Recruiting in China

"A total of 593,832 foreigners were living on the Chinese mainland at the end of 2010, data from the sixth national census reveals. The top three home countries of the foreigners were South Korea, the United States and Japan. Among the foreigners living on the mainland, 56.62 percent or 336,245 were males and 43.38 percent or 257,587 were females. Foreigners on the mainland were surveyed for the first time in the census. A total of 234,829 Hong Kong residents and 21,201 Macau residents were living on the mainland in November, the census results showed. Among those Hong Hong residents living on the mainland, 141,321or 60.18 percent were males. Males accounted for 55.22 percent, or 11,708, of the total number of Macau residents living on the Chinese mainland, the census found. And a total of 170,283 Taiwan residents were living on the mainland in November. Of them, 116,547 people or 68.4 percent were males." [Shanghai Daily]

SHANGHAI/HONG KONG: International banks in China find themselves stuck between a rock and a hard place as the battle for top-tier talent on the mainland leaves them facing a stark choice: either pay exorbitant salaries and benefits or lose their best people to competitors at a head-spinning rate.

China last year overtook Japan as the world's second-biggest economy and the country is positioning itself for a record fundraising boom to fuel its next stage of growth.

The financial market has experienced explosive growth in the past two decades. China now has more than 2,000 listed companies and the world's second-biggest stock market capitalisation, according to Thomson Reuters data. But the pool of financial talent has not expanded as fast, industry players say.

Heady expansion by JP Morgan , UBS and others has aggravated the problem.

JP Morgan aims to have "several thousand bankers eventually" in Asia, Gaby Abdelnour, JP Morgan Asia Pacific CEO, told Reuters Insider this week.

Talent management will be the biggest challenge for the next five years, Abdelnour said. "Guess what? We will be hiring and we will be losing people along the way because everybody else is hiring."

Competition for qualified candidates has driven up wages so much that the gap between salaries of mainland financial executives and their peers in other more advanced financial hubs such as Hong Kong and Singapore, are fast narrowing.

Salaries have increased on average by 20 percent this year for candidates taking new jobs within the financial services industry in China, according to the British recruitment group, Hays Plc .

Newly hired analysts in China are being offered 180,000-240,000 yuan per year while senior-level executives can expect offers of up to 1 million yuan ($153,060) a year. Bonuses for the lower-tier employees range from 15 to 25 percent of the base salary while senior executives are normally tied to performance targets, according to headhunters.

"Companies that are not giving competitive pay rises have to face serious turnover issues," said Emma Charnock, Hays' regional director for Hong Kong and China.

Hays recently helped a Beijing-based investment bank client secure a new hire from Hong Kong to fill a mainland financial controller's job after the client agreed to pay 40 percent more than what the candidate was getting in Hong Kong, Charnock said.

"There's a lot at stake. If they can't find the right candidates, their expansion plans could be inhibited. It will have a direct knock-on effect to their expansion in China," said Charnock, referring to international banks in China in general.

Another foreign company took the trouble to outline its growth plan in China over the next three to five years and promised a clear career plan for its financial controller candidate before the candidate signed on, she said.

FAST GROWTH CLSA Asia-Pacific Markets estimates fundraising on China's two stock exchanges will reach 700 billion yuan ($107.1 billion) a year, pushing the A-share market cap to 17 trillion yuan by 2015 and making it possibly the largest market in the world.

Shanghai, which aspires to become an international financial centre by 2020, is preparing an international board on the Shanghai Stock Exchange to allow foreign companies to list on the mainland.

China has also slowly opened its capital accounts and encouraged more cross-border financial products because it wants to raise the global profile of the yuan .

Global banks, salivating at the growth potential, are tapping overseas Chinese, popularly known in China as "returnees," from Asia to Europe and the United States to deal with the small local talent pool.

"There are not many people who fully understand China, fully understand finance and fully understand international practice. So if you use those three priorities, the talent pool is not that big," said David Li, chairman and country head for China at UBS.

The huge growth potential attracted Sun Wei, 25, after she finished her master's degree in accounting and finance at an Australian college last year.

"China's economy is growing very fast. The upside potential is huge," said Sun, now working at a big-four accounting firm in Shanghai. "I have more opportunities here than abroad," she said.

