. The practising rules and CEPA already envisage this kind of movement with the only obstacle being the discrepancy in salary levels.

The Mainland in-house market will also continue to develop at a pace. Of all the legal recruitment markets over the last year, the in-house market has held up well. There is an ever-increasing need to recruit good quality local lawyers for in-house positions with multinationals. There already exists a well-organised in-house lawyers group whose members are being presented with an ever-increasing range of in-house opportunities.

There is no doubt that the legal market in Mainland China will continue to grow - the challenge for everyone involved will be how to attract the right people and how to make a return on the investment involved - there will be no easy fixes in this regard.

Search Firm: DaCare Legal Search
Website: www.dacare-legal.com

Office: shanghai, beijing, china
Keywords: legal recruiting, law jobs, attorney jobs in China

A small business owner was looking for a few good employees for his alarm company. In the past, he advertised in the classifieds. Then, it dawned on him that the kind of employee he wanted probably wasn't sitting at home reading the "help wanted" ads. His best workers had always come to him with personal recommendations. That's when the first brainstorm hit. He chose a select group of customers and sent them a letter asking their help with his recruitment drive. He got his referrals and the unexpected benefit of engendering goodwill with his customers, who were flattered to learn he thought so highly of their opinion.

In just 60-seconds, you will learn how to recruit and hire good employees.

0:60 Take Recruiting & Hiring Seriously
The lesson here is to treat your employee recruitment efforts as seriously ¡ª and creatively ¡ª as you would any other business-related endeavor. A new employee is a major investment. There¡¯s the cost of training and the cost you want to avoid ¡ª the mistake of hiring the wrong person.

0:46 Use Your Network to Find Good Employees
When you set out on your candidate search, do as the small business owner did and solicit referrals from customers. Ask acquaintances, colleagues, and current employees as well. Other avenues include college placement offices, trade and professional associations, and employment agencies.

0:38: Set up an Interview Schedule
When you begin receiving resumes, you'll want to contact the best candidates and set up an interview schedule. Prepare a list of questions to ask each candidate. By asking everyone the same interview questions in the same way, you will be able to more fairly compare their responses.

0:20 Pay Attention to Your Initial Impression
Check the candidate's references, but be warned that you may not get an accurate picture. Sometimes people will give positive references because they fear legal action. It's better to rely on insights you glean from the interview and by paying attention to your own gut feeling. Ask candidates you are impressed with to come back for a second interview.

0:11 Be Clear About Responsibilities
During the hiring process, be clear about the new employees' role within the company. Set expectations by defining job responsibilities before hiring the candidate. A job description clarifies everyone's duties and heads off confusion about who is responsible for what tasks.

0:03 Make the New Hire Feel Comfortable
Put your best employee in charge of training the new hire, and consider starting off with a three- or six-month trial period. If you approach your employee recruitment efforts with the same creativity and drive you do other business projects, chances are you won't have a thing to worry about.

There's an old saying¡± ¡°Your actions shout so loud I can't hear what you're saying.¡±

Many managers feel constrained by the rules and regulations of their organizations. They feel that their hands are tied when it comes to rewarding their people ¨C that their actions are controlled by others, and there is little of any real value they can do to motivate their people. Leaders understand that recognition and reward applied on a one on one level is essential to success.

They understand the greatest sense of accomplishment and importance often comes from non ¨C monetary actions and rewards, and from positive recognition from the person who is the boss.

What are the ways to make your people know they are important?

Way #1 ¨C You have to believe the work performed by your people is important. This may sound pretty basic, but if you do not really believe that, there is simply no way you can convince your people that what they do is important.. How often have your heard ¨C or been guilty of saying ¨C or thinking ¨C ¡°Oh, she¡¯s just the receptionist¡± or, ¡°He's just the janitor¡± or ¡°They're just trainees¡± or ¡°They're just a staff weenie¡±?

Way #2 ¨C Expect the best from everyone, and settle for nothing less. Nothing makes people feel more important than high expectations for their performance. Just make sure they share in setting the expectations.

Way #3 ¨C Create goals that are shared and that show the tie in of individual work with the success of the organization.

Way #4 ¨C Select the best ¨C in every opening you have. Use every tool you can to ensure that you have made a good decision on who you select.. Your people watch carefully to see who you pick ¨C involve them in the selection process. If your actions communicate that you are not careful about who you select, your people will see that as a direct reflection on themselves.

Way #5 ¨C Make sure you are your people¡¯s institutional champion! What's that mean? When their pay is wrong, you act to get it right. When their reviews are scheduled, you act to ensure they are done accurately and on time. When their raises are due, you make sure they are handled properly and on time. Jealously guard your relationship as the go to person for your people ¨C the institutional support people can help, but you are the person you want your people to seek out.

Way #6¨C Be absolutely intolerant of unsafe, disruptive or other negative behaviors. Act on them quickly and decisively, and never let your people see you knowingly ignore a bad situation. It will not go away, regardless how much ¡°wish'in and hop'in and pray'in¡± you might do.

Way #7 ¨C Remember that trust and respect are not the same thing as being liked. It is nice to be liked, it is absolutely essential that your people trust and respect you. As a comedian said: ¡°If you want to be liked, get a dog.¡±

Way #8 - Cultivate a climate of civility for your people. In your relationships with your people, ensure your actions and theirs reflect a fundamental respect for each other, and for all the others they come in contact with.

Way #9 ¨CGet everyone of your people some form of self development activity on a regular basis. It may be a seminar, it may be tuition refund, it may be a book, it may be a CD set, it may be a Community College course ¨C it does not have to be expensive and time consuming, but the act of creating added value through the investment of personal effort supported by organizational resources is a powerful way to say you care.

Way #10 ¨C Respect your people's time ¨C it's their most valuable asset. Start meetings on time, end them on time, keep meeting commitments. Do what you have to do to ensure your people have access to as much of their work time as possible.

Way #11¨C Keep the rules and policies to an absolute minimum. If you have a workable set of cultural and organizational ¡°Way¡¯s Of Doing Things¡± you have the basis for treating your people with individual regard. If you have managers that are not comfortable doing that, either they change or get different managers

Way #12¨C Celebrate all the successes ¨C create the opportunity for group recognition to happen all over the place ¨C if Safety is an issue, create a Safety Award process that celebrates progress.Make the events frequent, and the rewards modest ¨C but do it all the time. Frequency of awards and the opportunity for celebration are as important, actually more important, than the annual lunch or dinner or whatever. Make it fun. Make it part of your enterprise.

Did you notice one thing about all 12 Ways? Not one of them deals with lots of money, or more capital, or new policies or procedures. All do require beliefs and behaviors ¨C and they are the most challenging, most high leverage efforts we can make to improve our organizations. It's always tempting to do a feel good seminar, or buy something ¨C or take some action that shows just how committed we are. But the truth is that the way to greater success is through a focused, day to day effort to improve the level of commitment of the people in an organization, and that takes hard work and the acceptance of change. If you can see Ways that can help you organization or your work group or yourself in this article, take them and run with them ¨C they are the basis for successful managers becoming successful leaders.

The business success is about taking right people to the right place on right time. So what is the problem? Actually, if you need to manage not one, but five employees or better five groups of employees, then you face the problem of measuring and control. It's hard to tell whether one group is performing better or not, it becoming hard to compare one employees success against other one, it's hard to see the unique features of people. So what the solution is? The key metrics and key indicators, which will tell you how to manage your stuff right.

There are two approaches I suggest to take into account when thinking about human resources (HR) at your company. First, you can think in terms of process, second you can think it terms of how do employees affect the whole business.

The processes of working with employees include: hire, education, management, retire. All the stages must be processes carefully, as they could fully change your business. For instance, if you will have the best system to hire stuff, but it will be working slowly, then you will fail. If your education system will allow to train everyone, but will not allow to check the actual performance generated by training processed, then you will fail. If your best people will retire, then you will lose.

So, that's why it's really important to measure and control all processes involved into employees relationship. People who you work with, should understand what your goals are and how they will help to achieve these goals. This is the key idea of manage and control in employees management processes.

Another approach is focusing on how someone's job affect the company. It's obvious that even if someone works in a Sales then he or she will affect not only the financial part of the business by generating sales, but also all other parts.

For instance, sales person will be involved in entire company processes, such as education and knowledge sharing. This person will also work directly with customers, so he or she might not just sale, but get a valuable feedback from end users of your product. These people will also help your company to grow not just in terms of sales, but in terms of better business processes and business efficiency.

So how to measure and control HR department at your company. The answer is very simple - you should develop some key indicators that will represent company business and then pay attention to what is working good and what should be changed. There are many names for this system, for instance KPI (Key Performance Indicators) or Balanced Scorecard. The result is having the clear view of what is going to happen in company and how it will steam-line your business.

What should be the first step? Actually, I think you have already had some important information for scorecard. For instance, you have document called "mission", this is a general definition of your principles, you can some business goals, you have business processes described and formalized. What you need now is to gather all this important information into a easy to manage system, which will take in account the importance of each metrics. This system (Balanced Scorecard or KPI) will help to manage and control the performance of your HR department.

GUANXI (THE ART OF RELATIONSHIPS)
Microsoft, China, and Bill Gates's
Plan to Win the Road Ahead

The Good Argues that Microsoft's Beijing research lab has played a pioneering role in high tech.
The Bad Misses key developments and rarely goes beyond the lab to explore issues facing Microsoft.
The Bottom Line Flawed, but it shows the importance China has for American high tech companies.

Last summer a Taiwanese-born PhD named Kai-Fu Lee was at the center of an intense battle between Microsoft (MSFT ) and its latest challenger for high-tech dominance, Google. (GOOG ) Lee, an expert in speech-recognition technology, had been working at Microsoft for seven years, recently in Redmond, Wash., and before that at the company's China research lab in Beijing, which he founded in 1998. But he had become increasingly frustrated by what he described as Microsoft's "incompetence in China" and last July abruptly announced that he was leaving to join Google. A nasty lawsuit followed over the terms of a noncompete agreement. During the trial, another Microsoft defector revealed that Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer had vowed to "f---ing kill Google." Lee ultimately won permission to leave, becoming a prime example of the recent talent exodus at Microsoft.

You might expect that a new book in which Lee is prominently featured and extensively quoted would have juicy insights into that drama. Alas, the flawed Guanxi (The Art of Relationships): Microsoft, China, and Bill Gates's Plan to Win the Road Ahead, by journalists Robert Buderi and Gregory T. Huang, has little to say about this key moment in the Microsoft-Google rivalry. Indeed, it appears Microsoft executives weren't the only ones surprised by Lee's departure: Although Buderi and Huang seem to have spent many hours over many months talking with Lee, they apparently had no inkling of his dissatisfaction. They devote one late chapter to the custody battle. But it feels tacked on, almost as if they realized at the 11th hour that Lee had upended the whole premise of their book, which tells how Microsoft successfully built its Beijing research center.

Microsoft Research Asia was only the second center for high-level research opened by the company outside the U.S. (The first was in Cambridge, England.) The authors argue persuasively that Microsoft's Beijing center has played a central role in developing products and served as a model for the company as it expands in countries such as India, where Microsoft opened a Beijing-like research center last year. In setting up the center in the late 1990s, long before most other multinationals had started to take China seriously as a research and development location, Microsoft was a pioneer in recognizing "the imperative of looking at emerging nations not just as potential markets but as sources of talent." Contrary to the book's subtitle, though, this is not a story about Bill Gates's strategy in the world's largest country, and the authors spend almost no time discussing Microsoft issues beyond the lab. For example, there's very little about problems with China's counterfeiters. And while mentioning a botched Microsoft pledge to invest $100 million in the country, they don't offer any insights into what went wrong.

Guanxi is at its best when it describes the brilliant collection of experts recruited by Lee, such as multimedia whiz Ya-Qin Zhang. (Buderi and Huang use the Western convention of given name first, family name last for most of the Chinese in the book.) A former child prodigy who entered one of China's top universities before his 13th birthday, Zhang took over as director in Beijing in 2000 after Lee relocated to Redmond. Zhang is adept at wooing Chinese officials. For instance, he scored a coup when he won permission from the government for the Beijing lab to award post-doctoral degrees, a first for a foreign company. And Zhang boasts about his ability to cut through red tape by making one phone call to the vice-mayor. "Problem solved," Zhang tells the authors.

Buderi and Huang also profile Jian Wang, an engineering psychologist who at first was reluctant to give up his position as a professor at Zhejiang University but went on to lead the team that developed the handwriting-recognition software used in Microsoft's Tablet PCs. Wang, who has come up with a "universal pen" that can instantly take writing from a piece of paper and put it on a computer screen, also created Thought Explorer, a computer interface custom-made for Gates that the chairman uses during Think Week, his semi-annual retreat.

Yet as fascinating as these characters are, the book suffers from its almost exclusive reliance on them for its information -- and its numerous boosterish quotes. Significantly, we don't hear from many Chinese officials, even though one of Buderi and Huang's themes is the importance of building relationships, or guanxi, with government leaders.

For all its shortcomings, though, Guanxi does show the importance that China has for American high-tech companies. With Kai-Fu Lee now back in Beijing to launch another R&D center, this time for his new company, the competition for Chinese talent is only going to get rougher.

By Frank Mulligan - Recruit China

In a War for Talent market like China you might want to consider your hiring process your Number 1 priority.

You can run as many Six Sigma FMEA projects as you like to improve quality and speed of hiring but sometimes it¡¯s just easier to tell line managers what they should not do. It¡¯s a quick and dirty solution that might give you time while you work out a more detailed, nuanced approach.

This advice is specific to what line managers in China should not do but it could just as easily cover other hot markets likes India or Ireland. Please copy, paste, modify and email as you see fit.

Top 10 Things Line Manager¡¯s In China Should Not Do

Do not wait more than a few hours before you begin to review applicant emails or online application links sent to you by your internal Recruiter.

Do not wait more than one day to respond with a decision about which candidates you want to actually meet. Recruiting is sales and you wouldn¡¯t keep a hot sales lead waiting, would you?

Phone screen all applicants and take the time to cull unsuitable candidates. Aim to bring in only two to three people and hire one.

Don¡¯t assume anything. Tell your Recruiter in detail why you thought his/her presented candidates were unsuitable, or suitable.

Never tell your Recruiter that you will only interview when he has enough candidates ie. more than 4. Interview what he presents now. If you wait more than a week you are likely to lose the current slate

Never miss interviews unless it absolutely critical. When you have to reorganize timing, be flexible and show the candidate that this is not how you normally work. Above all pay them the respect they deserve.

Once you have decided that someone is suitable, get an offer to them within a day or two. If you cannot do this, ask why, and take steps to ensure you are ready the next time. HR can support you with standard contracts etc.

Do not allow yourself to be unduly influenced about not hiring someone. On the other hand if everyone agrees act fast, the time for thinking is over.

Communicate with the successful candidate at least 5 times before he comes on board and meet him at least once. This is not HR¡¯s job.

And finally, be there when the candidate arrives for his first day and make sure you have thought through what you will do with him for that first day.

When you first start recruiting, the world is your oyster. You get the opportunity to help people find jobs, a noble way to earn your bread and one that promises a good living if you work hard.

Making phone calls, meeting with candidates, and finding new ways to uncover resumes is all part of the fun. Most people enjoy taking your calls, and in terms of respectability, most people really do like recruiters. Ask any parent, and the job of recruiter is a very respectable one. You may not be a doctor, but you help people and you make money.

But very soon, the recruiter runs into the hard facts about employment. The control of the process is all in your mind. The real task of recruiting is not finding candidates or finding job orders, but rather making a connection between an employer and a job-seeker. And at the end of the day, working with people is infinitely harder than working with widgets.

After 3 months or so of getting battered and bruised and quite honestly, failing to place people, as many recruiters do, most newbies start to wish for a job that is less sales oriented and more creative. Recruiting is hard work, but it's not always smart work.

Maybe this is why so many experienced recruiters are jaded. Having seen the employment process up close, they know that is is unpredictable, and that keeping your word is not a valued commodity for hiring managers or jobseekers when their job is on the line.

It's a results-driven business. If you want to eat, you do what you can to survive, and that hardens you. You can't afford to let emotion get into your decision-making process, but emotion is exactly the right selling technique you need to be successful.

So the question this leads to are what are your responsibilities as a recruiter? The client pays you, and so perhaps your responsibility lies in helping them? The problem is you have many clients, and so who gets your best effort? How do you manage your time?

And what about the candidate? Surely they are a client, too? But they don't pay you, and you can't afford to be their career counselor in any meaningful way, especially when their job is to get a job, not make you money.

There is no single answer to this question - there is no should here that can be defended. There is no "one right way" that protects all parties and leads to a gleaming city on the hill of profit, respectability, and happy clients. Every situation is different, and in the end, everyone gets burned at some time.

So the real question is not, what is your responsibility as a recruiter, but rather, what is your responsibility to yourself.

Often times we come across companies that are looking to hire sales people but don't recognize the value of an outside sales recruiting service. The reason is because they are experienced hiring managers. Certainly most sales managers, one of their key capabilities is to hire good people, but getting to those people is half the battle. This is where a good recruiting company can help. A good head hunter knows how to go in and access the best talent, where ever it may be, including companies which you could not approach directly and can make the difference between hiring B and C players for your company, those who are out looking for a job, and hiring A players, those who typically aren't out looking for a job.

The results between hiring a B or C player and hiring an A player can be truly astounding. Particularly in the sales arena, a top produce is one who can produce several times the amount of sales as a B or C player. Getting to those people is no easy task and that's where seeking outside assistance can make a real difference. What's the bottom line impact? Sometimes it can be worth several million dollars of incremental sales for your company per year. Can you afford not to hire the best in your business? If you really are trying to grow and take your company to the next level, it's important that you don't settle for less than the best. This is why a head hunter is so critical to bringing you the talent that you need in order to grow your company.

WALNUT CREEK, Calif., March 1 /PRNewswire/ -- China is the world's fastest-growing economy, offering significant opportunities for U.S. businesses, but also a unique set of HR challenges. Quick employee turnover, widely varying employment laws between provinces, recruiting the right talent, benefits desired by Chinese workers -- are all issues for companies entering China and organizations already there.

"Making China Your 'Gold Mountain,'" a new conference and exposition in South San Francisco on May 23-25, explores the unique human resource difficulties that can significantly affect business success in China. The conference is hosted by XMei International, a business consulting and development organization with expertise in Chinese business practices and their cultural impact.

The conference is the first event in the U.S. with influential Chinese HR executives and business leaders from multinational companies, private Chinese companies, Chinese consulting firms and the government.

Among the abundance of practical advice, attendees will learn:

* Compensation and benefits trends, including how much to pay employees, how to pay them, required benefits, typical benefits package, and what benefits are most valued by Chinese workers
* How to find top talent in China, including how to advertise jobs, and keys to retaining employees in a culture where the average length of employment is two years.
* How Chinese culture impacts doing business in China, including how to work effectively across cultures
* How to outsource HR services in China, including what HR products and services are available in the Chinese marketplace
* How to comply with Chinese employment law -- and the critical
differences amongst provinces.
* Which Chinese provinces are the most labor friendly and how to set up business in China.

Delivering keynote speeches will be Dr. George Koo and Dr. Irv Beiman. Dr. Koo, the Director of Chinese Services Group for Deloitte and Touche, will speak on the conference theme, "Making China Your 'Gold Mountain.'" Dr. Beiman, Chairman of eGate Consulting, Shanghai, will address the links between challenges and solutions of doing business in China to HR requirements there. He'll discuss five root causes of the HR problems that hinder successful execution of business in China.

"This conference and expo represent a great opportunity to develop a Chinese business network," said Xiaoli Mei, president and founder of XMei International. "Our keynoters and session speakers are completely accessible. Those doing business in China, and those considering it, will benefit from the educational and social components of the event."

By Stephen Moulton

What Research Tells Us

Over the last 50 years, researchers have conducted numerous studies on the employment selection process. The studies discussed here are some of the most current. We hope this information will help you make better hiring decisions. Successful Interviewing is a Process, Not an Event.

1. Conduct a Job Analysis:

Wiesner, W. H., & Cronshaw, S. F. (1988) A meta-analytic investigation of the impact of interview format and degree of structure on the validity of the employment interview. Journal of Applied Psychology, 61,275-290.

The results showed that structured interviews were more than twice as effective as unstructured interviews. “On the basis of our findings we concluded that the best prediction achievable for structured interviews would be obtained where structured interview questions are based on a formal job analysis rather than a less systematic assessment of job requirements.”

