Recruiting in China

IN the past weeks, I've joined several Christmas parties in Berlin, but what I am really longing for is coming back to Shanghai and celebrating the Chinese New Year with my parents. I need a short break from my doctoral thesis in Berlin.

I have been asked so many times by both Chinese and German friends about the plan after achieving the doctoral title in Germany, to stay or to return. I have never hesitated to answer - I will go back to Shanghai. Definitely! Home is sweet.

But what if home is not always sweet? I was surprised when my German supervisor at the Humboldt University of Berlin once seriously suggested that I might need two to three years to get readjusted in Shanghai. But how can this be true? I was born and grew up in this metropolis, and everything in Shanghai is familiar to me. I first just regarded this as a joke, but later I asked myself, is the process of readjusting to Shanghai that easy?

Nan M. Sussman, a renowned American professor, focusing on exploring cultural transitions among sojourners, wrote an article, The Dynamic Nature of Cultural Identity Throughout Cultural Transitions: Why Home Is Not So Sweet, in which she analyzed the relationships among self-concept, cultural identity, and cultural transitions.

The well-known U-curve hypothesis vividly depicts the process of acculturation in a new culture as a curve with four-stages (honeymoon, conflict, critical, and recovery). Later, the return into the home culture is suggested as another U-curve and the whole process of cultural transition was described as a W-curve.

Frankly, I did expect the cultural difference before I left Shanghai for Berlin, but it is frustrating to imagine that I even need to prepare for another round of cultural shock to my own culture.

Nevertheless, on second thought, it is logical and reasonable that one should never take the readjustment for granted, as home is never the same home it once was and the person himself is never the one he once was. Everything at home changes, more or less, during one's absences. One cannot step into the same river twice, for fresh water is forever flowing towards him. The better one has adapted to the foreign culture, the more difficulties one will come across when he returns to his own culture.

Pressure to succeed

Then, what I am worrying about in going home? Definitely, it is the high social pressure on and expectations of young people. We are all familiar with the standards of "successful" young professionals in Shanghai, who are expected to have a "white-collar" job, to purchase an apartment of his own (a bonus if it is downtown), to own a car and to be able to afford a "golden-week" holiday abroad (in Europe or in Japan) once a year. I am sure I will be excluded from this "promising" group when I come back to Shanghai.

Clothes and trappings make the man in Shanghai. I always turned off the tone of my old mobile phone, as my old-fashioned one made a monotonous noise when someone called me; people around me on a bus would cast their eyes upon me, wondering how could I, being a young people in such an information era, be that out-dated. I didn't bother to purchase a new one and just switched the ring tones off, to avoid the peculiar eyes.

In Berlin, old-mode mobile phones are sometimes still seen and one doesn't necessarily have to feel ashamed for only owing an old-fashioned one. Believe it or not, the new interior decorations of my friends or former classmates in Shanghai are more luxurious than that of most German families I have visited.

Cultural transition is challenging and demanding. As a sojourner, I both suffered and benefited tremendously from various cultural shocks in Berlin. When I finally get used to the German language, culture and lifestyle in Germany, it is time to return, and I am actually more than happy to return.

But how shall I encourage myself to be brave and determined? Maybe one of the easy alternatives is not bother to think too much, but when in Shanghai as the Shanghainese do?

Home may still be sweet as we thought, who knows?

Author:Zhu Jiani

HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- Chinese companies plan to pay out larger discretionary 2010 year-end bonuses, as a percentage of base salary, than companies in Hong Kong or Singapore, according a quarterly survey released Thursday by recruitment firm Hudson. About 20% of China companies surveyed will pay bonuses equivalent to 20% or more of base salary, while only 16% of firms surveyed in Hong Kong, and 15% of Singaporean companies will be as generous. China companies also outpace their counterparts in terms of the percentage planning any sort of bonus packets, with 92% of companies to offer the payouts, compared to 87% in Singapore and 82% in Hong Kong, the report said.

A total of 57 million jobs will have been created in China's urban areas over the 2006-2010 period, the Minister of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS) Yin Weimin said Thursday.

Annual employment for the period will be 11.4 million, or 2.1 million more than China's 10th Five-Year Program (2001-2005) period, said Yin while addressing a national human resources and social security work conference.

Yin said the unemployment rate had remained under 4.3 percent throughout the period, while nearly 45 million underemployed rural workers had taken up new jobs in the non-agricultural sectors, 5 million more than the 2001-2005 period.

The Employment Promotion Law of 2007 as well as measures introduced after several natural disasters and the global financial crisis had boosted employment, Yin said.

Also, a system providing vocational training and employment services was taking shape, he said.

About 86 million people received special vocational training and 330 million people used government employment services during the period, he added.

Chinese Vice Premier Zhang Dejiang said at the national conference on human resources and social security that China needed to resolutely stick to the task of creating jobs and keep improving the social security system during the coming 12th Five-Year-Plan period (2011-2015).

In the next five years, the government should implement more effective employment measures and create jobs through diversified channels, Zhang said .

Zhang also said the government should increase investment in the social security network and expand the network's coverage so to improve the country's social security system for both rural and urban residents.