Another banker, Cheng Bing, joined BNY Mellon in March to lead its new trading floor in Shanghai after the U.S. bank was awarded a license to conduct local-currency business in China. He had been a senior executive at DBS Shanghai .

He said that it is not a challenge to find junior traders in China, where trading instruments are relatively basic and fundamental in nature, but it is a challenge to source senior talent.

"Finding senior-level talent with international expertise and local understanding is a challenge for many foreign banks," Cheng said. "In China, policies change a lot and you need to adapt to that."

Cheng also said a higher salary was not the main driver of his move, but the prospect of a better career.

INNOVATIVE CAREER PATH For overseas financial professionals who already have a solid career, however, any decision to relocate to China is not so straightforward.

It often means moving from a stable, sophisticated and exotic market to one that is less certain, primitive and one-dimensional, said a recruitment specialist and a Hong Kong-based banker.

"A private banker, for example, would be unhappy to move from an advanced platform to a basic platform, even if you offer him or her a larger geographical split," said Richie Holliday, a recruitment consultant with Morgan McKinley , a European headhunting company that recently set up a new office in Shanghai.

China's foreign exchange controls, regulations and an underdeveloped derivatives market limit the range of products private bankers can offer their clients, industry players say.

Uncertainties surrounding the country's regulatory environment and the slow progress of its capital market liberalisation have also discouraged many potential recruits.

"There are still a lot of restrictions and uncertainties in China's capital markets. You are not sure what your business will be like in one or two years," said Alexandre Werno, China business development director of global markets at Societe Generale in Hong Kong.

"If you are a trader and you are based in mainland China, you face a single market which is not very developed," Werno said.

The fact that foreigners will be subject to higher personal income tax rates does not help either. The 45 percent maximum tax rate for foreigners in Shanghai, for example, is significantly higher than the 17 percent rate in Hong Kong and the 20 percent rate in Singapore.

Desperate to attract and retain new talent, international financial institutions in China are embracing more creative and flexible talent management practices and a fast-track to top jobs.

Morgan Stanley's recent decision to promote its top China banker, Wei Christianson, to be joint-chief for its Asian business is seen as a classic example of how China's growing importance has raised the status of Chinese bankers.

"Some banks still consider Beijing as a hardship posting so they have to think around the box," said Charnock of Hays.

"Usually it's an innovative career path. We have seen candidates take up much more senior roles than they would do in some other financial hubs to attract them back," she said.

Ford Motor Co. (F) will hire 1,200 new employees in China by 2015, doubling its workforce as it seeks market share in the world?s largest auto market.

?In China we?re going to significantly increase our resources here,? Joe Hinrichs, chief of the automaker?s Asia- Pacific and African operations, said today in Shanghai. ?We?re committed to it, we have the capital, we have the products.?

Ford is banking on emerging markets to help it maintain profits after posting $6.56 billion in net income last year, the most since 1999. The Dearborn, Michigan-based company expects 70 percent of its growth in the next 10 years to come from the Asia-Pacific region and Africa, it said in September.

The automaker introduced its Mondeo sedan in China last month and also sells Focus compact cars and Fiesta subcompacts in the world?s second-largest economy. Its deliveries in China surged 40 percent to a record 582,467 vehicles last year as rising incomes and economic growth spurred auto demand. Sales rose 20 percent last month, the company said April 7.

The hiring in China -- in departments including engineering, manufacturing and marketing sales -- adds to the more than 7,000 workers Ford plans to employ in the next two years in North America.

Ford is building a new vehicle plant with its China joint venture Changan Ford Mazda Automobile Co. in Chongqing and has plans for a new engine plant in the southwestern city.

Jingwei.com, an SNS aimed at business professionals created by Beijing-based holding company Oak Pacific Interactive and Chinese online recruitment site Zhaopin, officially launched today.

In closed beta since earlier this month, registration on Jingwei is now open to the public; adding "friends" on the new site requires an "introduction" from a mutual acquaintance of both parties.

Jingwei spokesperson Shu Wei said the site will host "Company Day" events beginning in April, allowing employees from global Fortune 500 and well-known domestic firms to 'mingle' on companies' designated pages on the site.

STOCKHOLM: Volvo Cars, owned by China's Geely, said on Tuesday it planned to hire 1,200 new employees in Sweden and Belgium as it invests to meet new global demand.