The Wiesner and Cronshaw study reflected some interesting statistics.

1. The typical unstructured interview, conducted by a highly experienced interviewer, had a reliability of predicting job performance of about 15-30%.

2. A structured past-event interview, based on a job analysis, using rating guides, could achieve up to an 87% reliability in predicting job performance.

2. Create a Structured Interview:

Huffcutt, A. I., Roth, P. L., & McDaniel, M. A. (1996) A meta-analytic investigation of cognitive ability in employment interview evaluations: Moderating characteristics and implications for incremental validity. Journal of Applied Psychology, 81,459-473.

This review of 49 studies considered the impact of such factors as structure, type of interviews, and job complexity in assessing the extent to which employment interview evaluations reflect cognitive ability. Why do structured interviews have higher levels of validity? One theory is that they are better at assessing other factors related to success on the job.

3. Use Past Event Interview Questions:

Pulakos, E. D. & Schmidtt, N. (1995) Experience-based and situational interview questions: Studies of validity. Personnel Psychology, 48, 289-308.

In this study, two groups of 108 subjects were interviewed. One group was interviewed using experience-based questions (past event) about how they handled specific situations in the past, requiring skills and abilities necessary for effective job performance. The second group was interviewed using situational (highly structured future event or hypothetical) job related situations and asked how they would respond if they were confronted with these situations. The experienced-based interview questions resulted in higher levels of validity than the situational questions.

Campion, M. A., Campion, J. E., & Hudson, J. P. Jr. (1994) Structured Interviewing: A note on incremental validity and alternative question types. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 998-1002.

This study was conducted to see if a structured interview can have incremental validity in the prediction of job performance beyond a battery of cognitive ability tests. In addition, the study looked at whether the future oriented situational interview or past oriented behavioral interview would have higher validity. The validity of past interview questions (.51) was higher than the validity of future interview questions (.39). In addition, the past-oriented interview questions demonstrated incremental validity beyond future questions and the tests.

4. Use Interview Panels:

McDaniel, M. A., Whetzel, D.L., Schmidt, F.L., & Maurer, S. D. (1994) The validity of employment interviews: A comprehensive review and meta-analysis. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 599-616.

This investigation focused on what prior research had found on interview validity. The results were that the validity of structured interviews were higher than unstructured interviews and panel interviews were more valid than individual interviews. The study also found that interviewers who had access to test scores prior to interviewing candidates appeared to decrease validity.

So what is the big deal? The traditional interviews that most managers conduct will not keep your company ahead of the power curve. If you what to improve your ability to hire the right people for the right positions, structured panel interviews are the most effective. Panels need only be two or three members.

5. Control Biases and First Impressions:

Marlowe, C. M., Schneider, S. L., & Nelson, C. E. (1996) Gender and attractiveness biases in hiring decisions: Are more experienced managers less biased? Journal of Applied Psychology, 81, 11-21.

This study demonstrated that highly attractive male candidates were consistently rated as more suitable for hire than either marginally attractive male or female applicants. In addition, marginally attractive females were at the greatest disadvantage. Finally, men were perceived to be more suitable for hire or advancement than equally qualified women.

Bias and error by interviewers is a key reason for interviewing failure. Without some sort of scientific tools and training, interviewers will often make hiring decisions based on “gut feelings” and intuition. “Gut feelings” and intuition should be used to make probing more effective.

Dougherty, T. W., Turban, D.B., & Callender, J. C. (1994) Confirming First Impressions in the Employment Interview: A Field Study of Interviewer Behavior. Journal of Applied Psychology, 79, 659-665.

This study examined the behavioral styles of interviewers to confirm their first impressions of job applicants. In this study interviewers followed up positive first impressions by showing a high regard toward the candidate “selling” the company and giving job information. The interviewer also gathered less information on the candidate.

The candidate’s job is to make a good first impression. The first impression façade is often as unreal as the façade of a movie set, looks good, but little behind it. Interviewers that allow themselves to be sold by first impressions do little to check the qualifications of the candidate behind the façade.

Additional findings included:

1. Inexperienced candidates might be restricted in a range of potential responses to past questions. The relative flexibility of an interview probe based on past questions might improve relative effectiveness.

2. Future questions may be impacted by “fake-ability.”

“Fake-ability” relates to the candidate’s efforts to deliver responses that are not true in order to obtain a test or interview result that is favorable. Having the ability to minimize or eliminate “fake-ability” is perceived as important when screening for new employees.

6. Use a Rating Guide:

Cesare, S. J. (1996) Subjective Judgement and the Selection Interview: a methodological review. Public Personal Management, 25, 291-306.

Beyond such research considerations is the practical development of a sound interview that is psychometrically adequate, legally defensible, and cost effective. First, an effective interview must be premised on a through job analysis to outline the content, score, and determine the primary work domains of the position being examined. By extension, it is vital to align the rating dimensions contained within the job analysis to those content-based questions asked in the interview and those which correspond to segments of the performance criteria.

Additional findings included:

“ An essential component of any interview development strategy is the inclusion of training.”

The difference between an interview built on a job analysis, that links the interview questions and the rating guides, and one that doesn’t, is like the difference between day and night. Improving objectivity from subjectivity is a significant step toward the science end of the selection spectrum. Training is a key to user success.

7. Use Consensus Ratings:

Pulakos, E. D., Schmitt, N., Whitney, D., & Smith, M. (1996) Individual differences in interviewer ratings: The impact of standardization, consensus discussion, and sampling error of a structured interview. Personnel Psychology, 49, 85-103.

This research study investigated the validity of averaged versus standardized versus consensus ratings. This study sampled 515 professionals in a large Federal agency. The sample included a large cross-section of minorities. Past-oriented interviews were used to measure the quality of the rating process. “The underlying notion is that the best predictor of future performance is past performance in similar situations.” The result was that the validity of consensus ratings was significantly higher than the other approaches. The belief was that the interviewers were accountable to their peers and hence were more accurate in their ratings.

The consensus rating plays a key role in getting the right candidate. When interviewers and raters know they will have to meet and be accountable on the reasons for the fit of the candidate, they become more objective and thorough in their interviewing efforts.

Additional findings included:

1. Structured interviews, if preceded by a thorough job analysis, can be developed to tap the many skill and ability areas required for the job.

2. Experience-based interviews had little impact on, and were equally valid for, subgroups (White, Black, Hispanic, male, and female).

Past event questions were shown to be more effective than future event questions. Validated situational interviews often take weeks and cost $10,000 or more per position to create. Validated past event structured interviews can be created for 99.99% less.

Note that this study also supports the need for a thorough job analysis that identifies the skills or competencies necessary for success.

Bottom-line

Plowing through research studies like these can be dull and dry, as these summaries may be. Yet, they help us to understand what managers and interviewers need to do in order to hire employees and team members that will succeed and add to the success and bottom line of your company’s profitability.

ChinaForum

With the right credentials, the opportunities for chief financial officer candidates are wide open in China. But those credentials are very different than expectations in the United States or Western Europe. Success is linked to the ability to set up processes and systems, as well as the ability to thrive in the local environment.

Demand, supply

When foreign companies move their manufacturing operations to China from nearby Asian countries, moving regional headquarters follows. Then the banks come along. This migration has created a huge demand for qualified financial professionals and a special demand for a unique type of CFO.

Thomas Zhou, an executive recruiter with DaCare Executive Search in Shanghai, told ChinaForum, “On the corporate side, the hiring activities are quite busy because all companies need a CFO or controller. Financial management helps them grow the business. We do quite a lot at the controller and CFO positions.”

Other recruiters see the same. In a recent article “Hiring Days are Here Again,” consulting firm Wang & Li says, "The greatest need area that we are getting is for candidates with strong financial management backgrounds who are able to take on CFO and Controller positions.... In addition to being familiar with both international and China GAAP, such a person must also have very strong experience in setting up financial systems and processes."

To underscore the importance of systems knowledge and process, a study last year by PriceWaterhouse Coopers and CFO Magazine said that one reason CFOs in China find financial reporting a struggle is incompatible IT systems and poorly trained staff. Ting Liu of PWC’s advisory group in Beijing was quoted as saying, “The key reason that the finance function in China is not up to world class standards is mainly due to a shortage of qualified professionals as well as the advanced techniques coupled with state of the art IT systems.”

At smaller companies, Wang & Li, which specializes in placing international caliber bilingual professionals, points to a disconnect between the international environment expected by many CFO candidates and the localized environment of the businesses that need them. "Typically, the direction and intent of both the board and executive management team is there, but the day-to-day operating realities are quite a different story. Therefore, it requires a person who really understands how to get results and bring about fundamental change in a highly local Chinese company environment."

Some companies take the route of not hiring a CFO at all. Lehman Brown, for example, provides outsourced CFO services for companies that have good finance teams in place but which lack the resources to hire a full time CFO, or which have only sporadic oversight requirements.

Credentials

Most CFO candidates Zhou sees have their CPA credential, which they typically earn in China. Although an MBA is not always necessary, many have earned graduate degrees and certifications overseas in the U.S. or U.K. Some candidates are trained by their companies or they are promoted to the Asia-Pacific level (Hong Kong, Singapore, Kuala Lumpur) and are trained there, he says. Other recruiters say companies like to see candidates with both an MBA and CPA, although finding such a candidate is rare in China’s tight job market.

Special skills

At a multinational company operating in China, bi-lingual fluency is not only an advantage but a necessity. “The person has to be able to speak English and Mandarin very well,” Zhou says, and be able to read and write both languages. “English is a must because he will have to report to headquarters in Europe or the U.S.”

Fluency in changing accounting regulations and market knowledge is also important. Not only must candidates be very familiar with the U.S. GAAP and China GAAP, but they should understand the China market and the U.S. market.

Soft skills are also important, Zhou told ChinaForum. “They should be able to manage a team. And personality is always very important. You have to be able to communicate very well.”

David Yeoung, a partner in the CFO and professional services practice of Hendricks & Struggles in Beijing, says that IPO experience is also helpful, given the number of overseas IPOs, although it’s not absolutely necessary as most investors know that IPOs are driven by teams. It is more important for the CFO candidate to have run the full financial function.

Ambition, a recruiting firm with offices throughout Southeast Asia, reports a trend toward “exact fit” hiring of CFOs, leading to a more rigorous selection process, which can take six months. With CFOs in China now highly visible after recent accounting scandals, and with responsibility far beyond accounting, the risks of hiring the wrong candidate must be avoided. One of those risks is simply not fitting into the corporate culture, which is why “internal candidates” are often perceived to be the right choice for regional CFO positions.

Meanwhile, Ambition is also observing in China new “governance roles,” which support the CFO in compliance and financial reporting matters. New roles are leading to job creation and increased opportunities for senior level financial professionals beyond the CFO title, often at high rates of compensation. Ambition describes this as a new governance support profession.

Hiring

Zhou’s search group is typically used by foreign companies doing business in China, generally the Fortune 2000, and including such companies as Intel, Microsoft and EBay. When a company seeks a high level executive or CFO, his firm is able to attract candidates by presenting the company well and offering an attractive package, which can mean more than straight compensation. In China, he notes, the job title is important. “More and more candidates like to see their career progress while they are working in the company.” Rather than the title China CFO, many would like to see the title CFO- Asia-Pacific, according to Zhou.

And whereas China has a reputation for being a low-cost labor pool, hiring at the CFO level is an area where scrimping doesn’t work. One mistake that corporate executives typically make is thinking that they will be able to hire financial talent cheaper in China.

In a June interview with the Dallas Morning News, Martin Tang, Spencer Stewart’s chairman for Asia, said that some companies think they can hire a CFO in China for as little as $40,000, but learn it may cost five times that, or more. Not only that, but wise companies over-hire to sandbag against employee dropout.

Tang described five talent pools from which executives are chosen: (1) Western expatriates, (2) Asian expatriates, (3) Chinese natives who return after earning graduate degrees abroad, and (4) Chinese locals who have remained in China. Of these, the most valuable are the Chinese who return from abroad, according to Tang. That’s because they have education, knowledge of both cultures and the advantage of being Chinese themselves.

When multinationals can’t find these returnees, Hendrick & Struggles’ Yeung says they should consider foreign CFOs who have worked in China “for a meaningful period of time” rather than hiring expatriates. Ambition reports that it is “extremely rare for a full expatriate package to be offered to a CFO hired locally.”

In Zhou’s experience, half the candidates are coming from the Mainland, half are expatriates. Local candidates “can have a good degree, be well trained in the Big 4, also have some industry experience and work long enough in the local markets for a multinational company. Even if they don’t have overseas background, they can get small or medium size CFO positions.”

In terms of pay, the CFO title in China doesn’t guarantee a large salary, except in certain industries that require specialist knowledge. Increasingly, CFOs are expected to demonstrate a record of success. Ambition reports that corporate governance concerns have led to a general scrutiny of CFO pay packages, with compensation trending toward performance based incentives.

Retention

Churn at the CFO level remains relatively low. According to Zhou, “Turnover rate at the CFO level is not that high. I won’t say that’s a problem in China. I would say that’s a stable position.” The Ambition recruiters concur, especially for non-Chinese speaking CFOs who may be reluctant to move on because they see the “dwindling demand for non-Chinese speakers.

By Frank Mulligan - Recruit China

By now I am sure you have seen the headlines. ’Chinese stock plunge sets off a worldwide sell-off’, and ominously, ‘It began in Shanghai’.

If you haven’t been paying attention to this story maybe it is time to take a look. It looks and sounds like the beginning of a Hollywood thriller except that this time it’s for real.

Putting aside the negative consequences of the world-wide stock sell-off, it is clear that China has come of age. Ten years ago, or even five, no one paid any attention to the stock markets in China. There was little incentive to do this as the exchanges in Shanghai and Shenzhen were inaccessible to foreigners. Additionally, the stocks themselves were not of sufficient quality to grab anyone’s interest, and the market was extremely opaque.

It was more akin to gambling than investing.

The situation has changed a lot since then but it is still hard to come to terms with the fact that the Chinese stock exchanges were the first to fall and that they triggered a world-wide panic. It’s a bit like growing up. Suddenly you have all these additional skills but don’t know how to use them.

The source of the sell off appears to be the idea that the former US Federal Reserve Chairman, Alan Greenspan suggested a recession in the United States, and soon. The good news is that if you look at his comments, he did not specifically say that he expected a recession in the US. What he said was ‘ While, yes, it is possible we can get a recession in the latter months of 2007, most forecasters are not making that judgment and indeed are projecting forward into 2008 … with some slowdown’.

Not exactly the sky falling down, is it?

Here in China the upside of this is that the narrative of a recession and a falling stock market may cause companies in China, both foreign and local, to hold back investments in new factories and offices. Big companies are like that. Staffers don’t make strategic investment in uncertain times.

This should trickle down to a slowdown in hiring, albeit small, just at a time when it would normally increase rapidly. Candidates might also absorb the current headlines and become a little more conservative. The net effect might be an increased stability in retention patterns. So look out for a little fewer resignations than usual, which is a definite positive.

On the flip side you may have a harder time convincing candidates to join your company if you are new to the China market or the role is risky.

Here at Headcount HQ, we're always interested in tales from the high-rolling, globetrotting executive recruitment market – especially when they involve mysterious companies like Huawei Technologies Co. Ltd.

A high-level network architect recently recounted a strange tale in which he was recruited by two corporate recruiters and a half-dozen Huawei managers, only to end up with an offer that was roughly half of what he earned in the States. To take the job, Huawei also wanted him to relocate his family to China and live in Huawei's corporate housing – without a relocation package or an education budget for his kids.

Something got lost in translation.

"What a waste of time," said our source, who described the Huawei recruitment process as some sort of "Keystone Cops" experience.

The failed seduction started when our source got a call from a Huawei recruiter in Beijing. Our source says that after he expressed interest, he was quickly bounced from recruiter to manager to manager, back to recruiter, and then eventually to a manager at Huawei's FutureWei subsidiary in Texas.

Not only was nailing down the exact requirements for the job difficult, says our networking expert, but none of the Huawei executives could agree on where he should be based. The office proposals ranged from Beijing to Shenzhen. Sydney, Australia was mentioned, too, and that's a long drive from Futurewei's office in Plano.

Finally, our source asked for a formal letter with a formal offer. What he got was a letter asking him to take a laughable pay cut and pack his bags for a company dorm in Shenzhen.

Headcount hopes this yarn serves as a warning for execs everywhere: A bit of fragrance clings to the hand that gives flowers. Actually, that wasn't the lesson at all. That just came up in my Chinese proverbs desk calendar. Oh, well...

With Internet access spreading across Asia, employers can tap a growing array of online sites for sourcing candidates.
By Fay Hansen
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Vault.com is a well-established hunting ground for job candidates looking for U.S. job postings and inside information on employers. Recruiters post 500,000 openings a month on the site¡¯s job board and monitor the message boards to track candidate and employee postings about their company.

Vault analyzed its traffic data in 2005 and discovered that many of the users on its U.S. site were job seekers in Asia looking for career information and insider perspectives on U.S multinationals. To meet this obvious need, Vault launched its Asia site a year ago. Vault Asia now averages more than 200,000 unique visitors a month and posts jobs for employers across Asia.

Recruiters and job seekers can now find detailed information on the interview process for a technician at Ikea in Shenzhen, China, or the signing bonus for engineers at Qualcomm in Hyderabad, India. New hires freely report their experiences with the recruiting process and salary offers at major companies.

This year, Vault will break up the Vault Asia site into targeted sites for individual countries, with new sites for India, China and South Korea going live in the first quarter of 2007.

"Hiring is through the roof in Asia, particularly in China and India," says Edward Shen, general manager of Vault Asia.

Vault is part of the boom in career sites and job boards that is sweeping Asia. Internet recruiting has become a primary recruiting method in China and India, where economic growth is fueling nonstop hiring across all industries.

Recruiters are posting on the sites as soon as they appear. On January 11, NewChinaCareer.com went live. One month later, postings on the site for jobs in China included 296 positions at Microsoft, 320 at IBM and 492 at GE. Recruiters are using the site to source candidates with fluency in English for jobs in all the major cities in mainland China plus Hong Kong, Taiwan and Singapore.

Growing access
Job growth is explosive across Asia. China¡¯s major cities generated 12 million new jobs in 2006, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. GDP growth in China hit 10.7 percent in 2006, a full point above expectations.

India reported GDP growth of 9.2 percent for 2006 and surpassed South Korea to become Asia¡¯s third-largest economy, after Japan and China. Job growth is soaring at both foreign and Indian multinationals.

"Accenture is hiring 500 people a month in Bangalore alone," Shen says.

This volume of hiring is possible only when sourcing is fully automated through employment sites. The major players are job boards such as ChinaHR.com, which posts nearly 1 million jobs each day and offers 10 million registered job seekers. ChinaHR, the oldest employment site in China, sold a 40 percent stake in the site to Monster.com in 2005.

Recruit.net, a fully trilingual job search engine based in Hong Kong, posts 2 million jobs a month in English, Chinese and Japanese for positions in China, Japan, Australia, India and Singapore.

"Throughout Asia, the major job sites are becoming very important parts of the culture of each country," Shen says. "They have a major presence through advertising."

The number of Internet users in Asia is approaching 400 million, up 241 percent from 2000, according to Internet World. Although the Asian Internet penetration rate is only 10.5 percent overall, penetration in South Korea, Singapore and Japan is roughly equivalent to the U.S. rate of 69.6 percent.

China had 137 million Internet users by the end of 2006, up 23 percent from 2005, according to the China Internet Information Center. In Beijing and Shanghai, penetration is approaching 40 percent; in Hong Kong, it is 68.2 percent.

"In India and China, Internet use among the younger generation is at the same level as in the United States," Shen reports. "Our surveys of Vault¡¯s Asian members show that they are starved for information about careers and employers. The focus on careers among recent graduates is greater than what we see in the United States."

Rapid growth and high turnover drive constant recruiting. "Young professionals in China will change jobs two or three times a year and leave a company for a small salary increase at another company," Shen says.

Private-sector wages in China rose 11.4 percent for the year ending in the third quarter of 2006, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China.

High demand is balanced by a high supply. Vault¡¯s recruiting contacts in China and India report that the supply of candidates is strong and that many companies say they have too many applicants.

"InfoSys in India had 1.3 million applicants in 2006, with a large portion of this coming in through the company¡¯s Web site," Shen notes. "Young professionals are focused on brands, so a company like InfoSys receives many r¨¦sum¨¦s."

