Recruiting in China

Nov.19 - About 1.24 million Chinese college graduates have failed to land jobs that require their qualifications upon graduation this year, the county's top labour official said.

A total of 4.13 million students graduated from higher education institutions this year, 750,000 more than last year, as the country enters its ninth year of expanding college enrolment.

Tian Chengping, minister of labour and social security, said on Thursday he estimates about 70 per cent of college graduates have been employed since graduation, according to the China Youth Daily.

He said the central government has set up an inter-ministerial joint team, including the Ministry of Education, to help address employment problems.

Meanwhile, the Labour and Social Security Ministry has established a mechanism to provide guidance and training for unemployed graduates, the minister said.

Only 22 per cent of China's new jobs last year were for college graduates, estimates a ministry study of 114 urban labour markets.

Tian said the country should create more jobs in the process of economic development and urged college graduates to work in grassroots units and undeveloped areas where they are most needed.

China's official registered unemployment rate stood at 4.1 per cent in the first nine months of 2006.

The demand for college graduates was down 22 per cent in 24 provinces and 15 major cities from last year, said a report issued by the Ministry of Personnel in March.

A survey showed 52.14 per cent of bachelor degree holders considered lack of experience as the biggest obstacle in finding work.

Colleges and universities should organize internships to prepare students for employment, said Lin Zeyan, a researcher with the Development Research Centre of the State Council at a forum this month.

The country needs to develop its service sector and promote small and medium-sized enterprises to create more jobs, said Mo Rong, deputy chief of the Labour Science Research Institute.

Chinanews, Beijing, Nov. 18 - "Currently (before November 15), there are 121 branches of 47 foreign insurance agencies from 47 countries and regions in China,"said Li Kemu, deputy director of China Insurance Regulatory Commssion, at the 4th Sino-US Insurance Talks.

China's rapid economic growth has injected unparalleled vigor into its insurance industry, and allowed it to grow at an average annual rate of 17.3%. In fact, insurance is one of the fastest-growing of all industries in China.

Last year alone, insurance made a revenue of 49.27 billion yuan, and it will surely gain more by the end of 2006. The total capital of all the 100 insurance agencies in China is as much as 1.84 trillion yuan, an amazing figure.

However, there are problems in China's insurance industry. First, the market conditions are not perfect, thus regulations and laws must be made as soon as possible to bridge the gap of transparency and fairness of the market between China and developed countries. Second, local insurance agencies must work hard to improve the quality of their services, and the general public should know more about the importance of insurance.

As Chinese only spent 376 yuan per capita on insurance in 2005 (much lower than the average international level), the market will boom even faster in the future.

Many years ago when I hated what I was doing for a living, I was encouraged by my career coach to write down several short stories about times and events in my life where I influenced the outcome. I was stumped at first, but after a few days, I came up with more than 15 pages of stories of times in my life where I influenced the outcome and either grew myself and/or bettered the existence of either myself or others around me.

So what does this have to do with a job interview?

If you read other books on job interviews, you'll notice they feed you lists of interview questions and answers to memorize. An interview is not an interrogation, however it's a conversation. To make it that way you need to come armed with a multitude of small stories about both your business and personal lives.

When you go into an interview, you need to leave your nerves at the door. The best way to prepare is to be yourself. The best way to be yourself is to tell your own story (or stories).

This is especially great for the competency-based interview being used more today. In a traditional interview, the interviewer will ask you questions focused on whether you have the skills and knowledge needed to do the job. A competency-based interview goes further by asking you additional questions about your character and personal attributes that can better determine whether you fit their corporate culture. These are called "behavioral competencies."

A competency-based interviewer will spend about half the interview on your job skills, and about half on your behavioral competencies. He or she will be looking for evidence of how you have acted in real situations in the past.

An employer wants to find out:

Are you an asset or liability? In other words, will you make money or save money for the company?

Are you a team player? Will you fit into the corporate hierarchy or be like sand in the gears? Can you take and give (if appropriate) orders?

Will you fit into the company culture? They don't want prima donnas.

The best way to show these traits is to take the initiative and have several personal stories that you can tell, taking maybe 30 to 90 seconds each.

You may want to start by developing your stories around these seven areas:

1. Times where you either made money or saved money for your current or previous company.

2. A crisis in your life or job and how you responded or recovered from it.

3. A time where you functioned as part of a team and what your contribution was.

4. A time in your career or job where you had to overcome stress.

5. A time in your job where you provided successful leadership or a sense of direction.

6. A failure that occurred in your job and how you overcame it.

7. Any seminal events that happened during your career to cause you to change direction and how that worked out for you.

I want to emphasize that an interview should not be an interrogation. It should be a conversation between two equals. When you accomplish this you come away a step closer to your goal of landing the job you really want, because...