Volvo Chief Executive Stefan Jacoby said the carmaker expected to sell "significantly more cars in 2011" compared with the previous year and that it had seen good demand in the past month in the United States, Europe and also China.

Demand in Japan also remained surprisingly strong, he said. "We are investing in our future. There is no free ticket for a bright future," Jacoby said, adding that the firm was also investing in capacity at its plants.

The carmaker has said it plans to invest up to $11 billion in new product development and facilities over the next 5 years.

Geely, parent of Geely Automobile Holdings, took over Ford Motor's Volvo car unit in August 2010, in China's largest acquisition of a foreign car maker.

Mar. 16 ? While 10 years ago, China?s low-cost labor force was one of the major drivers pushing foreign manufacturers to choose the emerging nation as their production base, nowadays China?s human resource (HR) market is witnessing significant changes alongside its developing industrial landscape. But while it is widely recognized that hiring is becoming more expensive across the country ? especially in some industries and in major coastal cities like Shanghai - it should also be noted that the overall HR market is becoming more mature for employers.

More expensive hiring

According to the latest statistics released by Robert Walters in its 2011 China Salary Survey, recruitment activity increased in the first half of 2010 and peaked between April and June as the Chinese economy quickly recovered from the Global Financial Crisis amid strong market conditions. The survey predicts that in 2011, salary rises are likely to be around 10 percent across various industries, while top-tier candidates may command approximate 15 percent to 30 percent increases in their compensation.

The size of a company?s hiring budget is closely related to China?s policy alterations and economic development focus. Furthermore, a strong demand for information technology (IT) advancement, encouragement in merger and acquisition (M&A) activities, prosperity in consumer markets, and China?s attempts to further open up its financial sector mean that businesses in the fields of financial services, accounting, IT, sales and marketing may need to prepare bigger paychecks for their employees.

Shanghai: an increasingly mature HR market

Zhang Sheng, the Commerce Finance Division manager of Robert Walters, describes Shanghai as the third most mature hiring market in Asia among commerce-centered cities, following Hong Kong and Singapore. As Shanghai gains growing global presence and is ready to accommodate headquarters of international businesses, employers will be impressed to find out there is a significant number of candidates available with both local and international experience that make them completely qualified as being ?decision makers? instead of ?command followers.?

Professionals with local experience in the Shanghai market are of much value for employers who look to set up their business in Shanghai, since many of them have grown and learned with China?s rapid development and reforms in the past decade. The distinct development stages China has gone through in such a short period has enabled them to master a much wider span of business knowledge than those working in a country with relatively stable development.

The Shanghai HR market?s maturity also resides in its mounting diversity and comprehensiveness.

?You can find professionals at all levels to meet your demands in the city,? Zhang emphasized.

The overall national infrastructure development has not only made it easier for companies that want to take advantage of the lower cost in China?s inland cities to relocate their manufacturing bases and build up a national supply chain, but it also makes it more possible for those employers to hire people who are willing to relocate. The changing attitude to relocation means a senior manager can stay with a company longer, have a better understanding of the company?s periodical strategies, and thus become more qualified for participating in long-term decision-making.

The staff loyalty mystery

While loyalty is supposed to be highly valued in the Chinese culture, staff loyalty is becoming more and more of a mystery for many employers. On one hand, with a massive HR supply, the competition in China?s job market is fierce; on the other hand, companies still often find it difficult to maintain a comparatively stable staff since many employees hop from one job to another frequently for better opportunities or pay.

Zhang believes that low staff loyalty has something to do with China?s growth pattern. The country?s fast shifts in development focus has led to professional shortages in some fields. For example, While China?s M&A market just started booming two years ago, the supply of professional accountants that can help complete compliance processes failed to meet the surging demand, because it definitely takes longer than two years for an accountant to grow mature and competent enough for those positions. The imbalanced supply-demand relationship resulted in companies bidding for the limited amount of professionals, and finally facilitated the phenomenon of ?job changers.?

In order to maintain valuable employees, companies may need to take a closer look at China?s policy trends to receive a better understanding of when is the best time to offer employees more incentives. A universal 30 percent post-financial crisis salary increase in many companies that cut redundancy during the crisis is a good example showing how those employers perceive the ever-changing HR market conditions during different periods.