In China, multinationals and top domestic companies are looking for specific skills from native Chinese with English-language skills, so the challenge is to identify the right people, Shen says. Multinationals recruiting for professional positions on local job boards receive an extraordinarily large volume of responses and need to be prepared to target individuals.

Global partnerships
The online recruitment market in Asia is still far behind that of the United States, according to Maneck Mohan, director of Recruit.net. In Recruit.net¡¯s markets, Australia is the most mature and China the least developed in the transition from traditional offline media job postings to online postings.

"In the United States, 80 percent of the Fortune 500 companies now accept only online job applications," Mohan says. "For the Asia 500, this number is just below 25 percent, and we expect it to reach 40 percent by the end of 2008."

Because the site drives targeted job seeker traffic to the job listings on the company¡¯s Web site, all information flows directly into the employer¡¯s application tracking system.

Companies that use Recruit.net¡¯s premium services can tap the site¡¯s pay-per-click system. The companies define their own budget and then only pay for job seekers that click through to their job listings instead of paying for each posting.

Recruit.net also offers job-seeker analytics to measure the effectiveness of job advertisements and to collect information on job seeker behavior.

"For example, companies can track the keywords that job seekers used to find their job, how many times the job was displayed and the percentage of displays that resulted in a job seeker click-through," Mohan reports.

The jobs are also syndicated across a network of partner sites and distributed to niche sites, forums and blogs.

"This dramatically increases the reach and visibility of the jobs to a passive, highly targeted job seeker audience," Mohan says.

In November 2006, Recruit.net entered into a partnership with the U.S.-based DirectEmployers Association, which maintains JobCentral.com, an employer-owned search engine. Many of DirectEmployers¡¯ members are large U.S. multinationals. Jobs posted on either of the two sites now automatically appear on both.

"U.S. employers with operations in Asia are the primary users," says Bill Warren, CEO of DirectEmployers. "It gives them another outlet and a much more cost-effective way to reach job seekers in Asian locations." More than 140 U.S. employers are now using the Recruit.net site for posting jobs at their Asian locations.

The flat membership fee of $12,500 a year for DirectEmployers companies includes international job postings. Non-member companies can post a position for $25.

Job seekers who are interested in a job posted on JobCentral.com are automatically routed to the company¡¯s Web site, so DirectEmployers does not have information on the final outcome for candidates or employers.

"But the member company renewal rate is 95 percent, indicating a high level of satisfaction with the offerings," Warren says.

Warren believes that the rapid expansion of global recruiting conducted through the Internet will continue.

"Over the next few years, we¡¯ll see more of the upward spiral in usage," he says. He notes that both Monster and CareerBuilder are pushing for an international presence. The number of employment Web sites stands at 40,000 worldwide, according to the International Association of Employment Web Sites.

"Also, international job listings will become a commodity as they are now becoming in the U.S, with no charge for the listings and all revenues for the site driven by advertising," Warren says. "We see this approach now with the rise of Google, which will have a huge impact on Internet recruiting over the next few years. Developments overseas lag three to four years behind the U.S."

The technology is in place for global recruiting and true workforce mobility, but it¡¯s difficult to project political developments with respect to visa regulations, Warren says. With Asian multinationals now investing heavily in the U.S. and Europe, however, the push for simultaneous job postings across all regions will accelerate.

As Asian multinationals continue their cross-border merger-and-acquisition activities and buy up more U.S.-based companies, job postings will flow out from the Asian firms and create new opportunities for global job boards and for recruiters working in the U.S. and abroad.

Lenovo has announced its sponsorship of the "Global Marathon For, By and About Women in Engineering," a live webcast event that will be broadcast to a worldwide audience on March 22.

Lenovo also pledged its multi-year support for the National Engineers Week Foundation and the Global Marathon. This third annual Global Marathon will provide a global audience of K-12 and college students, teachers, counselors, parents and professional women engineers access to top women engineers in leading institutions and industries around the world.

Lenovo will kick off the live Global Marathon from its executive headquarters near Raleigh, North Carolina in the United States at noon EST and will feature Fran O'Sullivan, senior vice president of the Lenovo Product Group, and Dr. Sally Ride, former astronaut and the first American woman in space.

"Lenovo is focused on cultivating a diverse and talented pipeline of engineers. By reaching students early, we can help them overcome the subtle social obstacles that often turn school-age girls away from technical professions," said O'Sullivan. "This is our way of inspiring the next generation of women engineers by exposing them to a wide showcase of role models who have built distinguished careers in technical fields."

O'Sullivan and Dr. Ride will also lead a Q&A session at Lenovo with students from North Carolina schools during the live Global Marathon webcast.

Lenovo's global engineering team will also participate in the Global Marathon, giving presentations from countries including China and Japan. Over the course of 24 hours, various leaders from the engineering field around the world will hold conversations through webcasts, Internet chats and conference calls in an effort to encourage girls to pursue engineering careers

Shaun Rein of the China Market Research Group submits: My firm recently interviewed senior executives of MNCs in China about their operations in China and what parts are strong and what parts need improvement. One of the respondents’ biggest complaints in doing business here surprisingly was not corruption or IPR issues. Indeed, the majority of respondents said that the Chinese Government has cracked down on corruption and IPR enforcement to the improvement of business conditions.

Instead, the most common complaint from our interviews was HR related. As China’s economy booms, executives said that it is hard to recruit and retain good talent that will help them scale their businesses and enter into the potentially lucrative 2nd and 3rd tier cities of China .

I wrote about strategies for retaining talent in a recent Harvard Business Review piece, and how MNCs need to put in place better training programs, eliminate glass ceilings for Chinese workers, and reduce if not eliminate outsized expat packages that cause jealousy amongst lower paid Chinese employees.

China’s HR conundrum is something that confuses a lot of people who have not had to hire people here. They reason that there are so many people in China looking for jobs that it must be easy to hire people. They point to the fact that China’s number of university graduates matriculating every year has quadrupled in the last five years from 1 million to 4 million and to the fact that there are 180 million migrant workers who “float” around China looking for job. How can it not be easy to hire talent, these people reason, especially if you give them salaries like $500 USD a month that is far less than what companies pay workers in the US but far more than the average GDP per capita in China which stands around $100 USD a month.

The problem is that the skills that most workers possess are not necessarily what MNCs are looking for. For those with the needed skills, it is an employees market. They can and do demand ever higher salaries, with MNCs regularly doling out 20% annual increases to retain even mediocre talent. Restless and wanting to be the boss and make millions, they are switching jobs every year or so, leaving MNCs constantly looking to hire.

As a result of market conditions, large executive search firms like Korn/ Ferry (KFY), Russell
Reynolds, and Spencer Spuart as well as boutique ones have been multiplying. It seems like every other office in my building in Xintiandi is either a headhunting or textile company.

But online recruiting sites like 51jobs.com (JOBS), ChinaHR.com, Zhaopin.com, and an aggregator that pulls job listings from across the internet called Yingjiesheng.com is of the most interest to retail investors. The top three sites together control nearly 70% of the online job market with 51jobs.com leading the pack with a 39% market share, followed by ChinaHR.com at 15% and Zhaopin.com with roughly 14%. And it is a booming market.

My firm, the China Market Research Group (CMR), estimates that the online job market in China will grow fourfold by 2010 from its 2005 value of $100 million USD. Growth will remain steady as the majority of China’s 125 million internet users fall between the ages of 18 and 28. This age group, which I have termed China’s Baby Boomers, are internet savvy, much as their peers in South Korean are. They are willing to apply to jobs online. In our surveys, China’s youth said that they like to conduct a job hunt using online job hunting sites because it is “convenient” and because some of the sites like Yingjiesheng.com “actually have relevant information about companies including the interview experiences of other applicants.”

Investors have been paying attention to these numbers and sentiments.

Monster.com (MNST) invested $50 million USD in 2005 to buy a 40% stake in ChinaHR.com. More recently, Monster invested another $20 million USD to increase its stake in the company to 45% and has announced that it intends to take control of the company sometime in 2008.

Zhaopin.com, at present the smallest of the big three, recently received an investment of $20 million USD from Seek Limited, the largest job site in Australia. It has announced plans to differential itself from its competitors by targeting younger job seekers in China’s 2nd and 3rd tier cities.

Of the big 3 online job hunting sites, only one, 51jobs.com is public. So, should investors buy shares in the biggest player of a hot market?

The financials for 51jobs.com has been promising in 2006. Q1 2006 saw revenue of $21.5 million USD, 21% higher than Q1 05. Total second quarter revenue was $21.7 million USD 18% higher than Q2 05. The growth continued in Q3 with revenue was up 12.5% over 2005 Q3. Profit for Q3 was $12.1 million USD, 15.9% higher than the same period last year.

The stock has been wild, moving from $15 USD in early January to a high of $31.90 USD in the middle of May after beating estimates, before crashing back down to $12.70 USD at the end of October after missing earnings estimates. It is now holding steady at $16.56 USD on December 22.

Right now, 51jobs.com seems to have the edge in terms of market share over its competitors. But Chinese internet users are fickle and mass migrations from one site to another after a change in technology or service are quite common as 51jobs.com still has not created a stickiness factor. MNCs seem to post jobs on all 3 of the major sites.

We found recently the following examples of MNCs that use online job hunting sites to find talent:

51job: ABB (ABB), Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), General Electric (GE), Hitachi (HIT), HP (HP), Microsoft (MSFT), Motorola (MOT), Oracle (ORCL), Tyco (TYC), and Webex (WEBX)

Zhaopin: Bayer (BAY), Bayerische Motoren Werke AG (BMW), Colgate Palmolive (CL), Ford (F), HSBC (HBC), Philips (PHG), Shangri-La (SHANG), Royal Dutch Shell pls (RDS.A)

ChinaHR: Timken (TKR), China Mobile (CHL), Cisco (CSCO), Dell (DELL), Ebay (EBAY), Google (GOOG), International Business Machines Corp. (IBM), Morgan Stanley (MS), Sina (SINA), and Western Union (WU)

However, more and more MNCs are getting used to posting jobs on university BBS which are free and which is where the majority of students we interviewed said they go first when looking for jobs. Students like BBS like Fudan University’s because they can “discuss” a company there, get “company specific interview information”, ask for “advice on salary” packages – a scary situation for companies, however, as all their rejected applicants might criticize them.

In the next 6 months, I do believe that 51jobs.com has room to grow and capture more market share. It might be worthwhile for investors who are willing to take a few risks to look at buying a few shares. I think that the risks in 51jobs.com are quite high because of the potential competition. I see Zhaopin making big strides with its new war chest – this could pose a threat. However, I don’t see Zhaopin being able to take away major market share in the next 6 months.

Keep your eyes on the competition though. I believe that one major player will emerge in the next 12 months and that there will be a consolidation of the industry to 1 or 2 major players.

Note: CMR Analysts Ben Cavender, Natalie Zhu, and Allen Lee contributed to this article.

By Meta L. Levin 2007.1.23 Wall Street Journal

When Bernie Fung returned to Hong Kong 14 years ago, he secured a front row seat for the fastpaced economic transformation of the People’s Republic of China.

A HongKong Native who spent 20 years working and studying in Canada and the U.S., Mr. Fung is now CEO of AON Asia, a risk management consultancy, and finds himself competing for the limited pool of financial professionals who have expertise and experience of working in and with China. "It's a challenge to find the right talent," he says.

The rapid pace of economic growth is making China one of the hottest financial recruitment markets in the world. And multinational companies seeking to enter China are looking to hire candidates with skills that allow them to work in, and advise on, this complex market.

Companies arriving in china on the tide of foreign investment need accountants, auditors and financial managers who understand the market and are familiar with the variances between cities, provinces and regions. Demand is also high for English speakers, those with overseas and management experience, as well as familiarity with working in a multinational corporate environment and with new product sales, says Thomas Zhou, partner and co-founder of DaCare Executive Search, which has offices in Beijing and Shanghai.

"Native (Chinese) understand the culture, the policies and, most important, they have network connections with local government and companies," says Sherry Liu, a Beijing native, now based in Milwaukee, who has lived in the U.S. for 22 years and operates SimChain Global Logistics LLC, and outsourcing company in China. Like most, she believes that the best picks are the "haigui," Chinese who studied abroad and know the international game rules.

That, however, is one of the biggest challenges, and recruiters like Guy Day, managing director of Ambition Asia, an accounting and finance recruiting firm in Hong Kong, struggle to find enough Mandarin-speaking candidates who hold a U.S. Certified Public Accountant, British Certified Practical Accountant or similar certification from other countries.

Chinese colleges and universities are turning out an increasing number of entry-level job candidates, but there are few middle and upper-management Chinese with the necessary experience in international commerce, making the competition fierce and salaries rise. "Investment in education didn't start until about 10 years ago, so there is a greater supply of those with little or no experience and the top jobs are going to people from Hong Kong or to non-Asians," says Mr. Day.

It can be difficult, however, for non-Asians to understand the cultural complexities of working in china. "Sometimes a manager coming in from another country will have problems, because he doesn't know how to handle the locals," says Leonard Sarkissian of Milwaukee, Wis., whose company, international Harbor LLC, helps foreign firms through the process of setting up a business in China. He emphasizes the importance of learning to read cultural cues. For instance, Chinese will not say no directly to guests. They may say," it's very difficult," explains Ms. Liu. "There are many ways to show their disagreement, but none of them is no". Foreign managers who don't understand that may find the process frustrating and counterproductive.

Recognizing this, AON Corp., AON Asia's parent company, recently initiated a program to identify Chinese national studying in the U.S., hire them and put them through a training program before sending them back to China to work at either AON's insurance or brokerage offices there.

Those who take internal audit jobs in China must be ready for a lot of travel, and that can make these positions a tough sell, says Mr. Day. "Some of the junior-Level jobs have 90% travel. You are literally living out of a suitcase." Accounting and financial analysis jobs tend to have considerably less. Since many companies have manufacturing facilities in China, it also is important that those looking for jobs understand and be familiar with this environment, Mr. Day says.

Chinese job candidates are becoming more sophisticated. Whereas salary was king for many years, whey now are evaluating employers by career trajectory, training and overseas opportunities, as well as remuneration.

"Candidates have woken up to the fact that working for the right company and having the opportunity to work their way along a clearly defined career path can be worth more than money along," says Mr. Day. While money is still strong attraction, he finds the market maturing as those with financial expertise look for careers and not just jobs, and cast a critical eye on such things as location and travel opportunities. Employees also prefer big name multinational companies, seeing in them more opportunities in the long run.

An increasing number of young Chinese job candidates are looking for companies that will finance their M.B.A. studies, says Mr. Sarkissian. In fact, it has become a part of some corporate retention programs in China. An employer will offer to pay for graduate school in return for a commitment to stay with the company for certain number of years. A lot of Chinese universities also now have partnerships and joint programs with those in the U.S. and Europe. Often a job candidate will ask if the company will pay for an M.B.A. as part of the interview. "It would be the kicker for them," says Mr. Sarkissian.

Language is a big issue. Although Mr.Fung agree English is the international language of business, he believes that finance professionals who want to be successful in China do need to at least be familiar with Putonghua, the official Mandarin dialect spoken in most of the large cities.
"As a hot growth market, more U.S. companies are trying to establish their presence (in china), which does create additional demand for managers who are fully Mandarin-English fluent in both language and culture," says Susan Amy, director of the Career Management Center at the university of North Carolina's Kenan-Flagler Business School.

These is also the issue of Chinese familiarity with Western business culture. "Part of the advice I give is to raise your hand and speak up at meetings," says Corbette Doyle, AON's U.S. –based global chief diversity officer. "That is culturally unacceptable in China." It is Ms. Doyle's job not only to promote diversity in AON's offices around the world, but also to find ways to do business without stepping on cultural toes. She cites as an example a group of Chinese AON employees who founded the "China Desk" within the company. They help AON's U.S. clients who want to go to china, as well as Chinese clients who want to invest in the U.S. "They see it as an opportunity to help the organization and help themselves without raising their hands and saying 'look at me.'" She says.

A reader's toolbox:

For people who buy to let mortgages take care of the rest, the compass bank prefers to offer no deal at all. Usually those who discover card for the first time, get trapped into this mess of mortgages. It is high time we should know that credit cards are meant to be used as vouchers and not vice versa. A secured loan on the other hand, is a different matter altogether.

When you've worked at only one employer for your whole career, writing a resume that wins interviews may be no easy task. The reason: Some hiring managers and recruiters may take a dim view of your single-company job history. While you might see signs of loyalty or job security, they may wonder why you haven't moved to a better opportunity or been recruited, among other questions.

"It's an absolute red flag," says Daniel Barr, a partner with Christian & Timbers, an executive search firm in New York. "I would proceed with caution before recommending someone with a real long tenure with one corporation to a client." His main concern, he says, would be a candidate's ability to adjust to a new work culture.

If you have been with one company, it's important to quickly defuse any qualms a hiring manager might have about your job history.

To lessen the odds that it will hinder your efforts to move on, organize your resume using these five tips.

1. Show progression.

If you've been promoted, your job titles are likely to reflect your career advancement, says John Marcus, a resume writer and job coach in Sarasota, Fla. For example, you may have gone from accounting supervisor to assistant controller to controller.

Start your "Job History" section with your employer's name as a heading in bold, says Ms. Kursmark. On the same line, list your starting and ending years with the company, she says.

Emphasize your titles by giving each its own treatment, says Ms. Kursmark. List each one, flush left, and in bold, and, if you have been promoted consistently, provide the dates. If your most recent position has been for four years or longer, Mr. Marcus advises leaving dates out to avoid raising doubts about your potential for promotion.

For each position, list your achievements and responsibilities in bullet points, says Ms. Kursmark.

2. Show adaptability.

When Harvey Brackett, 42, of Fresno, Calif., wrote a resume after leaving his employer of 21 years, he listed each of his past positions separately and added descriptive bullet points. For his position as a co-manager, he stressed management skills, and for his position as a human-resources technician, he highlighted organizational and recruiting skills

"I wanted to show potential employers that I was versatile and my skills weren't limited," says Mr. Brackett.

Can't come up with a diverse range of skills and experiences? Think about your company's changing needs and how you adjusted to them over time, says Jewel Bracy DeMaio, executive resume writer for APerfectResume.com in Sanatoga, Pa.

"Just because you may have worked with the same company, it doesn't mean that you've done the same thing eight hours a day for 20 years," she says.

Make it clear that you have worked in different positions or offices to show that you can adapt to different managers and co-workers, says Mr. Barr.

If you have remained in one position without being promoted, highlighting a broad background is especially important, says Mr. Marcus. He suggests making the first bullet point under your title a task directly related to the position you are seeking and listing other areas of expertise with an emphasis on variety.

3. Use numbers.

Quantify your results for hiring managers. Mention the amount of money you were able to save or generate for your company and the number of people you supervised.

"Dollar signs and percentages carry the highest impact," says Ms. Bracy DeMaio. If you are unsure about a figure, use a good estimate, she says.

4. Group skills together under subheadings.

Subheadings are good ways to showcase different areas you've worked in. These groupings may include results, training and skills acquired in several positions. You also can create subheadings for special projects you were involved in, Ms. Kursmark says, using bullet points to stress results or achievements.

If you have remained in the same position with the company, subheadings will help you avoid a lengthy list of bullet points and will help make your resume more readable. When recruiters do a quick scan of your resume, they may get the impression you have a varied background, says Mr. Marcus.

5. Bolster experience.

If your resume looks a little bare, including relevant internships can show additional experience, says Mr. Marcus.

After working for three years with a district attorney, Brandi Brice, 29 of Philadelphia, was worried she would be typecast as a prosecutor while trying to break into white-collar defense. Ms. Brice, who hasn't accepted an offer yet, listed her internship with the defender's association to bolster her experience and show that she is capable of working for either side of the law.

Recruiters may be concerned that adjusting to a new work environment may be more difficult for someone with experience with just one company. Volunteer work and other activities where you interact with different people can show that you are comfortable in a variety of settings and that it won't be difficult for you to adjust, says Lindsey Pollak, a career-advice writer and speaker in New York.

Providing additional relevant information such as professional organizations, leadership and civic activities also can add credibility, says Ms. Kursmark.

Marshall Goldsmith is a famous executive coach, who has worked with more than 80 CEO¡¯s in the world¡¯s top corporations. He has a fabulous new book out called What Got You Here Won¡¯t Get You There. Actually, the title is not very descriptive, but the subtitle says it all: 20 workplace habits you need to break. It¡¯s a content-rich, well-written book.