It's the conversation that wins an interview, and it's the conversation that wins the job

To have a conversation, have your stories ready.

Like many profound ideas, ¡°professionalism¡± is an ambiguous concept used to refer to a wide range of attitudes, skills, values and behaviors. For example, if one asks people what is meant by referring to a consultant as ¡°really professional,¡± one hears a variety of replies. A really professional consultant, I am told,

Gets involved and doesn¡¯t just stick to their assigned role
Reaches out for responsibility
Does whatever it takes to get the job done
Is a team player
Is observant
Is honest
Is loyal
Really listens to the clients¡¯s needs
Takes pride in their work, and shows a commitment to quality
Shows initiative

This list indicates some of the differences between a ¡°really professional¡± consultant and an ordinary consultant. It reveals that a high level of professionalism doesn¡¯t stop with a foundation of technical qualifications and analytical skills. In addition to these basic attributes, the right attitudes and behavior must also be in place, and these become the distinguishing factor for achieving real professionalism. My former business manager, Julie MacDonald O¡¯Leary, said it best: ¡°Professional is not a title you claim for yourself, it¡¯s an adjective you hope other people will apply to you. You have to earn it.¡± (David H. Maister, True Professionalism, Free Press, 1997)

¡°You have to earn it¡± may not be a bad way to summarize what professionalism is really all about. It means deserving the rewards you wish to gain from others by being dedicated to serving their interests as part of an implied bargain. Professionalism implies that you do not focus only on the immediate transaction, but care about your relationship with the person with whom you are working. It means you can be trusted to put your clients¡¯ interests first, can be depended upon to do what you say you will do and will not consistently act for short-term personal gain. Professionals make decisions using principles of appropriate behavior, not just short-term expediency.

Significant efforts have been made, and continue to be made, to ¡°professionalize¡± consulting by promoting the use of the CMC¨CCertified Management Consultant¨Cqualification. However, professionalism is not about qualifications and certification. Having an MBA from a name school or official recognition from a trade association or certifying body might say something about your knowledge, but these pieces of paper are unlikely to be predictive of your attitudes and behaviors, and maybe not even your skills. No formal qualification will ever provide complete assurance to the buyer that the provider will act appropriately, even if equipped with the required skills.

Who Really Has the Upper Hand? Employers or Job Seekers?

When members of the Employment Management Assn. gathered in Orlando for their 31st annual conference in early May, the big topic was recruiting and retaining employees in today's red-hot labor market.

Little wonder. In April, the national unemployment rate had dipped to 3.9%, its lowest level in 30 years -- about as long as the association has been holding its annual gatherings. And while it ticked back up to 4.1% in May, no one is ready to declare the labor crunch over.

For the group's membership, some 6,000 corporate recruiters who work to keep their companies fully staffed, the shrinking labor market means major headaches. For job seekers, though, it's a bonanza: Only once in every two or three decades are employees in the position of being sought-after commodities.

On the eve of the conference, Business Week Online Senior Writer Pam Mendels caught up with Barbara A. Mitchell, president of the association, which is a branch of the Society for Human Resource Management in Alexandria, Va. Mitchell discussed how employees can best use the tight labor market to plot their career strategies. Here are edited excerpts of that conversation:

Q: What jobs are particularly difficult to fill?
A: It's pretty much across the board. Everything from the very high-end Web positions -- Web designer, Webmaster -- all the way through to programmers, systems analysts, anything to do with Visual Basic or C++ programming. The very, very high-end programming jobs are especially difficult to fill.

Q: Outside of technology, what other kinds of jobs are begging for employees?
A: Certainly in the service sector many organizations are taking people who would primarily have been service workers in hotels and restaurants and training them for technology positions. So that's leaving the service industry very much in difficulty. Every organization is having trouble at entry levels because there are fewer people at that level coming out of school.

Q: How can job hunters best take advantage of this labor market?
A: I think it's a marvelous time to be an applicant because you have your pick of the field you want to go into, and you can negotiate far more benefits and a better salary than I can remember ever before.

I think what job applicants need to do is research. And the best place to do that is through the Internet. There are thousands and thousands of sites for job seekers that give tips on how to ace interviews and how to find out everything you want to know about a company.

Q. What kinds of things might a job hunter negotiate?
A: Certainly for salary and time off, which has become the most difficult commodity, I think, for anyone in today's workforce. Because there's a shortage of workers, people are having to work longer hours. And so, negotiating for time off is something that people should do up-front -- maybe an extra week's vacation, maybe a trip they've already planned.