INTERNET job hunting giant Seek has expanded further into southeast Asia, taking a $206 million stake in a Hong Kong-based online recruitment website.

Seek yesterday announced it had purchased the majority holding in employment website Jobs DB Inc, giving it a 60 per cent slice of the Chinese company through the creation of a new company, Seek Asia.

Seek Asia is a partnership between Seek, James Packer's Consolidated Media Holdings, Macquarie Capital and Tiger Global.

Seek's co-chief executive Andrew Bassat said the move into Asia "built upon the company's existing international footprint" and exposed the company to "attractive regions".

"We believe this transaction represents a compelling opportunity for Seek to play an increasingly meaningful role and to expand its exposure in the region."

Seek's latest acquisition adds to several other major international investments including Chinese online jobs board Zhaopin; Southeast Asian recruitment website JobStreet and employment sites in Brazil and Mexico.

Evans and Partners analyst Paul Ryan said the Jobs DB acquisition would be part of Seek's long term strategy to become a leader in the Pan-Asian online employment market.

"When you add Jobs DB in, the combined businesses have a larger, more diversified and better presence in southern China," Mr Ryan said. "It's a bigger, more diversified and more profitable business."

Mr Ryan said he expected Macquarie and Tiger Global to exit Seek Asia through an IPO at a later date.

However, another analyst said Seek may have been spreading itself too thin with its latest Asian investment following co-founder and chief executive Paul Bassat's plans to leave the company in mid-2011.

"This is another company that they have to integrate and manage and try to grow," said the analyst, who declined to be named.

Seek Australia has a 69 per cent holding in Seek Asia and the other 31 per cent, $64 million, will be divided between the three other co-investors.

Mr Packer's $25 million Seek Asia investment was his first since selling out of Seek Australia last year for $440 million.

The media and casino mogul has also invested in Seek's Brazilian acquisition, Brasil Online Holding, and made an unsuccessful attempt to get Paul Bassat on the Ten Network board.

Seek shares rose 1c to $6.57.

On CBS' 60 Minutes last Sunday, the Brazilian billionaire Eike Batista told correspondent Steve Kroft that he's hiring Americans to weld his oil platforms.

"To weld the platforms?" Kroft responded incredulously. "Yes," replied Batista, explaining that his country's booming economy is at almost full employment, and Brazil needs to import workers. "Already we have created this year 1.5 million jobs," continued the world's eighth richest man according to Forbes' most recent tally. "It's unbelievable."

That unbelievable job growth is reflected in the latest global employment outlook survey by the staffing firm Manpower. Brazil rates fourth on the tally of the nations with the greatest optimism about hiring in the first quarter of next year. Brazil's net hiring outlook--the number of employers surveyed who expect to increase their employment rolls minus the percentage who expect to decrease them--is 36%. That's driven by a 7% gross domestic product growth rate, three times higher than in the U.S.

Manpower surveyed 64,000 human resource directors and senior hiring managers from public and private concerns worldwide to come up with its list. It asked each of them about their expectations for hiring in the first quarter of 2011. Almost half, 47% of them, came from 10 countries in the Americas, 24% from eight countries in Asia and the Pacific, and 29% from Europe, the Middle East and Africa. "This is very much a macro-economic look at new job creation," says the staffing firm's chairman and chief executive, Jeffrey Joerres.

The results are striking, if not surprising. India has pulled ahead of China since last quarter to take first place, with a whopping 42% net hiring outlook for the first quarter of 2011. China follows close behind at 40%, a 2% decrease from last quarter. Taiwan comes in third, with a net employment outlook of 37%.

Next in line, after Brazil: Turkey, at 27%."There are 75 million people in Turkey," Joerres notes, "more than people realize." And so, despite a lingering debt overhang, there are plenty of consumers buying stuff and driving growth and hiring. Next up after Turkey: Singapore, with a net hiring outlook of 26% for the first quarter.

Are these new jobs ones that should prompt Americans to consider moving? Possibly, says Joerres, though much of the demand gets filled by people from neighboring countries. Outfits like Manpower, which has offices in 82 countries, and the plethora of online job listings make the international job market ever more transparent.

While many of the openings are for low-paying jobs, there are also plenty of opportunities for highly qualified professionals, especially in fields like geoengineering and information systems, Joerres says. Oil and gas engineers are in high demand, for instance. That's a minority of the workers who relocate internationally for jobs, he adds, but it's a minority that's growing: "It's still on the margin, but the margin has gotten bigger."

The countries rounding out the list include Peru, Costa Rica and Argentina as well as Australia and Hong Kong.

How does the U.S. rate? Better than you might expect. It has a 9% net hiring outlook.

China will revise its list of 1,838 different kinds of job categories, which was made by the Ministry of Labor and Social Security, Quality and Technical Supervision Bureau and National Statistics Bureau in 1999.

The revision would reflect China's social structure better and help future workforce analysis and human resources development, said Yin Weimin, the Minister of Human Resources and Social Security and head of the revision committee, said at a ceremony held here Thursday.

As the country developed over the past decade, many occupations faded out while new ones appeared and thus the job list needed to be adjusted accordingly, Yin said.

The revision is expected to be finished in the first half of 2012.