While Goldsmith warns against self-diagnosis, I found the list incredibly helpful (even though I am not and never will be a CEO.) The practical, real world advice he provides for conquering these bad habits is immensely useful. Here¡¯s his list of bad habits:

1.The need to win each time
2.The overwhelming desire to add our two cents to every discussion
3.The need to pass judgment on others
4.Needless sarcasm and cutting comments
5.Starting with ¡°no¡±, ¡°But¡±, ¡°However¡±
6.Need to show how smart we are
7.Speaking when angry
8.Negativity: the need to share negative thoughts even when not asked
Withholding Information
9.Failing to Give Proper recognition
10.Claiming credit we don¡¯t deserve
11.Making excuses
12.Clinging to the past
13.Playing favorites
14.Refusing to express regret
15.Not listening
16.Failing to express gratitude
17.Punishing the messenger
18.Passing the buck
19.An excessive need to be ¡°me¡±: exalting our faults as virtues simply because 20.they¡¯re who we are

If you're a senior executive looking to add a key member to your marketing staff, but you've never hired marketing people before: buyer beware! Why do I say this? While there are a lot of talented marketing executives out there with an excellent repertoire of skills and experience, there also are marketing people who lack the substance, the training, the skill sets, and the understanding of marketing dynamics in order to really have a positive impact on your business.

What is the profile of an empty marketing suit? Well, typically it's somebody who dresses well, is very polished, speaks nicely, and uses all the latest fancy buzzwords, but who has little/no track record of actual execution or success. This person is great at "wowing" a CEO through the interviewing process, but that's about all they're good at.

What you should be looking for is a marketing executive who's got true substance and capabilities.

What I want to outline here are some of the key hiring criteria when you're looking for a good marketing executive:

• They should have outstanding quantitative training with a strong background in mathematics, which translates into being able to do budgeting, forecasting and tracking.

• They should have proven analytical skills that are used to survey and analyze complex sets of data, do market segmentations, sizing, competitive analysis, etc.

• They should have strong strategic thinking skills and a strong grasp of marketing strategy, as evidenced by previous challenges they have faced and dealt with in their career.

• They should have formal training in strategic marketing planning, product planning, new product development, etc.

• They should understand the modern methods for marketing communications for both awareness building as well as lead generation. In particular, a marketing executive of today needs to have a very strong grasp of Internet marketing since that¡¯s how so much of today¡¯s successful marketing gets done.

• A marketing executive needs to be able to lead. That means they have to have very strong collaborative and influencing skills, that can be brought to bear on setting a direction for an executive team. They also need to know how to instill good marketing discipline.

Today's "best in class" companies are both market and customer driven. The marketing leader needs to be the voice of the customer and the marketplace as it relates to setting strategy on target markets, new product development, gross margins, sales channels, messaging, etc. ¨C the list goes on. Given this level of complexity in skills and experience, making a good hire can be a real challenge for the untrained eye. This is why bringing in a recruiter or executive search firm which specializes in marketing is so important for many firms who lack this expertise in-house.

If you are in the process of looking for a member of your marketing team, make sure that you follow a rigorous process to clearly understand what's under the hood with the people who you are interviewing. If you don't, and you end up with an empty marketing suit, it'll cost you tremendous amounts of money, lost market share, and lost opportunity.

If you are a CEO or a sales manager and you're in the process of interviewing top sales talent, you probably have been trained on standard behavioral interviewing techniques which are used to make sure that you are getting to the heart of a candidates past behaviors as to predicting future performance. The other critical component that's probably even more important is to make sure that in your behavioral interviewing process, you're integrating performance based interviewing questions that really get to the heart of whether or not a candidate has the track record of consistent achievement that is an accurate predictor of their ability to achieve their sales goals once they come to work for you.

Performance based interviewing means that you need to integrate a number of specific measurements of metrics into the actual questions that you ask to a sales interviewee. Those include providing a summary of sales achievements by year against their actual quota, and then moving upstream from there to look at their activities in terms of daily and weekly customer visits, call counts proposals delivers, face to face customer visits, percentage time spent at the sea level versus at the front line decision maker level, etc. A good sales candidate should be able to rattle off these types of measures from previous positions.

Performance based interviewing also means that you're going beyond just asking a person how they faced and won in a difficult sales challenge. What it translates to is asking the candidate how they've consistently beat their sales goals. Those are the kind of people that you're looking to hire anyway, and by asking performance based questions, you'll have a much better chance of weeding through a pile of resumes and a pile of potential candidates to get to those true top performers. After all, the true top sales producers, those who are in the top five percent of their class, can outsell the next ten to twenty percent of sales people by a factor of two fold. So why wouldn't you invest in hiring only the best?

The thought of writing a resume fills many people with dread. However, all you need is a plan that covers both lay out and content. CareerOne's website editor and Ask Kate columnist, Kate Southam passes on the advice from the experts.

The plan below should help you produce a resume that is easy to read and packed with facts employers want to know.

Contact details
Centre contact details at the top of the page. Include name, address, phone number, mobile and email. Make sure your name and phone/email contacts are on each page just in case the pages get separated after being printed out in hard copy. Only use professional-sounding email addresses. Emails used by couples or zany nicknames like evilpixie@ should be replaced. This is a marketing document promoting you so use some variation of your name.

Birth date and marital status
You are not legally obliged to include either detail. Including marital status in this day and age just looks plain weird to me. As for age, MANY recruiters advise against it - there is just too much age prejudice out there. However, if you think displaying your birth date would be an advantage to you, then go ahead.

Lay out
Again, this is really open to debate but the best advice I've heard is "keep it simple". Font style should be easy to read like 11 point Times New Roman or Arial. I've noticed many candidates use a table format but I find this wastes a lot of space and is hard to follow and ugly. Centring contact details and your Career history or Career summary (see next section) is fine and then placing the other information flush left.

Bold for headings is easier to read than bold and underline (overkill). Use dot points if you want, but just the one type. I have seen resumes with a variety of dot points. Also avoid colours. The content of the resume is the most important thing.

Summarising your strengths upfront

You can do this two ways, either via a list of Key Strengths represented as dot points or by creating a section under a heading like Career Profile.

Key Strengths

Based on my conversations with recruitment consultants, a key strengths area represented with dot points is the popular option. The aim of the section is to give the person reading your resume a quick snapshot of what you have to offer in the hope they instantly place you in the short list pile.

To maximise the opportunity

For example:

High level computer skills including Excel, Word and Powerpoint.
Five years experience in customer service both face to face and phone based.
And you fill in the rest. As a guide, six points is good but there is no real rule. Another tip, be specific. I see a lot of "Excellent Communication Skills" but what does that mean?

Excellent written and verbal communication skills acquired via study and customer service work.
Career Profile, Career Overview, Career Summary, Career Objective?

Many people start a resume with a Career Objective. I think this is fine for school leavers or recent uni grads. For the rest of us, a career overview or Career Overview might be better. Employers want to know what you are going to do for them. Putting your expectation of your next employer in the first line of your resume could be off putting. By all means conclude with a career objective eg - "While currently a product manager, my career goal is to move into general management".

A Career Overview should provide the reader with a quick preview of what he or she will find in your resume. It should be a few sentences and written as one paragraph. It should include a smattering of your professional, academic and industry training. Some personal attributes are optional. As stated, your career goal could serve as the last sentence.

For example:

Career Overview

A sales management professional with seven years' experience in the media industry, I have worked on newspaper, web and television products. I have a proven track record of developing new business and motivating a team to consistently exceed targets. I've recently completed a Masters of Business Administration and am now seeking a new professional challenge.

By the way, the example above is totally made up, but you get what I mean.

Also, avoid airy, fairy statements. Ian Napier of Flexiforce says that if a sentence doesn't contain factual information, ditch it.

For example, Ian has seen more than a few candidates describe their career goal as "to utilise my skills in a professional environment for the mutual benefit of myself and employer".

"I hate that line," Ian says. "Where is this sentence coming from? It is stating the obvious and tells me nothing."

Professional history

Outline your career history in reverse chronological order.

The structure to follow for each role is:

Job title, employer, dates
What you did, for whom and when.

Description of employer
This is appropriate for those coming from overseas or in cases where the company might be largely unknown. Organisations like IBM, News Limited, Suncorp or the big banks, to name a few examples, will need no explanation.

I read a resume from a candidate with fabulous IT experience gained while working for the largest children's hospital in India but he didn't say that. The hospital name, without that description, might not ring any bells with an IT hiring manager in Australia.

Responsibilities
People make the mistake of believing the more responsibilities listed the better. Include only the key things you were "responsible for" (accountable for). Don't list every single thing you did. I have seen CVs where people include: "Attended a weekly team meeting". So what? "Chairing" the weekly team meeting is a responsibility. See the difference?

Achievements (up to three per job is good).
This is where you list the things that you did that you were not paid to do. Items would include staff awards, special commendations, suggestions you put forward, scoped out or helped to implement that led to cost savings or an increase in revenue, access to new clients, higher levels of customer service, time efficiencies and so on.

Please note meeting a target is not an achievement - it's doing what you are paid to do. Exceeding a monthly target by an average of 30 per cent with a top result of 56 percent is an achievement.

Achievements show potential hirers what you are made of - and what they can expect you will do for them.

Indent your achievements by one tab on your resume to make them stand out.

Example of a professional history item using the above lay out (again, purely made up):

Customer services manager, A-1 Clothing Care Service, October 1999 - present day

About A-1:
First opened for business in November 1999, the company provides a national telephone and email consumer service to the end users of its 35 fashion retail or design clients.

Responsibilities:
Manage a team of 30 call centre agents who advise consumers on garment care, product updates and where to purchase particular garments.

Update and distribute new research to call centre agents; manage technology suppliers.

Plan and project manage technology and service improvements.

Achievements:

Recruited, trained and established a start up team that was fully operational within a month - one week ahead of schedule
Introduced technical efficiencies that resulted in an improved customer response time of 150 percent.
Worked with the sales team to create new products and services that resulted in a 40 percent increase in our customer base in 2004-2005.
Named Employee of the Year 2004
Follow this format for at least your last two to three jobs.

Education and Training
Start with your highest qualification first. Unless you are fresh out of school, leave your secondary school history out.

Education and Training section can cover university, TAFE training, industry courses, in-house courses, and any other professional training.

Professional Memberships
Include only those relevant to your career as well as an indication of how active you are in the organisation.

Referees
References/Referees come at the end. Names and phone numbers (not mobiles) are the most acceptable presentation. Add a sentence: "Written references available upon request" if you wish.

Hobbies and interests
I have heard mixed views about the wisdom of including a "Hobbies and Interests" section. If you want to include it, place it before Referees.

Some career experts warn that the section could work against you if the reader dislikes or is threatened by the activities you list.

How long should my resume be?
For school leavers and those that have been in the workforce for a few years, two pages is fine but for everyone else three to five pages is advised.

That is the advice from career experts like Amanda McCarthy of Brisbane who is currently writing Resumes for Dummies and from Geelong-based business consultant Steve Gray.

Both warn that hiring managers and recruiters want to see how your career has developed as well as some detail of your achievements, both what they were and how they added value to the business.

However, experts advising mature candidates say don't go back more than 10 years on your resume. You can include a paragraph under the heading "Other professional experience" if you want so you can mention earlier work of particular interest or relevance. Or you can provide a full summary of your professional history. You can end with the sentence: "Full resume available upon request."

My last word
The structure above provides the potential employer with the information that he or she wants - in the correct order - to help them make the decision to interview or not.

No one gets a job based on the resume alone. The purpose of the resume is to get the interview, no more, no less. Send further questions about resumes to me via the Ask Kate link.

At the beginning of the New Year, we urged candidates to get their searches started off right. With the New Year comes new hope and the realization that there might be a better job out there. Well, as the first month of 2007 draws to a close, recruiters need to prepare themselves for the onslaught of candidates who are ready to take the necessary steps to find the right position. We¡¯re now in the midst of what is generally the busiest season for recruiters:

¡±We¡¯ve always seen a spike in activity throughout January as people resolve to build a better life in the New Year. But it seems this is compounded by the poor weather and in particular the lack of daylight at this time of year, which contributes to a poor sense of wellbeing. It seems depression is the motivating factor for many a job search: ¡®I¡¯m unhappy = perhaps a new job might make me happy¡¯ seems to be the train of thought.¡± (From Recruiter Magazine)

It¡¯s not just depression that leads quiet and active candidates to move their searches into high gear at this time of year. Bonus structures, vacation time, and advancement opportunities are often determined by where you are and how you¡¯re doing in the early months of the year. So, as things pick up, it¡¯s important for recruiters to communicate with candidates and hiring managers in order to make the right match. It¡¯s also important to realize that you might be inundated with even more resumes than usual, which means you¡¯ll need to spend a little extra time responding to candidates.

For candidates, realize that the market can be a little flooded right now. This doesn¡¯t mean you shouldn¡¯t get involved. It just means you need to be as prepared as you possibly can:

¡±We all know that your resume is key to your job search. January is a great time to make sure it is up-to-date.

¡±Think about your target job, employer, and overall market. Make sure your resume is tailored to the outcome you want. Include industry key words and format your resume according to any industry standards.¡± (From Job Tuition)

Take the time to get your materials in order and to do the research that will help you better understand what specific companies are looking for and what you have to offer them.

As always, good luck to all involved as the job search heats up.

Companies recruiting several people at once such as call centres favour group interviews. It allows many people to be assessed simultaneously while also providing candidates with a look at what the company is all about.

Jacqui Whyatt of the Chandler Macleod Group says group interviews do not follow the traditional question and answer format. Instead, candidates take part in a number of group problem-solving activities.

Often role-playing will be involved with one candidate acting as the angry customer while another plays the staff member applying a solution that the group has come up with. Candidates might be asked to stand up and tell everyone a bit about themselves and why they believe their attributes suit one of the roles on offer.

The best way to prepare is ask for a job description. Spend some time thinking about why your skills and personal attributes would suit that description. Some CareerOne readers have told me companies fobbed them off when they asked questions. Don't sweat it if that happens; just get on with your research. Read up on the company using its website as a source but also visiting a library to look at newspaper clippings if need be. Rehearse talking about yourself and role-playing with family members. This helps calm nerves and enables you to practice a firm handshake, good eye contact and listening skills as well as speaking clearly and loudly enough for all to hear.

Ms Whyatt said corporate dress is the only way to go even if you know the company has a casual dress code.

We¡¯ve reached the half-way point of our Recruiter Bill of Rights, and we¡¯ve come to a topic that some candidates shy away from: Salesmanship. A top recruiter knows that a candidate can have a great background and huge plans for the future, but never even get close to landing the job they want because they simply can¡¯t or aren¡¯t willing to sell themselves.Now, we¡¯re firm believers in hiring qualified people for the job, but if you have the skills a company needs, you have to show them that or you can quickly get overlooked for somone with less experience and less ability. Companies want to know how you can help them, and recruiters want you to demonstrate that you fit that company¡¯s needs. Not everybody is fond of throwing out the sales pitch, but it will help recruiters help you, and it will help you get closer to the job you want. The folks at Guerilla Job Hunting summed it up rather perfectly, so we once again go back to their quote for inspiration:

¡±Employers don¡¯t care about what you want to do or even who you are until after they¡¯ve hired you. So stop telling them about your dreams and start selling to their needs.¡±

We¡¯ve often talked about the need for urgency on the part of hiring managers. Urgency can play a part for candidates, as well. This doesn¡¯t mean that we want people to take the first job that comes along or to engage in suspect search practices with sub-par search tools just to land a job quickly. However, it¡¯s important to stay focused on the present and to give hiring managers and recruiters a sense of what you have to offer right now:

¡±It¡¯s not about your past or what you used to do for someone else. It¡¯s about how you come across right now, in the present moment. That means you have to sell yourself so people get a powerful snapshot of you . . . one that makes them sit up and pay attention to you!¡± (From Job Search Secrets)

We don¡¯t want you to pull cheap tricks like coming in dressed as a clown or singing a song in your interview in order to ¡°get noticed.¡± We just want candidates to give recruiters and hiring managers the best possible chance to match them to the right job. This means candidates have to know what they have to offer and what a company is looking for. We¡¯ll provide the tools to make that happen, but candidates will have to take it from there.

Career Expert Offers Tips for jump-starting a lengthy job search.

When people think of burnout, they tend to think of overworked employees, but those putting in long hours on the job hunt also may be affected.

Weary candidates often suffer the same problems as overwhelmed workers, including reduced productivity and morale, says Career Expert Tracey Turner.

"It continues to be a very challenging time for job seekers, some of whom have spent many months looking for new opportunities," says Turner. "Switching gears and exploring different career avenues can help the unemployed re-energise and identify new leads."

"Jobseekers don't have to dramatically alter their strategies to be effective. For example, volunteering one or two days a week with a nonprofit isn't a big change, but it could have a major impact if the candidate acquires a new skill or meets someone along the way who can help him or her professionally."

Turner offers the following ideas for jump-starting a job search:

Make the call

You may have sent out a flurry of resumes, but have you followed up on the phone? Find out who the hiring managers are, and call them to express your interest and discuss your qualifications.

Divide your time

A lot of job seekers focus primarily on searching job listings and sending out resumes. But networking is equally important. Spend at least half of your day reaching out to others and making new contacts.

Put your work on the Web

A professional website providing work samples, a printer-friendly resume and your contact information can be an impressive job-hunting tool for any professional. A simple site is fairly easy to create, but if you're not web-savvy, consider hiring a local web design student to develop your site for you.

Create a business card

Develop an attractive card to hand out that briefly describes your expertise and gives your contact information, including the URL to your professional website if applicable.

Launch a publicity campaign

Submit articles in your area of expertise to local business and trade publications, or give talks to nonprofit groups or industry organisations. These activities can enhance your professional visibility and expand your network.

Follow the laws of supply and demand

If your skills and experience are in low demand, identify the positions that are in high demand and try to acquire the necessary qualifications.

Consider temporary work

Working with a specialised staffing firm can help you make new contacts and acquire additional job experience while earning a paycheck.

10 New Year Resolutions to Help with your Career

It's that time of year again when you have to re-evaluate your career.

It's that time of year again when you have to re-evaluate your career, determine what your next step will be and where you want to go next. So whether your resolution for the upcoming year is to land yourself that killer raise or boldly become the company's next CEO, here are 10 resolutions vital to furthering your career.

1. Put the extra effort into your work

It's so easy to fall into the "doing your time" rut of a nine-to-five job. Why not spend those extra hours working late on those projects your boss needs done by the end of the week? This doesn't mean cramming more work onto your already full plate, but rather taking initiative and doing something extra. The added benefit is that it will make you feel good and proactive, and your boss is likely to notice your hard work.

2. Improve yourself

The New Year is the perfect opportunity to step back and look at what areas you want to brush up on. Don't allow yourself to fall into a 'couch potato' mind-set. Learn a new skill this year that you can add to your CV. Or learn a new language, especially if you wish to take on a new position with an international feel, requiring travelling and socialising with other cultures.

3. Keep on top of what's going on in your industry

Get a "big picture" view of your industry by subscribing to one or more trade publications. Or resolve to read professional publications or attend conferences or workshops in your field.

4. Network, network, network

This year, learn how to network. Maintain contacts from your past while continually seeking out new, beneficial relationships.

5. People skills

Don't forget your people skills. If you don't know how to interview, work with a team or handle your boss, chances are you won't go far.

6. Update your CV

Doing an annual or biannual touch up of your CV is a great idea. If it's been a while since you rewrote your CV, you may want to seek professional CV advice.

7. Go for an interview

Although you should be extremely discreet about it, keeping your options open is the best career move you could make - even if it's just to hone your interview skills and practice your responses.

8. Join a professional association

Join a professional association in your field. It is an excellent addition to your CV!

9. Dream Job

Learn about competitive salary ranges for your dream job. This is especially important if you are about to enter into a job negotiation or are working with recruiters.

10. Work-life balance

Have fun. Looking for a job and boosting your career is hard work. Don't forget to take time out and enjoy yourself along the way. Make time for friends and family, exercise, hobbies and life. Remember, all work and no play...

And finally, right after getting that annual bonus, insulting your boss at the office party and photocopying your behind, remember to stick to your resolutions this New Year.

Expatriates are a big part of the business life in China. They have brought a good amount of technology, management and practical knowledge to bear on the challenges that face China¡¯s industrial base. In many ways you could say that they brought a new manufacturing platform to China and the economy has been at least partly built around it.