People are now negotiating for [instant] vesting of their 401(k) or stock options. It used to be that organizations set how vesting would be done, and it usually was a four- to seven-year schedule. Now, people are asking to be vested when they start, so that every dollar that they earn or the company puts in is theirs to take if they leave.

Q: Is that a negotiable item even with companies that have set policies?
A: It means that sometimes exceptions have to be made or plans have to be reviewed, but it's definitely being done, especially in technology organizations.

Q: The rule of thumb used to be that you had to stay in a job at least a year before moving on. Has the tight labor market changed that?
A: Absolutely. No longer is it a negative for people to change jobs quickly. But still, applicants need to be able to explain why they made the change. It can't be just that they didn't like their boss, or they didn't like the culture.

That sends a message to the new company they're applying to that this is a person who didn't do their research. That this is a person who, perhaps, makes very quick decisions. So, even though it's more acceptable to make frequent changes, applicants still need to have a good business reason why they made the change.

Q: And what about notice? How much warning does an employee have to give an employer before taking a [new] job?
A: It depends on the level the person is working at. The higher the level, the more notice organizations usually require. But that's usually up-front with the employee. In their employee handbook, they'll know if it's two weeks or if it's a four-week notice.

In today's world, those [rules] aren't always followed. People will sometimes make very quick decisions. I'm hearing about people whose boss [says] something to them that they don't like in the morning. By noon they've got their resume on the Internet, and by the end of the day, they've got job offers, and they leave. It can happen just that quickly.

Q: If you're happy in your current job, but you get an offer for another position, do you ignore it? Or should you use it as leverage to negotiate a better deal?
A: I think it depends upon how long you want to stay with your current organization. I don't think you should ever ignore another opportunity. But if you're happy where you are, and you go to that organization and say that you have another offer, you may be putting your current job in jeopardy if you have a manager who values loyalty, who may see the fact that you're even looking as being less loyal.

So, you really have to weigh your options. I would recommend not using [an offer] as leverage, but perhaps using it as information when you go for your next performance review or your next salary review. So, you can kind of let them know that you know what's happening in the marketplace.

Q: What are common blunders that job seekers make?
A: The biggest blunder I see applicants making is not knowing anything about the organization they are applying to. With the Internet, there's no reason at all why an applicant should not be very knowledgeable about the organization. Say the interviewer says: "What do you know about our company, and why do you want to work here?" If the applicant says: "Well, nothing, tell me, start at the beginning," that sends a message that the applicant really isn't interested in your organization.

So first, I would say: Be knowledgeable about the organization you're applying to. And other blunders? What people wear to interviews is still important, even though we are in a very casual business atmosphere. Applicants need to err on the side of being a little more formal for job interviews. It's always a good idea to find out what the culture is before you go for the interview.

Q: But when in doubt, be conservative?
A: When in doubt, be conservative.

BEIJING -- The number of China's estimated 200 million migrant workers covered by medical insurance increased from 4.9 million at the end of last year to 18.4 million at the end of this September, the National Development and Reform Commission said on Thursday.
Migrant workers covered by employers' liability insurance also surged by 79.3 percent to 22.4 million in the first nine months of the year, thanks to China's stronger efforts to protect the rights of migrant workers.

China's economic boom has driven an unprecedented army of about200 million people to swap farms for factories, construction sites and mines as they seek a higher income.

A survey by the State Administration of Work Safety (SAWS) in nine provinces shows that migrant workers account for 80 percent of China's 30 million-plus construction workers. They also make up56 percent of the workers in mining and dangerous chemicals and fireworks factories.

The survey also shows that almost all the workers at small collieries are migrant workers. Even in state-owned collieries, almost all the non-management jobs are filled by migrant workers.

Poor safety facilities, slack safety rules and the lack of proper training have made migrant workers the most vulnerable group in terms of work safety.

To protect the interests of migrant workers, the Chinese government has been pushing for wider insurance coverage in vulnerable industries such as coal mining and construction.

By the end of last year, almost all the migrant workers in major state-owned collieries had been covered by employers' liability insurance.

China is also trying to strengthen the training of migrant workers, as the SAWS survey shows that 90 percent of industrial accidents are caused by human error, and 80 percent occur in work places dominated by migrant workers.

A SAWS guideline states migrant workers in dangerous industries must receive no less than 72 hours of safety training before they begin work. For those in the construction industry, the minimum requirement is 32 hours. The guidelines also require no less than 20 hours of safety training for each worker each year.