Unfortunately, expatriates tend to bring both the good and the bad with them. It cannot really be any other way, and it¡¯s not in any way a criticism.

For expatriates holding recruiting or HR positions in China this means that they bring the processes and models that relate to the hiring of staff in their home country. They hold these models in their head and they often try to apply them to the market here. Sometimes they know they are doing it, and try to minimize the damage. At other times they are not even aware that their assumptions are not valid.

In China, like much of the world, we are currently experiencing a ¡®War for Talent¡¯. It would actually be more accurate to say that this war continues to rage, but let¡¯s not split hairs. It¡¯s been going on for about 20 years but it ramped up significantly after China acceded to the WTO in 2001. One thing that caught my attention recently was a throw away line by an expatriate workforce development professional that companies around the world are solving their War for Talent, to some extent, by tapping into the pool of mature workers in their country. The suggestion was that this would work everywhere because, obviously, ¡®everywhere¡¯ is suffering from the retirement of the post-War Baby Boomers.

The reaction here in China was a kind of embarrassed incredulity, and a degree of irritation at such a lack of understanding of the market. So what was the basis of this lack of understanding?

Exponential Growths
First a little background material. Without laboring the point too much, demand for skills is a direct result of expansion in industrial production or increased demand for services. There is a lag in this demand but it can be shown that the overall demand has a direct correlation to the GDP growth of the country. Broad GDP growth leads to a broad growth in demand for skills and people.

In China things are a little different. The typical scenario for the growth of a particular industry has been that the government liberalizes the industry and it takes off fast, within a very short time. Latent demand kicks in and the sheer scale of opportunities causes an inrush of suppliers and manufacturers.

Simply put, the government gets out of an industry and allows private players to take the lead. Foreign players then form joint ventures with the local players and the quality and quantity of product increases. Meanwhile, the introduction of newer manufacturing methods drives the price down and this in turn drives more demand.

The problem is that this growth tends to be massively exponential. So what you see is a series of exponential growth curves that represent the take off in telecommunications, automotive, banking, shipping and so on.

If you remember anything about your high school mathematics courses you will see instantly see that it is very difficult to look back through the skills pipeline to find strong skills going back to the time before the market was liberalized. The available skill set for a given age group tends towards zero very fast.

So you are going to find it extremely difficult to find a 20-year veteran in any given industry in China coming to you with a real understanding of modern production methods. And of course you won't find the depth of experience in the younger professional who does have the understanding of modern production methods.

Change must be on our minds this week. In our last glimpse at Talent Force we explored the ever-changing job market and how it affects both companies and top talent. Today, we¡¯re going to look at the fourth right in our Recruiter Bill of Rights, which centers on a very different type of change:

4.Change: Candidates shall be willing to listen to advice given by the recruiter when advice is given in an honest attempt to help. Candidate will also be willing to make the changes necessary to make themselves a better candidate for the positions they¡¯re interested in obtaining.

We might have easily labeled it flexibility. It¡¯s about a candidates¡¯ willingness to take good advice and do the things necessary to make themselves as appealing as possible to the companies they¡¯re interested in:

¡±Faced with stiffer competition and tougher hiring requirements, companies of every sort are becoming single-minded about productivity and bottom-line performance. Consequently, competition for jobs is increasing as management seeks and hires only those persons who appear to have the most potential for helping to boost the company¡¯s profits.¡± (From Guerilla Job Hunting)

We know that candidates have their own unique skills and qualities to bring to the table, but we also know that great recruiters have insight into what else is needed to get the right candidates into the right positions. Career coaches and resume experts are quick to point out situations that most of us have faced at one time or another:

¡±You find a promising job listing online. Excited, you send a well-crafted cover letter and resume and wait for a response. Six weeks later, you¡¯re still waiting, your enthusiasm has waned, and you¡¯ve concluded your resume has fallen into a black hole.¡± (From ResumePower)

They often suggest tweaking your resume or committing more time to making quality contacts. Both of these steps can give you a leg up in your search, but there are times when it takes more than that. Recruiters can point out where skills and experience are lacking, and they can point candidates in the right direction to help rectify those weaknesses. However, the advice only works if candidates are willing to listen and willing to make changes when necessary. The task becomes easier for both recruiter and candidate when they can both look at a concrete breakdown of how the candidate stacks up against others who are vying for the same types of positions.

We know that change isn¡¯t easy and that not all advice is good advice, but top recruiters can help you transform into top talent if you¡¯re willing to listen and willing to use all of the tools at your and their disposal.

China's rapid economic expansion has allowed Beijing to fund a recruitment drive targeting some of the best and brightest IT graduates from U.S. universities, according to Chinese sources.

In turn, this brain trust is being used by China both as a control on its own Internet revolution and as a potential resource for North Korea' cyberwar program.

South Korean defense ministry said North Korean hackers are targeting the most tightly-guarded systems of that country's main foes to extract intelligence information and to spread viruses capable of wiping out material or, at least, slowing down computers.

North Korean students learn how to use computers at an elite school in Pyongyang. AFP

Defense officials said privately that North Korea, with no great pool of computer whizzes from which to select, is relying on Chinese aid and advice to train some 600 qualified hackers in five years.
One Hong Kong-based specialist said China has a budget for hiring the best IT graduates from U.S. universities to monitor and control Internet news reporting, and useage within its own borders as well as for a national security resource. "They've got the money, and they are spending it," he said.

In North Korea, the campaign ranks as a priority for Kim Jong-Il, who whetted his appetite for computer skullduggery during visits to China and Russia several years ago. Kim made a point of visiting computer labs in both countries and decided that all North Koreans should somehow become adept at operating computers even though Internet access is forbidden except for the highly privileged elites.

Those having access include Kim Jong-Il closest relatives, friends and allies, notably from the armed forces, as well as extremely well-trained technicians who had to pass strenuous tests of loyalty before being accepted into the elite computer course.

Students are studying in China and also at an academy that South Korean officials say has been educating a cadre of elite technicians for more than 20 years in a remote mountainous region.

Is finding a new job on your list of New Year's resolutions? The market may be in your favor.

Recent reports from the U.S. Labor Department indicate that while the expansion of the U.S. economy is slowing, it is doing so at a reasonable pace, and inflation has steadied. A moderated, yet stable, job market is expected to carry over into 2007 with gains that will remain strong enough to keep the unemployment rate in check.

University of Michigan economists predict the United States will create 1.5 million jobs in the next 12 months. According to CareerBuilder.com's annual job forecast, 40 percent of hiring managers and human resource professionals operating in the private sector report they will increase their number of full-time, permanent employees in 2007, compared to 2006. Eight percent expect to decrease headcount while 40 percent expect no change. Twelve percent are unsure.

Employers are expected to become more competitive in their recruitment and retention efforts in the New Year as the pool of skilled labor shrinks and productivity growth plateaus. Forty percent of employers report they currently have job openings for which they can't find qualified candidates.

This bodes well for workers who are likely to benefit from more generous job offers, more promotions, more flexible work cultures and other major trends identified for 2007:

No. 1: Bigger Paychecks
To motivate top performers to join or stay with their organizations, employers plan to offer better compensation packages. Eighty-one percent of employers report their companies will increase salaries for existing employees.

Sixty-five percent will raise compensation levels by 3 percent or more while nearly one-in-five will raise compensation levels by 5 percent or more.

Nearly half of employers (49 percent) expect to increase salaries on initial offers to new employees.

Thirty-five percent will raise compensation levels by 3 percent or more while 17 percent will raise compensation levels by 5 percent or more.

No. 2: Diversity Recruitment -- Hispanics Workers in Demand
Understanding the positive influence workforce diversity has on overall business performance, employers remain committed to expanding the demographics of their staffs. With the Hispanic population accounting for half of U.S. population growth since 2000, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, and buying power growing 8 percent annually, one-in-ten employers report they will be targeting Hispanic job candidates most aggressively of all diverse segments. Nine percent plan to step up diversity recruiting for African American job candidates while 8 percent will target female job candidates.

Half of employers recruiting bilingual employees say English/Spanish-speaking candidates are most in demand in their organizations.

No. 3: More Flexible Work Arrangements
Work/life balance is a major buzzword among U.S. employers as employees struggle to balance heavy workloads and long hours with personal commitments.

Nineteen percent of employers say they are very or extremely willing to provide more flexible work arrangements for employees such as job sharing and alternate schedules. Thirty-one percent are fairly willing.

No. 4: Rehiring Retirees
Employers continue to express concern over the loss of intellectual capital as Baby Boomers retire and smaller generations of replacement workers fall short of labor quotas.

One-in-five employers plan to rehire retirees from other companies or provide incentives for workers approaching retirement age to stay on with the company longer.

No. 5: More Promotions
With the perceived lack of upper mobility within an organization being a major driver for employee turnover, employers are carving out clearer career paths.

Thirty-five percent of employers plan to provide more promotions and career advancement opportunities to their existing staff in the New Year.

No. 6: Better Training
In light of the shortage of skilled workers within their own industries, the vast majority of employers -- 86 percent -- report they are willing to recruit workers who don't have experience in their particular industry or field, but have transferable skills.

Seventy-eight percent report they are willing to recruit workers who don't have experience in their particular industry or field and provide training/certifications needed.

No. 7: Hiring Overseas
Companies continue to drive growth by entering or strengthening their presence in global markets. Thirteen percent of employers report they will expand operations and hire employees in other countries in 2007. Nine percent are considering it.

With China's economy expanding at 10 percent annually and India's at 8 percent, these two countries are particularly attractive to U.S. companies.

Twenty-three percent of employers recruiting overseas report they will hire the most workers in China and 22 percent will hire the most in India.

Survey Methodology
This survey was conducted online by Harris Interactive on behalf of CareerBuilder.com among 2,627 hiring managers and human resource professionals (employed full-time; not self employed; with at least significant involvement in hiring decisions), ages 18 and over within the United States between November 17 and December 11, 2006. Figures for age, sex, race/ethnicity, education, region and household income were weighted where necessary to bring them into line with their actual proportions in the population. Propensity score weighting was also used to adjust for respondents' propensity to be online.

With a pure probability sample of 2,627, one could say with a ninety-five percent probability that the overall results have a sampling error of +/- 2 percentage points. Sampling error for data from sub-samples is higher and varies. However that does not take other sources of error into account. This online survey is not based on a probability sample and therefore no theoretical sampling error can be calculated.

Matt Ferguson is CEO of CareerBuilder.com. He is an expert in recruitment trends and tactics, job seeker behavior and workplace issues.

One 31-question survey used by Ceridian for its employees. Questions include "How satisfied are you with how the job was described during the interview process compared to what you are actually doing?"
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As part of a solution to deal with employee turnover, Ceridian¡¯s HR department saw an opportunity to increase employee satisfaction and retention and improve its staffing processes. The staffing department created a quarterly survey in (below) to help gather information from each new hire regarding their satisfaction of the hiring process, training, impression of manager, and orientation.
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We appreciate your feedback on this brief survey to help us understand what we¡¯re doing well, and what we need to improve regarding: the interview process, new hire introduction, new hire training, and job specific satisfaction.

The survey has 34 questions and will take you 10 to 15 minutes to complete. Your answers will be kept completely confidential.

Section 1 - Pre-Employment

1. How were you recruited to Ceridian?
Employee Referral
External Recruitment Agency
Ceridian Staffing Department
Re-hire
Worked for previous customer
Other

2. How satisfied were you with the number of on-site interviews with Ceridian?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

3. If dissatisfied, please tell us how many interviews were conducted: _________

4. How satisfied were you with the organization and scheduling of your interviews?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

5. How satisfied were you with the explanation of Ceridian¡¯s benefit program?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

6. How satisfied were you with the length of time it took from the time you applied to the time you were hired?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

7. During the interview process, did you receive a folder with company information?
Yes
No

8. Overall, how satisfied were you with Ceridian¡¯s interview process?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

Section 2 - New Hire Introduction

9. Do you work virtual (off-site)?
Yes
No

10. How did you receive your "first day" new hire orientation?
Teleconference conducted by Ceridian Human Resources associate
On-site
Did not receive ¡®first day¡¯ orientation. If so, skip to question #14

11. How satisfied are you with the first day new hire orientation?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

12. How satisfied were you with the welcome you received from your department?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

13. How satisfied were you with the knowledge and skill of your assigned mentor or co-worker?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

14. How satisfied are you with your manager¡¯s ability to lead and provide direction to you?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

15. How satisfied are you with the necessary tools (i.e. computer, phone, etc.) provided to complete your job?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

16. How satisfied are you with the time it took to receive your benefits package?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

17. How satisfied are you with the benefits automated enrollment process?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
Section 3 - Training

18. When you were hired, what percentage of your skills matched those required to perform your job?
100% Match
80% Match
50% Match
20% Match
No Match

19. How satisfied are you with the computer-based new hire orientation training?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

20. How satisfied are you with the flexibility and ease of completing the computer-based new hire orientation training?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

21. How satisfied are you with the job-specific training opportunities provided by the Learning and Development Organization?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

22. How satisfied were you with the assistance of your manager in completing your training?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

23. How satisfied were you with the availability of your mentor or co-worker to assist you in completing your training?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

24. How satisfied are you with the length of time given to complete training during work hours?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
Section 4 - Job Specific

25. How satisfied are you with how the job was described during the interview process compared to what you are actually doing?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

26. How satisfied are you with the review of Ceridian¡¯s Performance Management Process with your manager?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

27. How satisfied are you with the review of Ceridian¡¯s goals and objectives explained by your manager?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied
N/A

28. Considering everything, how would you rate your overall satisfaction with Ceridian at this time?
Extremely Satisfied
Very Satisfied
Somewhat Satisfied
Dissatisfied
Very Dissatisfied

29. Would you recommend Ceridian as a good place to work?
Strongly Agree
Agree
Neither Agree or Disagree
Disagree
Strongly Disagree

30. What recommendations do you have that would improve the new hire process?

31. Please share any additional feedback or recommendations you may have.

Executive search is about enticing the right person for a job, writes Vivienne Reiner.

HEADHUNTERS can do no wrong in the current economic climate, with a global skills shortage fuelling growth in their industry. Revenues for executive search firms worldwide have grown by 20 per cent each year for the past two years, and indications are very good that 2006 will also be a year of significant growth, according to US-based Peter Felix, president of the Association of Executive Search Consultants.

"Assuming a 20 per cent increase this year, then the market would be more or less back to its peak 2000 level with worldwide revenues at about $8 billion,'' Felix says. "Any growth beyond that would take us to new heights.''

Search has experienced strong growth in the past few years because of a war for talent caused by demographic trends in Western countries and high competition for experienced management in new growth markets such as Asia and Eastern Europe. In Australia, the market is quite buoyant across all sectors, and particularly strong in infrastructure and resources. As well, the rate of change in Australian companies jostling to improve position, and mergers and acquisitions, have placed further pressure on the hunt for executives.

Executive search organisations tend to perform searches for senior positions offering remuneration upwards of $150,000-$250,000. But in Australia search is also becoming more common for more junior roles, thanks to the low unemployment rate. Employers are increasingly turning to recruitment agencies to target specific organisations and people to fill positions below the $100,000-mark.
Recruitment agencies with executive search arms, however, can be less research-intensive than headhunting firms that specialise in search.

Rob Pocknee is a partner in Cordiner King, the Australian arm of leading global executive search group Amrop Hever. Cordiner King receives up to 100 unsolicited resumes every week. But the people Cordiner Kings wants are often those well looked after by their employer, or too busy to apply for a new job.

"Sometimes the best candidates will not respond to an advertisement, and in fact that's probably becoming more and more the norm the higher you go in terms of the job,'' he says.
From the employer perspective, it may also be preferable not to advertise an upcoming vacancy, because this could be sensitive. To some people, headhunter is a bad name, suggesting a profession which poaches otherwise happily employed individuals.

But Pocknee believes the best headhunters present the information and leave the next step to the individual. According to Antony Beaumont, country director for Australia of another big global headhunting firm, Russell Reynolds Associates, people targeted for approach are generally ready for a new challenge. It is increasingly common for their companies to respond with a counter-offer, but Beaumont says about 80-90 per cent of people who accept counter-offers and stay put end up leaving within a year.

Beaumont says one of the exciting elements of working in the industry is the potential for finding the right placement that transforms an organisation. He once saw an injection of outside expertise boost a share price substantially. Some headhunters keep unsolicited CVs, but Beaumont says his firm focuses on search rather than collating and managing the numerous requests for work that come its way.

"It's like a golden age for executive search,'' Beaumont explains. "As companies become more international, the potential impact of executives who can really make an impact and drive performance and demonstrate that superior leadership is more marked. There's more demand for these people and there's a relatively small pool of them.''

The job of headhunting may sound mysterious, but there is generally a set way of going about the business that guides the profession. The first task is to get a clear brief from the client -- perhaps not so easy when it involves a number of stakeholders. Next is to identify possibilities. Headhunters search their databases, speak to sources and specialists, and look at people in similar roles to the brief.

They then act as a mediator between the short-listed candidates and the client. Getting a meeting between the interested parties can be a job in itself, with full diaries and executives often in overseas locations. A change of mind at the last minute can further drag out the process. Searches commonly take three months or more, and are not always successful.

Headhunting can be done by large international executive search firms, boutique firms that may focus on one or two niche markets, or by national recruitment agencies with executive search arms. Larger firms tend to be brought in for appointments at the CEO level or for positions reporting to the CEO, and where candidates are hard to find.

Stakes are high, with executive search firms generally charging up to a third of the position's first-year salary -- (placements resulting from advertising average about one fifth of the salary, and some headhunters charge a fixed fee). One standard headhunters generally set for themselves is to not approach people previously placed for another client. Damon Sharwood, the director of legal search and recruitment agency, Dolman, says the exception is a past placement approaching the agency off their own intitiative.

Sharwood says in some cases people have said in their exit interview that they were headhunted, rather than admitting they had been looking. "It's happened a few times and we have then had to go back and explain ourselves,'' Sharwood says.

How can people increase their chances of being headhunted? As well as approaching agencies, people should raise their profile. Julie Mills, the chief executive officer of Australia's peak body, the Recruitment and Consulting Services Association Ltd, says in this new era of privacy law headhunters can face hurdles getting information -- but there is nothing to stop people posting their own details on the internet.

And Gaby Riddington, senior principal at local recruitment firm Hamilton James & Bruce, which also does executive search, says people can become more visible by presenting themselves as expert in their area -- especially beneficial for those who do not network outside the workplace to make presentations at conferences, publish papers or do volunteer work for professional associations.
Riddington says people who are looking for new opportunities should not get complacent, or let their standards drop. And she says it is worth the effort to recommend a suitable person if someone approaches you for help in a search -- it's likely the favour will be returned.

Do your opinions seem to count? Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important? Have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?
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After hundreds of focus groups and thousands of interviews with employees in a variety of industries, Gallup came up with the Q12, a 12-question survey that identifies strong feelings of employee engagement. Results from the survey show a strong correlation between high scores and superior job performance. Here are those 12 questions:

Do you know what is expected of you at work?

Do you have the materials and equipment you need to do your work right?

At work, do you have the opportunity to do what you do best every day?

In the last seven days, have you received recognition or praise for doing good work?

Does your supervisor, or someone at work, seem to care about you as a person?

Is there someone at work who encourages your development?

At work, do your opinions seem to count?

Does the mission/purpose of your company make you feel your job is important?

Are your associates (fellow employees) committed to doing quality work?

Do you have a best friend at work?

In the last six months, has someone at work talked to you about your progress?

In the last year, have you had opportunities at work to learn and grow?

Previously employed by a major Korean consumer electronics company to supervise one of its production facilities, A is working for a Chinese electronics manufacturer (referred to as B) as an executive. After recruiting A, B copied the manufacturing system and even operational processes and organization of A¡¯s past employer. At the request of his current employer to ¡°bring talented workers from Korea at every opportunity,¡± A has recruited seven Koreans.

A¡¯s case reflects the ¡°talent war¡± waged between Korea, China and Japan. Given the cultural similarity among the three, it is relatively easier for them to capitalize on one another¡¯s talent pool.

Unfortunately, Korea is losing that ¡°war.¡± While China and Japan have rolled up their sleeves to attract as many talented workers as possible, Korea is losing a significant number of workers to non-Korean employers overseas due to job shortages. Moreover, Korean companies are not making enough systematic efforts to retain workers.

China is eying Korea¡¯s high-tech workforce who they think will boost its industrial growth. Grappling with an aging population, Japan is looking for workers who will help relieve itself of the burden of workforce shortages.

Outflow of Korea¡¯s Skilled Workers ¨C

The Korea Institute of Science and Technology Evaluation and Planning (KISTEP) estimates that about 9,000 skilled workers were employed out of Korea last year and that 3,000 to 4,000 of them went to China.

The number of job seekers who found work in China through the Chinese online placement agency China Tong more than doubled from 1,094 in 2001 to 2,232 this year. One third of them are estimated to have been hired by Chinese companies.

Japan is luring more Korean workers to enhance its IT competitiveness and resolve its workforce shortages problem caused by aging. Indeed, the Japanese government and businesses are making hard efforts to recruit Korean and Chinese IT workers under the second-phase ¡°e-Japan¡± project whose main objective is Japan¡¯s comeback as an IT powerhouse. Headhunters in Japan are so eager to find Korean IT workers who are willing to come to Japan that some call the whole situation an ¡°IT Korean wave.¡±

Potentially A Hard Blow Against Korea¡¯s Competitiveness ¨C

Compared to the two neighbors, Korea¡¯s record of attracting talented foreign workers is far below expectations. According to the Ministry of Information and Communication, non-national IT experts working in Korea are just 1,122, whom include only 87 Chinese and 41 Japanese. The combined number of non-national high-quality workers in Korea (excluding those at language institutes) stands at about 2,000.

The Koreans who chose China or Japan did so because companies in the two countries came up with more attractive employment offers, including better living conditions.

Korean programmers working in Japan say, ¡°I don¡¯t want to go back home because I feel mistreated there.¡± An employee of a Korean company in Beijing says, ¡°Recently, Korean companies reduce their staff in China to cut costs. So more Koreans in China are quitting to remain in China.¡±

Outsourcing ¡ª the practice of using outside firms to handle work normally performed within a company ¡ª is a familiar concept to many entrepreneurs. Small companies routinely outsource their payroll processing, accounting, distribution, and many other important functions ¡ª often because they have no other choice. Many large companies turn to outsourcing to cut costs. In response, entire industries have evolved to serve companies' outsourcing needs.

But not many businesses thoroughly understand the benefits of outsourcing. It's true that outsourcing can save money, but that's not the only (or even the most important) reason to do it. As many firms discovered during the outsourcing "mania" of the early 1990s, outsourcing too much can be an even bigger mistake than not outsourcing any work at all. The flat economy caused many companies into huge layoffs and subsequently outsourced functions that were better kept in-house. Wise outsourcing, however, can provide a number of long-term benefits:

Control capital costs. Cost-cutting may not be the only reason to outsource, but it's certainly a major factor. Outsourcing converts fixed costs into variable costs, releases capital for investment elsewhere in your business, and allows you to avoid large expenditures in the early stages of your business. Outsourcing can also make your firm more attractive to investors, since you're able to pump more capital directly into revenue-producing activities.

Increase efficiency. Companies that do everything themselves have much higher research, development, marketing, and distribution expenses, all of which must be passed on to customers. An outside provider's cost structure and economy of scale can give your firm an important competitive advantage.

Reduce labor costs. Hiring and training staff for short-term or peripheral projects can be very expensive, and temporary employees don't always live up to your expectations. Outsourcing lets you focus your human resources where you need them most.

Start new projects quickly. A good outsourcing firm has the resources to start a project right away. Handling the same project in-house might involve taking weeks or months to hire the right people, train them, and provide the support they need. And if a project requires major capital investments (such as building a series of distribution centers), the startup process can be even more difficult.

Focus on your core business. Every business has limited resources, and every manager has limited time and attention. Outsourcing can help your business to shift its focus from peripheral activities toward work that serves the customer, and it can help managers set their priorities more clearly.

Level the playing field. Most small firms simply can't afford to match the in-house support services that larger companies maintain. Outsourcing can help small firms act "big" by giving them access to the same economies of scale, efficiency, and expertise that large companies enjoy.

Reduce risk. Every business investment carries a certain amount of risk. Markets, competition, government regulations, financial conditions, and technologies all change very quickly. Outsourcing providers assume and manage this risk for you, and they generally are much better at deciding how to avoid risk in their areas of expertise.

Checking applicants' references is one of the most important procedures in the hiring process. Many job seekers misrepresent their backgrounds and credentials; others simply leave out important information. And no matter how honest applicants are, you can still learn a great deal by talking to other people who know them well.

Checking references takes time, but it can save you a lot of money and headaches down the road. A negative reference could save you from hiring someone who is woefully unqualified for a job or who has destructive tendencies that could land you in trouble. For example, you can be held liable for a new hire who becomes violent and injures an employee or customer, or commits fraud ¡ª if it's proven that a reference check could have stopped you from hiring the applicant. The best rule of thumb: always check applicants' references before offering them the job.

These nine tips will help you get the goods on a job applicant:

1.Tell all applicants that you will check their references before you make any hiring decisions. Business owners often hire applicants because of a sharp-looking resume or a "good feeling" from an interview. No matter how quickly you'd like to get a position filled, always perform due diligence before you take the hiring plunge.

2.Ask each applicant to sign a release form permitting you to ask detailed questions of former employers and other references (sample background check permission forms are listed on this page). Make sure the form prevents the applicant from suing you or any former employers based on the information you learn during the reference checks. Without this permission, you may only be able to confirm employment dates, pay rate, and position ¡ª information that tells you little about a prospective employee's character. Also, check with your lawyer, because some kinds of liability cannot be waived.

3.Fax over a copy of the prospective employee's background check waiver and your personal credentials before you call a prospective employee's references. Many employers fear being sued for defamation if they say anything negative about a former employee. Your fax will ease their fears. Keep in mind that some states now consider employers' comments to be "qualifiedly privileged." That means the employer cannot be held liable for the information he or she reveals unless he or she knows it to be false or reckless. If that's true in your state (check with your lawyer), make sure the references know it.

4.Verify basic information such as employment dates, job titles, salary, and types of jobs performed. If one of the basic checks doesn't match the prospective employee's resume or what you heard during an interview, you've got a clear sign that something may be amiss.

5.Avoid vague questions. Ask specific questions based on what you learned about the applicant in the interview. For example: how did the employee contribute to projects mentioned in the interview?

6.Pay attention to neutral or negative comments from references. Lukewarm comments or half-hearted praise speak volumes. Ask the former employer if they would hire the person back. If they hesitate, move on to the next applicant.
Put less weight on positive references. Most people can find someone to say something good about them. And some employers give positive references even to bad ex-employees, because they're afraid of legal action or are tired of paying unemployment taxes on the applicant.

7.Use former supervisors or senior coworkers as references. An applicant might not want you to contact their current employer (who might not know about the job hunt), but there are always people who can provide a reference.
Don't rely on prospective employees' verbal word regarding salary figures. Ask for a current pay stub to verify employment and pay rate.

8.Another bit of research you might conduct on a prospective employee is a background check. Not every company does this, and not every position merits it, but it might be appropriate for many of your staff. Learn more about how a background check is different from a reference check.

Our guide to online recruiting includes some general guidance on interviewing, reference checks, and other aspects of hiring, and it also tells you about the different online resources available to support your hiring and recruiting.

R¨¦sum¨¦ flow is strong and time-to-hire is fast in Asia¡¯s largest labor pool. Broad statements in the U.S. media about an impending talent shortage in China are not borne out by more granular data on the labor supply and direct reports from companies engaged in heavy recruiting.
By Fay Hansen --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
San Francisco-based Freeborders reviewed 25,000 job applications in China last year, conducted 3,400 first-round and 800 second-round interviews, and hired 251 new employees for its IT outsourcing services facility in Shenzhen. Recruiting is proceeding at roughly the same pace this year, with more than 2,000 r¨¦sum¨¦s flowing in each month for 30 to 50 positions.

Gomez Inc., another U.S.-based high-tech firm, moved from no presence in China to a fully functioning R&D facility for new-product development in less time than it takes many companies to hire a single advanced-degree engineer in the United States. The company posted positions in May and opened its new Beijing office in July.

Despite widespread predictions of looming talent shortages in China, where GDP growth is now clocking in at 10.2 percent, Freeborders¡¯ recruiters are swimming in r¨¦sum¨¦s in Shenzhen and the company¡¯s CEO discounts reports of acute shortages of managerial and high-level technical workers. Gomez¡¯s executives anticipate no difficulties in building headcount in Beijing.

Broad statements in the U.S. media about an impending talent shortage in China are not borne out by more granular data on the labor supply and direct reports from companies engaged in heavy recruiting.

Hard data offer no evidence of tighter labor markets, even in China¡¯s first-tier cities. In 2005, 295,000 new university graduates looked for work in Beijing alone. The highly developed Chinese university system is pumping out an ever-larger annual pool of candidates whose skills more closely match the needs of high-growth multinational companies than graduates in the United States and most of Europe.

Simultaneously, China¡¯s recruiting infrastructure is growing to meet the needs of employers, including multinationals expanding in the urban areas. The number of online job boards in China hit 2,000 this year and online sites have become the dominant form of recruiting for large companies, according to BusinessForum China. Last year, Monster Worldwide bought a 40 percent stake in one of the largest players, ChinaHR.com, which currently offers 480,000 jobs and 7.5 million registered job seekers.

Bulking up
Freeborders announced in June that it plans to quadruple the size of its Shenzhen facility to accommodate 2,000 employees, who will work in coordination with the company¡¯s U.S. and European project managers. Freeborders has stepped up its recruiting efforts to sign on hundreds of new employees in short order.

"We plan to hire several hundred graduates majoring in software development in a month or two as trainee developers," Freeborders CEO John Cestar reports.

With revenue up 45 percent in 2005 and year-over-year bookings up 30 percent, Freeborders is a high-growth firm recruiting in a high-growth market.

In Shenzhen, Freeborders can pull from the 600,000 technology professionals who live there or the thousands who pour in from other regions of China every month. Most of Freeborders¡¯ new hires come from outside the Shenzhen area.

Shenzhen is home to 3,000 software companies. GDP growth for the metropolitan area is topping 15 percent a year. IDC forecasts that China will be the largest IT services market in the Asia-Pacific region by 2010, with a 24 percent share of IT spending in the region.

But those growth rates do not necessarily translate into tight labor markets. Instead, they act as a magnet for new investment and job seekers. China¡¯s Ministry of Science and Technology is pouring money into incentives for investment in new technologies, particularly in e-commerce, logistics, design and finance, and the Education Ministry is moving in tandem with university programs that boost the supply of tech candidates.

When Freeborders moved into China five years ago, it recruited 20 Chinese nationals who were working for software multinationals in North America and Europe. This core group then recruited for Freeborders¡¯ Shenzhen expansion. The company now runs a nationwide recruitment program through its own network, Web sites and job fairs.

"Our strategy is to focus our hiring for the key technologies that we know North American and European companies have demand for," Cestar says. "We determine these needs through client surveys and training-needs questionnaires with our workers. Our software graduates speak good English and become highly valuable resources after going through our rigorous training program."

Freeborders has not been forced to accelerate salary increases or bonuses to meet its recruiting goals.

"We find that many of our employees choose us because of the opportunity to work with Western clients," Cestar says. "It¡¯s a source of prestige and they know it¡¯s good for their careers to deliver services to Western companies. That¡¯s our main selling point. When we survey our teams, compensation is usually the third or fourth reason they chose Freeborders."

Freeborders minimizes its use of expatriates, but most of its senior managers in China have worked or been educated in the United States. This is changing, however.

"We are leveraging our current employees to recruit heavily within their personal networks to find managerial talent," Cestar says. "We also plan to promote the next group of managers from within."

Securing the managerial talent in China is a top priority for the company.

"It is a challenge simply because the universities are churning out so many young and highly skilled technology workers that there are not enough middle managers to handle the massive labor pool," Cestar notes. "But it¡¯s a manageable challenge. Over time, this shortage will shrink as the junior-level technology workers grow in experience to become middle managers. It¡¯s only a matter of time."

Meanwhile, Freeborders¡¯ global structure allows the company to segment tasks when necessary.

"Because we¡¯re a U.S.-based company, we mitigate a lot of the risk by having a strong U.S.-based project and technical management component to our teams," Cestar reports. "They essentially work with the client on site and with our offshore teams at all hours of the day."

Starting from scratch
While Freeborders is calmly recruiting more than 1,000 IT workers in Shenzhen, Gomez is expanding its R&D staff in Beijing, bringing in additional support staff and basking in the new recruiting environment that China offers.

"We were up and running in Beijing with 20 R&D employees in 12 weeks," reports Richard Darer, vice president and CFO of Gomez.

"We never could have done that in our U.S. office near Boston, no matter what we threw at it. The talent pool is so much smaller in the United States that there simply isn¡¯t sufficient r¨¦sum¨¦ flow." The company pulled in 3,000 r¨¦sum¨¦s to fill the Beijing jobs.

"In the United States, we use job boards like Monster, but we end up hiring contract recruiters," Darer says. "The universities in China are turning out so much talent that it¡¯s a different situation."

In its site search, Gomez considered Shanghai, but it settled on Beijing because of its exceptionally strong university system. The company¡¯s new facility is located near Tsinghua University, China¡¯s leading science and technology institution. The Beijing area is home to 274,000 tech workers, with scientists and engineers accounting for 83 percent of the total, according to the Beijing Municipal Science and Technology Commission.

Gomez provides Web application performance management solutions for 400 companies worldwide, including Amazon, Yahoo and Best Buy. Headquartered in Lexington, Massachusetts, with European operations centered in Hamburg, Germany, the company reported Q1 2006 revenue growth up 50 percent compared with Q1 2005. As its first step in expanding into China, CEO Jaime Ellertson personally recruited Yuan Cheng, a Chinese national with an engineering degree from Tsinghua University and a doctorate from MIT, as general manager for China.

The new office will triple Gomez¡¯s product development staff by the end of 2006. To recruit the first group for the Beijing location, Cheng tapped job boards such as ChinaHR.com and targeted university online job sites. The company¡¯s online job postings for China include JavaScript software engineers and technical support engineers.

"Cheng screened the r¨¦sum¨¦s to find candidates with the right technical skills and to eliminate job jumpers," Darer says.

From the 3,000 r¨¦sum¨¦s, Cheng invited 200 candidates for interviews, most with two to five years of experience and 40 percent with graduate degrees.

Large groups of candidates attended high-level presentations on the company, followed by one-on-one interviews that used the presentations as the context for detailed technical questions.

"Our challenge was screening out candidates, not finding sufficient talent," Darer says.

He worked with technology companies operating in India before joining Gomez, and notes the sharp differences there.

"If you want to fill two positions in India, you make offers to four candidates because only two of those will actually show up to start the job," he says.

During Gomez¡¯s initial recruiting drive in Beijing, a few candidates who received offers didn¡¯t accept because of compensation issues.

"Our challenge in China is that compensation is beginning to move up," Darer says. "But the economic cost ratio for the United States and China is 3-to-1, so even if compensation creeps up in Beijing, there is still a huge cost advantage."

Darer is not concerned about retention in the Beijing office.

"We work on the cutting edge of the Web and e-commerce, and part of the attraction for our employees is the opportunity to work on exciting and sexy stuff," he notes. "You can see the gleam in their eyes."

The R&D employees in Beijing develop new products with worldwide reach and the company now plans to hire direct-sales and support staff, but with different language skills.

"When companies set up R&D in China, they have to think about language proactively," Darer advises. "For some of our key managerial and customer support positions, our employees must be fluent in English. But we do not require fluent English from our engineers."

Darer, who received an engineering degree and an MBA from Harvard, sees his HR responsibilities as a logical part of his work as CFO.

"As we all know, our assets walk out the door every night at 5," he says.

Managing talent is a critical component in the company¡¯s financial success.

"And the talent in Beijing is well beyond our expectations," he notes.

What is the secret to creating and managing a successful human resources function? With so much at stake, HR must step up and demonstrate it is worthy of the human and financial capital entrusted to it.
By Derek Carissimi
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"Employees are our greatest asset."

"We are nothing without our employees."

"Our strength is our employees."

e¡¯ve all heard these words, or something similar, uttered at one time or another by every CEO in the country. We¡¯ve heard these words so often they¡¯ve become clich¨¦, and almost meaningless.

How many organizations really believe these words and conduct business accordingly? How many give human resources equal status and importance with finance, marketing, medical affairs and patient services? The good news is: more and more every day. The bad news is: not enough.

As staffing shortages continue; the true cost of employee turnover finally hits home; the connection between employee satisfaction and patient satisfaction is recognized; the importance of effective employee relations understood; the number of dollars and percent of budget devoted to employee benefits acknowledged; and the exposure to employee-related lawsuits realized; organizations throughout the country are coming to appreciate that employees truly are the organization¡¯s greatest asset--and expense.

As such, human resources, which is charged with managing the "people function," is a very important role and needs to be on the same level of the corporate food chain as finance, marketing, IT, et al.

That being said, what is the secret to creating and managing a successful human resources function? With so much at stake, HR must step up and demonstrate it is worthy of the human and financial capital entrusted to it.

Traditionally, this has not been a strength of human resource leaders. Reliance on the touchy-feely and warm-fuzzy intangibles is no longer adequate as HR must step up to the plate and become a true business and strategic partner.

How to step up to the plate? Here are the building blocks to establish an effective human resources function:

Aggressive recruitment
Keeping the organization staffed is, and will continue to be, an essential function of the effective HR department. Today¡¯s recruitment strategies, however, must be different than in the past.

Very few organizations have invested in the most fundamental and necessary component of a strong recruitment program¡ªthat being the preparation of a workforce projection document. Workforce projection consists of an in-depth analysis of the staffing needs of the organization five to 10 years into the future.

This analysis, done by job classification (i.e., staff nurses, pharmacists, respiratory therapists, food service workers, etc.), must include the following components: (1) projected voluntary and involuntary turnover; (2) projected retirements based on the current age of employees in each job classification; (3) projected growth or decline of each of the organization¡¯s service lines; (4) anticipated population growth or decline in the community or communities the organization serves; (5) geographic shifts in the population, anticipated growth and strategies of the organization¡¯s key competitors; (6) future plans of local and state governments.

Only after the workforce projection analysis is complete is human resources in a position to aggressively recruit, and even more important, direct resources in the proper direction, effectively utilizing budget dollars.

Aggressive recruitment in today¡¯s world is definitely different than in the past.

Newspaper advertising, long the staple, is no longer effective. Spending significant amounts on newspaper recruitment is a waste of resources. Instead, more creative methods are required.

Today¡¯s recruitment requires the extensive utilization of on-line methodologies, including resume mining, applicant tracking, on-line applications, the extensive use of banners and headlines, and direct messaging to the targeted audience.

Cold-calling, direct mailings, recruitment events, employee referrals, internal career mobility programs and the use of targeted professional journals are the ways to attract candidates. It is also important to include current employees in the formulation of strategies and focus groups in the community, and elsewhere, to determine what the public thinks of you as an employer, and why current employees came to, and stay with, your organization.

It is also crucial to have a robust exit program to determine why employees leave the organization. Lastly, recruitment must not be the sole responsibility of human resources.

Hiring departments--and indeed, all managers--must have a stake in keeping a low vacancy rate. The best way to accomplish this is to include it as a performance measurement item that determines pay adjustments.

Education
Invest in your employees. Once on board, new employees must be immediately immersed into a culture of continuous learning.

Starting with the new-hire orientation program, employees must feel the organization¡¯s commitment to education and continuous learning. Such commitment translates into an investment on the part of the organization to its employees.

Meaningful tuition reimbursement programs, salary increases for certifications, salary adjustments for the attainment of degrees, tapping skilled employees to teach, career ladders, the opportunity to attend internal and external workshops, rewards for publishing articles and books and for presenting at professional conferences, mentoring programs and internal career mobility programs are all ways to demonstrate commitment to education and a culture of continuous learning. With a little creativity and innovation, these outcomes can be achieved with less expense than one might think.

Communication
Communicate early and often.

There is no substitute for communication in establishing a loyal workforce. Human resources should be the focal point for employee communication.

Organizations frequently hide behind the cloak of confidentiality as a reason for not communicating with employees. In reality, however, there is a lot we can tell employees without hitting the confidentiality barrier.

To be credible, communication needs to be open, honest, truthful, frequent and humble--and should disclose as much as possible, good news or bad. It must also be two-way and come in a variety of formats, such as newsletters, open meetings, letters to the home, opinion surveys, 360-degree evaluations, management rounding, rumor hotlines, open-door policies, broadcast voice mails, management meeting minutes and information centers.

There is no secret to effective communication. It is easier said than done, however. If an organization trusts its employees as stakeholders in the business, this process of communication will come easily. Without trust, it will prove very difficult.

It is human resources¡¯ responsibility to develop the good will and foundation for effective communication. It is then HR¡¯s responsibility to coordinate the ongoing process of solid two-way communication.

Without a good communication program, there is no way an organization can succeed. With one, there is no way it can fail.

Recognition
The fourth building block for constructing a strong human resources function is an organized and methodical employee recognition program. Many organizations believe they have a recognition program because they have a service awards luncheon once a year and an annual company picnic.

These activities are good if part of larger effort, but virtually worthless if they stand alone.

Today¡¯s recognition programs must be broad-based, long and short term in nature, individual versus event-oriented, and woven into the culture of the organization. A culture of recognition is one where employees know they are appreciated every day, without corny or awkward gestures from managers and administrators.

There are five objectives for a recognition program:

To build a long-term relationship with each employee.

To promote strong supervisor-employee relationships.

To involve and encourage employees to contribute to solutions.

To let employees know they are key to the organization¡¯s success.

To address issues before they become major problems.

Recognition programs sound like a no-brainer. It¡¯s hard to disagree with the concept, isn¡¯t it?

Nevertheless, a relatively small number of employers actually have one. It¡¯s easy to throw together a couple of events every year and say we have a recognition program.

But we don¡¯t.

A true recognition program must be systematic, methodical, in writing and measurable. It must also allow for spontaneous recognition every minute of every day, and it must allow for employee peer recognition. A recognition program that doesn¡¯t allow for spontaneity, and for employees to recognize one another, is doomed to failure.

Organizations without comprehensive recognition programs should remember the following: (a) praise and recognition are keys to employee satisfaction; (b) employers receive the lowest ratings from employees in the area of recognition; (c) high employee satisfaction equals low turnover; (d) according to employees, being ignored is the worst.

In conclusion, despite the clich¨¦, people really are the organization¡¯s greatest asset; as managers of the people function, human resources deserves recognition as a business and strategic partner, but must step up and prove its understanding and connection to the business; and the building blocks of a strong human resources function are (1) aggressive recruitment, (2) education; (3) communication and (4) recognition.

An HR function strong in these four areas will be successful and meaningfully contribute to the success of the organization.

SHRINKING TALENT pools, increased mobility of workers, an ageing workforce and a desire on the part of younger generations to work for companies that are honest in their dealings with employees are driving an increase in employer branding.

Brett Minchington, managing director of Collective Learning Australia, said HR professionals need to engage senior executives in the benefits of developing a strong employer brand and its impact on the ability of the firm to attract, engage and retain talent.

¡°In essence, HR needs to develop a business case that is written in the language that will engage the hearts of mind of those at the top,¡± he said.

¡°To develop a culture that is supportive of the employer brand concept and is reflected in the actions of leaders at all levels of the organisation, firms should measure employee engagement and/or satisfaction and commitment on a consistent basis and link the results to financial performance.¡±

Speaking at a recent Select Australasia event in Sydney, Minchington also said employer branding should not be the sole responsibility of HR, even though research shows that, globally, the strategy is generally driven by the HR department.

¡°Ideally HR should work closely with the marketing and internal communications department to ensure that there is consistency in the development and communication of the employer brand internally and externally,¡± he said.

¡°Without the support of the MD or CEO, it is unlikely employer brand efforts will achieve the financial and operational outcomes being experienced by firms that integrate employer brand efforts into their overall business strategy.¡±

He also noted that the biggest criticism by owners and senior management of employer brand activities has been the lack of measurable outcomes for their investment.

¡°In simple terms, what doesn¡¯t get measured doesn¡¯t get managed. There are a number of human capital measures to determine the ROI of your employer brand program,¡± he said.

Few HR leaders attempt to take responsibility for their workforce's productivity.
By John Sullivan
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Iroutinely ask HR leaders around the world, "Do you see increasing productivity of your workforce as a primary part of your job, and do you compare your results with those of your worldwide competitors?" The response of most leaders is the same: bewilderment, a long pause, a blank stare. It continues to amaze me that HR leaders do not recognize that every business function, whether it be marketing, finance, production or HR, is in the productivity business. That means continually getting more out of every dollar you spend on the resources that you control.
Workforce productivity is in the news: I am highlighting this issue because workforce productivity is in the news on a daily basis. Corporate giants like Ford, Kraft, Hewlett-Packard, United Airlines and General Motors are being pounded by analysts because their labor costs are skyrocketing past those of their domestic and foreign competitors.

My point is simple: Despite the constant rants by analysts and CEOs, few HR leaders attempt to take responsibility for their workforce¡¯s productivity. In finance, for example, calculating the productivity of financial investments is a common practice, as in real estate, marketing, manufacturing and supply-chain management. Measuring workforce productivity is not that hard. The most basic measure is simply the cost of the inputs (all salaries, benefits and HR department costs) compared with the value of the outputs (production output value, revenue or profit).

HR must declare itself "captain of the ship": One argument I often hear is that HR does not directly manage the workforce and therefore cannot be held directly responsible for productivity. That argument is weak. Every other corporate function is held accountable when the resources that it manages do not produce adequate results, so why should HR be exempt? HR must declare itself accountable and then design systems that influence, cajole and sell managers and employees so that the productivity levels of the workforce remain competitive.

Cutting costs is easy; managing strategically is hard: Occasionally HR leaders will respond that they do manage the productivity of the workforce by manipulating labor costs. Any accountant can figure out how to shave 10 percent off the budget, but developing systems to maximize the output of all the budgeted pieces requires significant thought and coordination. This, in my estimation, is the true purpose of HR: to increase workforce productivity through activities that increase the other (but most important) side of the ROI equation, which is revenue. If HR leaders can shift their emphasis to driving increases in workforce output without increasing people costs, they will have demonstrated that they can strategically manage the workforce.

Global competition is forcing HR to change: Globalization and economic growth in China, India and Eastern Europe, where labor rates are significantly cheaper than in the United States and Central Europe, will make managing workforce productivity an imperative for organizations that wish to survive. This new imperative means that HR must monitor labor productivity and advise senior management when moving offshore or outsourcing presents an opportunity to better compete. HR must begin to look at what type of work must be done and under what parameters, and then suggest to management what labor type to use and where such labor should be sourced or located. In addition, HR must advise managers when they have too many employees before a wide-scale correction is needed. Labor costs will be a component of the analysis, but they cannot be given more weight than quality, innovation and agility.

I argue that these wake-up calls signal that it is time for the DNA of HR to change. The new HR leader learns from the old slogan "What¡¯s good for General Motors is good for the country." But the lesson learned is a new one: Managing workforce productivity like HR at GM has may be the cause of your organization¡¯s downfall.

Every job seeker...and there are lots of you out there...wishes there was a "magic formula" to accelerate their job search. The truth is how well your job search fares is directly dependent on preparation. Just like in the game of chess, a sound strategy before you start to play is more likely to reap success than just "winging it".

Here are 3 preparation strategies you can use now, so your job search is equipped with a winning game plan:

1. Get FOCUSED: What specific occupational field, what level within that field, and what industry (or industries) of choice are you targeting? For example, you may be passionate about outdoor adventuring and have a background in retail sales and sales management. You may choose to focus on Retail Sales (occupational field) Manager (level within that field), Outdoor Sports Equipment, Accessories, Services and Vendors (industries of choice). The employers in your industry (or industries) of choice are your target audience, rather than any employer anywhere!

Trying to be all things to all employers in a "generic" resume just doesn't work anymore. Keyword resume-sniffing software mandates that the job seeker or career advancer identify exactly what they are going after, and then crafting their marketing message around that, incorporating required and desired keywords for the occupational field, level of position, and industry.

2. Get BRANDED: Differentiation is key to career and job search success. You cannot appear to be just another one of the thundering herd. So knowing your personal brand - what makes you unique and different from your competitors, as well as what attributes your target audience really values - AND being able to express that in your marketing materials (like your resume and cover letter) will put you ahead in the job search arena.

Personal branding and the 360Reach personal branding assessment - a confidential online branding assessment - can aid you in unearthing your personal brand so you can begin to use it effectively in your job search.

3. Get UPDATED EDUCATION and TRAINING: Do not assume that Associate's or Bachelor's Degree you got 10 or even 20 years ago suffices anymore. Employers want to see that you are actively engaged in learning about advancements in your field. They do not want to have to train you on what they believe you should already know.

If you technology skills are rusty, look at non-credit courses at your local community college or even tutorials online. To stay updated in your professional field, you can take courses (credit or non-credit) or join a professional association in your field and attend the workshops and conferences. If the association offers credentialing, consider it. Objective evidence of up-to-date skills and knowledge, like credentials, offer proof that you are serious about your career and the value you can bring to a potential employer.

BONUS - Keep track of your ACCOMPLISHMENTS: Accomplishments are the "meat" that makes up your resume's main course. Without relevant and convincing results, you may be perceived of by an employer as just a "seat warmer" in your current (or past) jobs. That's not exactly a stellar approach to securing a potential new employer's interest. But, benefits (accomplishments) are! What better place to showcase the benefits of hiring you than by demonstrating what you have been able to accomplish for others in the past.

We continually see recruiters and hiring managers urging job candidates to evaluate themselves and what they¡¯re looking for. Hell, Heck, we tell job candidates to do that ourselves. People who work with candidates in any capacity want them to conduct a focused job search:

¡°Get FOCUSED: What specific occupational field, what level within that field, and what industry (or industries) of choice are you targeting?¡­The employers in your industry (or industries) of choice are your target audience, rather than any employer anywhere!¡± (From Career Goddess)

One of the major problems with job boards, though, is that they don¡¯t allow for focused job searches. Candidates can¡¯t always hone in on specific companies or even specific types of jobs. Instead, they¡¯re inundated with every job opening that might match a single keyword in their resume or that falls within their broad search parameters.

An effective Plan B job search should give you the best opportunity to find the right company and the right job for you. It should also allow you to avoid having to deal with companies and positions that hold no interest for you. Unfortunately, this doesn¡¯t seem to be the case on most boards these days, and messages on job openings have become their own kind of spam:

¡°Post your resume to these boards, and you¡¯ll be added to the Job of the Hour club. After you get tired of emails about jobs selling insurance and delivering pizzas you will discover that you can¡¯t opt out of an email list you did not sign up for in the first place.¡± (From Job Matchbox)

The Plan B search should be a targeted one. Candidates should be able to gather information and receive job opening notifications from companies they¡¯re truly interested in. They shouldn¡¯t have to waste their time looking through countless openings or getting hassled by businesses that they want nothing to do with.

Wouldn't it be nice if you could just press a button and find a great new job? With all the job search tools available online, you can. New opportunities are only a mouse click away in cyberspace. The only problem is the competition can be tough with so many other space travelers taking advantage of the Internet to market themselves to potential employers. The key to success when responding to online job postings is using the right strategies to break out the pack and get noticed.

An estimated 80 percent of companies use technology to help scan resumes and store the data in keyword-searchable databases for future use. So how does a computer decide who stays and who goes? In simple terms - keywords! These electronic processing systems are designed to seek out resumes that contain specific keywords chosen by the recruiter.

What are the right keywords for the job you are seeking? You'll need to spend some time researching job postings and help wanted ads for jobs that are closely associated with or nearly a perfect fit for your experience. Read as many job postings and job descriptions as you can find and start writing down words that you see over and over again. Then, incorporate these words into your resume(s) and cover letter(s).

For example, a recruiter is looking to hire someone to work in his manufacturing plant. He also needs the employee to operate the company's computer tracking system and conduct quality assurance testing. He will likely choose the following words to seek out applicants: Manufacturing; Computer; Quality Assurance.

The inclusion of these keywords is important, but make sure not to overdo it. Today's scanning technology is advanced and programmed to identify resumes that appear to duplicate a company's job posting. If you basically cut and paste a job posting into your resume, it will not be considered and your name will remain in the company's system in the red flag file. It is better to pepper in keywords as they relate to your experience.

After the initial screening by the computer, recruiters take over and begin reviewing resumes for qualified candidates. Primarily, they will look for relevant experience and qualifications. That is why it's important to highlight your accomplishments up front.

One happily employed Public Relations executive suggests throwing out the window any humble thoughts and hushing that inner voice that says you are bragging. Start your cover letter with a clear statement outlining your skills and abilities and try to put a different spin on your communications to stand out. For instance, her cover letter opens with: "Communications expertise. Results-driven media strategy. Ability to juggle multiple projects simultaneously...there are just some of the benefits I can bring to your organization."

She knows this technique works because she's used it to successfully land her last two jobs. As she says, "If you don't toot your own horn, who will?" Experts agree that by stating your key selling points right off the bat, you are maximizing your resume's chances of being placed in the "call for interview" file instead of the circular file.

Experts also say that the appearance and professionalism of your communications are critical. All too often, recruiters and hiring managers report finding typos and grammatical mistakes in the resumes and cover letters they receive. Before responding to even one more online job posting, take the time to edit your resume, proofread it and proof read it again. It's also a good idea to ask someone else to review it for you.

Once you are sure your resume and cover letter have the right keywords in place, are aggressively advertising your skills and qualifications, and are error-fee, start pushing those buttons and let the opportunities come to you.

Often when receiving a job offer, candidates are eager to sign on the dotted line. Maybe they¡¯ve been with out work for awhile, maybe it is an increase in pay, or maybe it is simply a better commute.

It is important to remember though, that the most important time in salary negotiations are those early meetings. Be prepared and act confident, it can mean a huge difference in your future lifestyle.

Here is some advice to help you land not just the gig, but the salary that you dream of

Give a Range

The general rule of thumb in negotiations is that the first person to name a number loses. Unfortunately, most people know this and it can quickly lead to nonproductive encounters. If you are in a position where you are expected to name a number, give the range that you are comfortable with. Research salaries in your area using sites like Salary.com. This will also allow the conversation to move forward so you can learn all the new costs associated with the gig.

Know the Costs

Make sure to factor in all the expenses your new position will require. Will you need a new wardrobe? Does it require you to pay tolls on your commute? Is there overtime pay? What¡¯s the health insurance like? Are you going to have to worry about your own retirement package? Total compensation is important in determining the salary that you require for accepting the job. Don¡¯t sell yourself short.

Be Bold

Fortune favors the bold. Especially if the bold has previous experience. Remember that managers are trying to keep their costs low. Salaries can often represent the largest cost within a company. If you have a target number in mind, always respond with something higher. Remember one key thing ¡ª If they say no, negotiations are not over. If they say yes, the negotiation period is finished. Many companies have policies that prevent salary increases over certain percentages. You may only grow 4-5% a year once employed by the company. During negotiations, this can be achieved in seconds. Be bold. You owe it to yourself and your family.

Consider Growth Potential

A high salary may mean nothing if you are not learning skills to use later on in your career. Sadly, the concept of a life long position is a disappearing notion. Always try to search out positions that will train you for your next job and improve your resume. If a job has a lower than expected salary, but a ton of growth potential and training, it may be worth considering, especially if you are lacking experience.

Outline Key Goals

Another strong tactic is to work out an outline of suggested accomplishments. Negotiate a follow up meeting for an early review at the 6 month period. When the time comes, be prepared to show how you¡¯ve accomplished each of the agreed upon milestones. You¡¯ll be able to make the case for a higher salary after proving yourself.

Our exploration of The Job Candidate Bill of Rights created by Accolo¡¯s John Younger gave us a chance to take an in depth look at what it is that job candidates want, expect, and deserve from recruiters and hiring managers.

The 11-week series led to discussion among candidates, but it also sparked some talk regarding the rights of the recruiter. Over at Confessions of an Executive Restaurant Recruiter they even took the candidate Bill and applied the rights one-to-one for the recruiters of the world.

We love the idea of a Recruiter Bill of Rights (and a hiring manager Bill of Rights for that matter), so we¡¯ve borrowed some ideas from the aforementioned Executive Restaurant Recruiter post, the folks at SittingXlegged, Guerilla Job Hunting, and recruiters that we work with. We¡¯ve also culled the depths of our own addled brains just for good measure to come up with our own Recruiter Bill of Rights:

1.Self-Evaluation: Job candidates will look themselves in the mirror and form an honest opinion of what they want out of a job and what they have to offer. They will also realize that maybe they aren¡¯t perfect for every single job on the market.

2.Homework: Job candidates will not go into interviews blindly. They will utilize the resources at their disposal to learn as much as possible about the company and the position.

3.Truth: Job candidates will provide the truth in regard to experience, education, accomplishments, etc. Lying on a resume doesn¡¯t help anyone.

4.Change: Candidates shall be willing to listen to advice given by the recruiter when advice is given in an honest attempt to help. Candidate will also be willing to make the changes necessary to make themselves a better candidate for the positions they¡¯re interested in obtaining.

5. Salesmanship: It¡¯s important to realize that while your dreams are meaningful, they¡¯re not always the top priority for a company. Candidates should commit to demonstrating how they can serve a company right now and selling themseleves as the right candidate for the job.

6. Communication: Hiring managers will keep open communication with recruiters on all matters pertaining to the job search. They will give timely updates when their needs change or when new positions open.

7. Commitment: Hiring managers will commit to hiring. If the right candidate comes through the door, mangers won¡¯t put off hiring just for the sake of ¡°seeing as many people as possible.¡±

8. Integrity: Job candidates don¡¯t have to accept every job offer that comes their way. However, coming up with a new set of demands each time is not a viable means for finding the right position or the right compensation, and it makes the recruiter¡¯s job almost impossible.

9. Follow-Up: It¡¯s something that candidates demand, but sadly they don¡¯t receive it enough. They¡¯re not the only ones, though. Recruiters also need to be kept abreast of the candidate¡¯s situation. Whether it¡¯s touching base after an interview or just returning phone calls.

10. Respect: It¡¯s the lifeblood of the job search, but nobody feels the other parties involved are giving them any. Candidates need to respect the time, efforts, and basic humanity of recruiters, and they should expect the same.

Over the next several weeks, we hope to break this Bill down just as we did the last. Hopefully it will give everyone a better understanding of the challenges facing recruiters, and maybe it will help candidates and recruiters work together more effectively than they have in the past.

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.

There are many types of job seekers, and knowing which you¡¯re recruiting for can make your job attracting the right applicants and getting them through to the offer process much easier. Here¡¯s a profile of 3 major types.

The High Maintenance Job Seeker
High maintenance job seekers tend to increase when the stakes are higher. These might be for senior talent or leadership positions. In fact, it¡¯s perfectly appropriate for these job seekers to be higher maintenance ¨C there¡¯s more on the line for both the employee and the company.

The high maintenance job seeker is marked by the need for more attention, more information, more interview time, more decision making time, and more negotiation. The reason for the extra time is simple ¨C money is not as important. When a senior talent or leader is thinking of joining your organization, the employer brand, culture and peer group are exponentially more important. It takes time for a person to decide if the employer brand is real and if the employees that surround them will match the personal needs of the job seeker.

By tailoring your recruiting strategy to the high maintenance job seeker for the appropriate positions, you¡¯ll be more able to understand their unique wants and needs and have more success in converting them to employees.

The Habitual Job Seeker
Being a habitual job seeker is not necessarily a bad thing. Most of these people should probably be consultants, but not all of them may qualify. At the lower levels of employment and maybe at the senior levels, habitual job seekers may not be desirable. At the lowest level it may not actually matter, but you don¡¯t really want to train receptionists and administrative assistants on an ongoing basis. Similarly with senior leadership positions, they will need enough time to execute on their strategy and see it successful.

In the middle tier, there might be need for short and mid term employees for specific projects or to act as turnaround agents. These are the perfect spots for habitual job seekers. They enjoy new challenges and get bored easily if they don¡¯t constantly try new things. Occasionally you¡¯ll find a habitual job seeker that is worth hanging on to (in fact there are many out there who are wonderful ¨C they just have commitment problems). This is where your recruiting department¡¯s partnership with talent management is critical. Transferring these employees from project to project or allowing them a growth path unrestricted by manager¡¯s desires to ¡°hold on¡± to them can give you the benefits of these employees for a much longer time.

What¡¯s important about the habitual job seeker is that the work is important, but not the employer brand, culture, or other employees.

The Indifferent Job Seeker
The indifferent job seeker may be the most problematic. Even with alternatives where high degrees of employer brand exist, the indifferent job seeker is really looking for the highest wage. This employee is hard to engage and will easily choose to leave when a better wage opportunity exists. Identifying and avoiding these types of job seekers early in the process and certainly before you offer them a job will save you much headache in the future.

Experience and education are the two pieces of information that most recruiters use to determine whether someone is a fit for a job. These two measures are easy to understand, widely accepted and easy to communicate. They are perfect measures of a likelihood that someone will be able to do a great job. Except for the fact that, in the Creative Age, they don't work.

Regardless of which age it is, it is hard to describe all the factors that go into deciding whether someone is a good fit for a job: personal factors, relative maturity, diversity of background in experience, comfort with learning, flexibility and openness to change and reaction in difficult situations are all important. None of them can be described by looking at a diploma or a resume.

In the Creative Age, a person's ability to create / produce under highly unique and individualized situations is the single most critical factor in deciding whether someone can produce in your situation. So how do you determine this if you can't use experience and education? A portfolio.

Artists of all types have been using portfolios to show their ability since before the renaissance. It's now time to expand that concept to all candidates. When I talk with someone about a project management job, or a software engineering job, or even an administrative job, I ask them for examples of their work. I am always very specific with them: don't share something that is proprietary or confidential. If they say they don't have any examples I ask them what kinds of work they have done in the past. No matter the type of work, they always have some example somewhere. Once you lead them through how to ¡°clean out¡± any confidential data (take out names, dates, descriptors, etc.) they can usually come up with a great portfolio.

Once you have the portfolio in hand, you need to review each piece while asking behavioral questions about each piece:

1 - Describe the situation in which you did this work. What was the specific outcome that was demanded? By who? What specification or instructions did they give you?
2 - Who did you work with on this project? Describe at least one conflict that happened during this project and what it was about. How did you resolve it? Where is that exhibited in this work you have given me?

And so on. Use the portfolio as a way to guide the discussion. Finally, ask for references that can verify that the candidate did the work.

The information you get out of a portfolio and subsequent question session will be much more valuable than simple statements about education and experience.

couple of weeks ago in The Job Search Obstacle Course, we discussed how difficult it can be for job candidates to find the right type of recruiter. There are several different categories of recruiters out there, and if you¡¯re working with the wrong type, your search is going to encounter some problems.

The situation for recruiters isn¡¯t all that different. There are various types of candidates out there, and different tactics need to be employed to successfully recruit each one. Systematic HR recently provided an overview of their ¡°3 major types¡± of job candidates and how to recruit each one:

¡±The high maintenance job seeker is marked by the need for more attention, more information, more interview time, more decision making time, and more negotiation. The reason for the extra time is simple ¨C money is not as important¡­

¡±In the middle tier, there might be need for short and mid term employees for specific projects or to act as turnaround agents. These are the perfect spots for habitual job seekers. They enjoy new challenges and get bored easily if they don¡¯t constantly try new things. Occasionally you¡¯ll find a habitual job seeker that is worth hanging on to (in fact there are many out there who are wonderful ¨C they just have commitment problems)¡­

¡±The indifferent job seeker may be the most problematic¡­Identifying and avoiding these types of job seekers early in the process and certainly before you offer them a job will save you much headache in the future.¡±

Once you know the type of candidate you¡¯re working with, you¡¯ll have a much better idea of how to successfully recruit them and match them to the right job. But how do you know exactly which category they fall into? Slowly but surely, recruiters and hiring managers are realizing that the simple resume doesn¡¯t quite do it any more:

¡±Artists of all types have been using portfolios to show their ability since before the renaissance. It¡¯s now time to expand that concept to all candidates. When I talk with someone about a project management job, or a software engineering job, or even an administrative job, I ask them for examples of their work.¡±
(From Simply Hired)

Recruiters should have the same advantages as hiring authorities. They should have access to candidates¡¯ ¡°portfolios¡± before committing their time and energy to the recruiting process. With a fuller representation of a candidate¡¯s history, education, skills, etc. it will be much easier to identify which type of candidate they are, and it will make recruiting them or choosing not to recruit them a much faster and more effective process.

Just because the job market is a good one doesn't mean you can or should get cocky about getting the job you want. If you want some control over your opportunities, consider this next section your homework¡ªit's advice employers¡ªthe people who are recruiting and hiring¡ªoffer. Most of the following sounds like common sense, but you might be surprised by the number of job candidates who blow off these details (and employers can tell which students/new graduates have taken their advice seriously).

Research
Take 60 minutes, go online, and learn everything you can about any company you might want to work for. Your goal is to be able to articulate how you will be a good fit within the company. If you have trouble putting your research into words, ask a career services counselor for help.

Experience
Do you know what you want to do? An internship or co-op experience (or several of these positions) on your resume will tell an interested employer that you've tested your career up close and you've learned some of the basics of the workplace. Almost three-quarters of employers say they prefer to hire students who have relevant work experience, and a little less than a fifth of employers said they are willing to consider any type of real-workplace experience.

If you're an underclassman, line up your experience as early in your college career as possible (go to your career center for leads on internships and co-op positions). Some employers recommend getting that first internship during your freshman year so that you get to know a company well and have your "foot in the door" at graduation!

Prepare
Employers rate the influence of attributes when choosing between two equally qualified candidates Attributes Rating
Has held leadership position 4.0
Major 4.0
High GPA (3.0 or above) 3.7
Has been involved in extracurricular activities (clubs, sports, student government, etc.) 3.7
Has done volunteer work 3.2
School attended 3.0
(5-point scale, where 1=no influence at all, 2=not much influence, 3=somewhat of an influence, 4=very much influence, and 5=extreme influence)
You'd think getting organized and ready to apply for jobs would come naturally, but it doesn't. Just because you learned to write a nice thank-you note in sixth grade or put together a rudimentary resume in "career class" in high school doesn't mean you have the skills to crank out the appropriate cover letters or build resumes that attract employers. Among the skills you need to learn in college include:

how to write a cover letter that markets you to employers.
how to compose a well-written, error-free resume that articulates your skills and course work as a match for the company and position.
how to interview and explain the value you can bring to a potential employer.
Take advantage of the resources on your campus provided by the career center. Trained, professional staff are available to guide you through the process and teach you how to take the various steps in the process with success. Plus, these career counselors know the employers¡ªthey work with them on a regular basis¡ªand can put you in touch with the organizations where you'd like to work.

Don't be fooled. A career counselor won't find you a job or "place" you in a position. They're on campus to teach you something more important: the tools and contacts to successfully find a job today¡ªand in the future when you're looking for your second, third, or 10th position!

Research, experience, and preparation: If you have these, you won't need "good luck" to be successful in your job search.

Screening techniques honed in developing markets provide valuable lessons for talent management everywhere. Originally, the push for screening in the developing markets was driven by the multinationals, but now local employers are increasingly recognizing the need for background screening.
By Fay Hansen --------------------------------------------------------------------------------
The White House sent Steve Casteel to Iraq for two years to recruit 200 people to rebuild the Interior Ministry under the Coalition Provisional Authority. In Iraq and in his previous position as chief of intelligence for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, Casteel learned how to screen candidates in Latin America and the Middle East.

"Recruiting in Iraq is not that different from recruiting in Jordan or Egypt, or China, for that matter," Casteel says. "You can use any databases that are available--military and police data, for example--but in the end you have to rely on local contacts to research an applicant¡¯s reputation and history in the community. You can¡¯t just use a Western approach."

Casteel is now senior vice president for international business development at Vance International Inc., an investigation and security consulting firm based in Oakton, Virginia, with 3,200 employees worldwide. His approach to screening and background checks will become increasingly relevant as globalization accelerates in 2007 and corporations pursue a broader mix of geographies and less familiar locations.

Business reports indicate that companies will continue the trend toward staffing new facilities with local nationals instead of expatriates.

"Multinationals have found that they can reduce costs and eliminate many problems by hiring locals," Casteel notes. "Shell, for example, has moved to local hiring in Nigeria."

As Shell has discovered in Nigeria, however, recruiting in the developing nations requires extreme due diligence.

"By far, the biggest risk in recruiting in less-developed markets is corruption, most likely in the form of political corruption but also, in some locations, organized crime," Casteel reports.

In 2005 alone, Shell Nigeria investigated 74 cases of employee fraud and ethics violations, ending in the dismissal of 24 career and contractor staff, warning letters to 49 employees and delisting for six contractors. In addition to the recruiting difficulties that arise from corruption among candidates and employees, Shell is also plagued by local scam artists who make bogus offers of employment at Shell Nigeria and then shake down job seekers for money or personal financial information.

Digging deeper
"The biggest weakness among companies that are recruiting in the developing countries is their lack of knowledge about the local market and their willingness to rely entirely on cheap background checks," says Bob Sikellis, managing director and associate general counsel at Vance. "In the U.S., the quality of standard pre-employment screening is good enough for entry-level positions. But outside the U.S., the quality is abysmal. The databases are simply not available."

Instead, companies must develop the capacity for deeper pre-employment investigations, often working with local partners. Even then, the company must know which local security companies do quality work.

"In Iraq, there are 52 security companies, and you need one that has local operations in the city where you need to recruit," Casteel notes.

"Companies need to be very cautious and do full due diligence on the security companies they choose to work with," Casteel says. "Just because a local vendor seems to take a Western approach and shows up in a business suit does not mean you will get high-quality work. This is true anywhere."

The client company should ask the security firm exactly what information they will provide.

"And, as the Hewlett Packard case demonstrates, the security firm should also explain exactly how they will get that information," Sikellis says.

The fact that negligent hiring lawsuits are uncommon abroad does not reduce the need to screen applicants carefully.

"To focus on the potential for negligent hiring lawsuits or other legal actions is a dangerously narrow approach," Sikellis says. "Outside of the U.S., the ability to remove employees is so limited that you want to be extremely careful about who you hire. In many countries, a company that removes an employee faces long unemployment payments and other significant costs."

Local demand
Originally, the push for screening in the developing markets was driven by the multinationals, but now local employers are increasingly recognizing the need for background screening, according to Chuck Papageorgiou, executive vice president of international services for First Advantage, a risk mitigation and business solutions provider. The company, based in St. Petersburg, Florida, employs 4,500 people, with 1,200 outside the U.S. devoted to employee screening.

Papageorgiou reports that screening by local employers in the developing markets has accelerated during the past three years, driven by different factors in each country. In India, for example, the rise of diploma mills has generated a new focus on education credentialing.

In other developing countries, concerns about cyber-crime, corruption and terrorism have spurred local employers to institute screening policies along with the multinationals that operate there.

In addition, developing-market BPO providers that work for financial institutions must screen applicants to meet their contractual obligations.

"Some of the contracts are very explicit," Papageorgiou says. "This is spreading to other industries, especially design firms and manufacturers with high-value intellectual property. Also, more companies are screening all management applicants because they see credentialing managers as very important."

India¡¯s outsourcing industry has been rocked by cases of data theft and fraud. KPMG¡¯s 2006 survey on fraud in India reports high levels of deception in CVs, fueled by unethical practices at placement agencies. In March 2006, Wipro cleaned house after discovering major screening shortcomings in the placement agencies it used.

The National Association of Software and Service Companies, the trade group representing the Indian IT software and services industry, launched a national skills registry in early 2006 that provides information on employees¡¯ backgrounds. Job candidates authorize release of the information to employers.

Papageorgiou does believe that other nations will soon follow with the same level of self-policing.

"But we are seeing professional associations in some countries building membership rosters, and we can work with this information to verify certifications," he says.

According to Papageorgiou, companies in India are also plagued by scammers posing as recruiters who demand money and personal financial information from job seekers.

In both India and China, candidates and employers can no longer rely entirely on familiar village contacts to make recommendations. Dramatic increases in worker mobility in recent years leave candidates and employers more vulnerable fraudulent practices

Living with limitations
In some countries, full accurate screening is simply not possible.

"We deem screening in these countries as ¡®nonreliable¡¯ for background information," Papageorgiou says. "The limits on the amount of information available about candidates may enter into site location discussions, and some companies may decide that they cannot expand into these areas."

"There are many ways to get information in many countries if you are willing to break the law, which we are not," Papageorgiou says. "We advise clients of these restrictions and then use research teams to gather as much information as possible on criminality, for example. The key is to make sure that the client is well aware of the limitations."

In India, the crime rate is relatively low and some information is available about most job applicants.

"If all the education and employment checks are clean, it is highly likely that the candidate is clean," Papageorgiou says. "In other locations, a clean check may not mean the same thing."

In China, educational and professional qualifications, employment history and employment performance history can be secured, but criminal record checks are more difficult.

First Advantage is developing statistical models that provide some indication of the probability of criminal records and other negative factors for specific groups of applicants. These models are in place in some locations and in development for others.

First Advantage abandoned the idea of screening candidates abroad from offices in the U.S., and now has offices staffed with its own employees in the Philippines, Singapore, China, Japan, India, New Zealand, Australia, Canada and the United Arab Emirates. It will open an office in South Korea by the end of 2006 and new offices in Europe, Africa and the Middle East in 2007.

The international portion of First Advantage¡¯s screening services now represents 25 percent to 30 percent of its total screening revenues. The company expects 20 percent growth in the international portion in 2007.

"In this industry, it is extremely expensive to have a physical presence on a worldwide basis, but there is a competitive advantage in expanding our international presence," Papageorgiou says. "In addition, the market for screening is relatively saturated in the U.S.; the real growth in screening is abroad."

For clients, the biggest advantage in using screening firms that have a physical presence overseas is speed and more control over compliance. Also, firms with offices abroad may be more effective in managing costs because they utilize their own staff and operations.

In any developing market, screening must be tailored for the specific risk level, legal environment and infrastructure, and executives should be aware of any limitations.

"When a company moves into a new location, it must develop a market-entry strategy," Sikellis says.

"Recruiting should be part of the discussion and HR should have a seat at the table." Sikellis says. "HR executives need to analyze the personnel risks and maintain a close relationship with legal counsel while they do this."

The Job Outlook survey is a forecast of hiring intentions of employers as they relate to new college graduates. Each year, the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) surveys its employer members about their hiring plans and other employment-related issues.

From mid-August through October 4, 2006, NACE collected data for the Job Outlook 2007 survey. The survey was provided to 1,137 members; there were a total of 267 usable surveys, a 23.5 percent response rate. This report focuses largely on the results of that survey.

Of those responding, 52.4 percent were service sector employers, 37.8 percent were manufacturers, and 9.7 percent were government/nonprofit employers. In addition, 38.6 percent of respondents were from the South, 25.5 percent were from the Midwest, 21.7 percent were from the Northeast, and the remaining 14.2 percent were from the West.

Job Outlook 2007 Spring Update (data collected late March through early April) will offer a final update on hiring for 2006-07 graduates. Results will be available in mid-April.

by: (ContentDesk) ¡ª With the busy hiring season just ahead, now is the time to think about preparing for the interviewthat can land you the job you want in 2006. To get that coveted offer, the interview must be considered one of the most important steps in the hiring process to create a relationship with a potential employer. With the right preparation, qualified candidates can take the driver¡¯s seat and position themselves as the top pick for the position.

Jill Donnelly, president of CareerWomen.com advises, Practice, practice, practice. Many questions, such as those inquiring about your experience and qualifications, should be expected. By creating the right storyline to anticipated questions, your delivery will sound natural and confident. Remember, if you are qualified, the interview is where you can win or lose the game. To get the job you want, CareerWomen.com¡¯s top five tips to impress interviewers are:

1. Be the qualified candidate

Know why you are qualified for the position by matching your experience to the specific requirements of the job ahead of the interview. By offering examples that match your qualifications to the exact position, the interview will be a breeze for you.

2. Prepare by doing your homework

Do your homework on the company as well as the position. Get up to date on the company¡¯s current business issues so you can address any questions about direction and opportunity. Develop a list of questions prior to the interview to demonstrate your interest and curiosity about the company.

3. Speak with confidence

This is not the time to by shy and timid. Be confident about your professional accomplishments and talk about your results. Talk about yourself through your previous employer¡¯s words to give your claims needed validation. If you have some work samples you are proud of that are related to the position, why not show them off?

4. Act like a professional

This may seem like common sense, but you¡¯ll be surprised how many people forget this completely. Common courtesies will take you a long way at setting the right professional impression. For example, dress appropriately for the position, be sure to turn off the cell phone and most importantly, be on time!

5. Be a good communicator

Listen and be appropriately enthusiastic. Listen to the questions before you answer. If you interrupt, it could send a warning flag that you are not interested. Lean forward, listen carefully and be sure to make direct eye contact.

Additional resources to enhance professional development and advance women¡¯s careers can be found at http://www.CareerWomen.comincluding career development tools, career and employment news, professional associations and employment opportunities across the US with some of the best women-friendly companies.

An "adventure" is what Dave McCann calls the quest to recruit and retain good workers in the rapidly changing economy and market in China.

"The opportunities are great, but they create HR challenges," says McCann, who is based in Beijing and has responsibility for HR activities for PricewaterhouseCoopers throughout China. The country may have a population of 1.3 billion people, but there's a war for talent as fierce as in many parts of the Western world, he explains.

Carrie Conlon, director of human resources for Nanjing Interbrew Breweries in Nanjing, says China is undergoing significant changes and wants a market economy. "But they don't have the talent," she explains. "They haven't recognized the need to train people to go into that type of economy.

And managers are particularly hard to find. "The challenge is finding managerial talent," she says. "You can't find a marketing director to save your soul."

The reason: While many Chinese professionals have good technical educations, few have managerial training because in the past managers were promoted based on their political party allegiance. "There never had been any selection criteria; it was not attached to skills," she says.

While managers are in particularly short supply and attracting good ones can present a special challenge, the truth is that recruiting for any position in China can require a whole new outlook. In some cases you may need to rethink what you know about finding and hiring talented workers because, when it comes to recruiting, China has its own particular rules of the road.

Do's and Don'ts

As in other countries, companies operating in China can use campus recruitment, job fairs, newspaper advertisements, search firms, internal referrals and the Internet to search for the right talent. But, "in terms of hiring, there are more than a hundred 'do's and don'ts,'" says P.O. Mak, president of the Hong Kong Institute of Human Resource Management.

"First of all, you have to know where you are and what kind of people you wish to hire. And then, a thorough knowledge of applicable law is important," says Mak.

Given the complexity of the market, Annella Heytens of Watson Wyatt urges U.S. companies to develop a well-thought-out recruitment strategy that spells out screening and interviewing methodology.

"Do not look for the perfect candidate--he or she does not exist," Heytens says. Other mistakes: being inflexible with the benefits package and taking too long to interview or make an offer, in which case, "You may lose a good candidate," she warns.

In addition, she warns not to market the company too optimistically or negatively. "Be realistic when describing the working conditions," she says, because new workers "may not stay too long if you misrepresent the company."

When interviewing, don't be fooled by "a perfect accent and Oxford English," Mak warns. "You still need to probe into values and experience. In the older days, many firms hired people primarily because of language proficiency. Don't do this anymore. I put values first because unfortunately--due to education systems, culture and norms--we tend to see a big gap between 'our' values and 'their' values, and this can make or break a working relationship."

Conlon warns that Chinese interviewees "may not be polished. Be cautious not to make a judgment on that."

Unlike Heytens, Conlon advises conducting several interviews because people in the Chinese culture tend to be less direct than in Western cultures, and they "take a long time to say what they want to say. Bring them back, so they feel comfortable and you get the information you need. Tap into their true potential. The system is not geared to helping people know their own potential."

Michael Colozzi--general manager for Portola Packaging Inc. in Shanghai--agrees. "Everyone I hired on my immediate staff I interviewed five times," he says. "In two cases, I gave people minor assignments to prepare presentations. I tested them. I let everybody know I was extremely serious."

Camille Elliott, who returned from Beijing last year to work as a recruitment manager for PricewaterhouseCoopers in the San Francisco area, also made use of multiple interviews in China. In fact, Elliott would regularly ask a Chinese native and someone from the West to interview and assess a candidate's ability to balance Western and Chinese styles of management. The Chinese management style tends to be very directed, she says, and Chinese managers "tend not to have the coaching skills that you as a Westerner would like to see."

This lack of managerial skills can be overcome, says Colozzi. Chinese managers "don't like to make decisions without having 100 percent of the facts," he explains. "In the United States we're not reluctant. If we make a mistake, we clean up the mess and start again," he says. But he has found that Chinese managers can learn to make direct decisions "and you'll be amazed at how creative they are at solving problems."

Conlon adds that references are easy to obtain in China. "You can call up a previous manager and ask for a reference. People have been pretty open."