Recruiting in China

China needs to take action against the large number of poorly qualified and low quality professionals with university or college certification, Chinese Talents Society Vice President Wang Tongxun said.

China Youth Daily reports Wang Tongxun issued his warning at a forum on human resources development held recently in Beijing.

Record numbers of Chinese citizens have received higher education in recent years. Over 66.5 million people have college degrees or above and around 17% of high school graduates enrol at university. There were 2.8 million graduates in 2005, nearly 9 times the number of graduates in 1985.

But Wang Tongxun said that as universities and colleges grow from institutions that cater to an elite group of students to institutions that education the masses, several problems have been created.

Degrees and titles are easy to obtain in China. Some universities or colleges issue diplomas recklessly, even providing them to people who have not attended the university courses. The lack of a sound qualification system allows poorly skilled Chinese professionals to receive titles more easily than their foreign counterparts.

Wang Tongxun also said the academic research at Chinese universities and research institutes is often carried out in a poorly planned and impatient manner. The resulting papers are rarely cited by foreign researchers and rank below 120 in the world in terms of citations. As a result, most of the research has no value and can't be put into practice.

To compound the problem, the tendency for employers to value people according to their degrees rather than their talent and work experience has led to a culture of degree-hunting where people neglect to improve their talents in a measurable way.

Finally, Wang Tongxun said the phenomenon has led to a brain drain. Around 930,000 Chinese have traveled overseas to study since 1986, but only 230,000 have returned

When she returned to China after more than a decade away, Dutchwoman Murielle Van de Pol was amazed at the huge changes that had taken place in the country.

She studied at Peking University 12 years ago, and now is back to attend the 2006 Conference on the Exchange of International Professionals which ended here on Thursday.

The changes are so massive that China looks like a completely different country, she told Xinhua excitedly.

Representing the Netherlands Senior Experts (PUM) in China, she hopes to introduce more Dutch experts to China during the conference.

Like Murielle, many foreigners living in China are experiencing the rapid changes taking place in this ancient civilization. The dynamism and energy of China make it an attractive destination for foreign experts.

Piet Hein de Wit, PUM coordinator, comes to China four to five times a year. He said he likes working in China and the people here are very hospitable.

According to Piet, PUM has signed 80 projects agreements with Chinese organizations this year and over the last 12 years about 4,000 Dutch experts have been introduced to China to work on about 1,000 projects.

During the early years of China's reform and opening up in the late 1970s, China only introduced about 1,000 foreign experts and professionals each year. The number has grown to 200,000-400,000 in recent years.

Last year China introduced 340,000 foreign experts and professionals, according to statistics from China's State Administration of Foreign Experts Affairs (SAFEA).

SAFEA spokesman Liu Yongzhi said China's rapid economic growth was the key factor in attracting more international talent, and the numbers of foreign professionals introduced to China is not likely to decrease over the next five years.

Pay levels in some companies and universities are now similar or even better than in developed countries, and this is another drawcard, Liu said.

About 700 foreign delegations from 30 countries, including Russia, the United States, Japan and France, attended the conference and 2068 letters of intent were signed.

Source: Xinhua

A number of Indian outsourcing companies have set up operations in China to tap the local market for IT services and to support the operations of some of their multinational clients in the country. Infosys, India's second-largest outsourcer, plans to increase its staff in China to 6,000 over the next five years.

India-based software outsourcing company Infosys plans to increase its investment in two new centers in China to a total of US$65 million over five years, after which it will be able to house a total of 6,000 engineers at its three centers in that country.

The centers will produce work in the areas of software development, IT services and business process outsourcing, and will also have training and research facilities.

Tapping Into China

A number of Indian outsourcing companies have set up operations in China to tap the local market for IT services and to support the operations of some of their multinational clients in the country.

Infosys plans to double the number of its workers in China to 1,000 this year. Bigger rival Tata Consultancy Services plans to increase the number of employees in China to 5,000 by 2010, from about 400 now.

"China is a domestic market for us because many of our multinational clients are expanding in China," Chief Executive Officer Nandan Nilekani said in an interview in Singapore.

It is a "potential source of resources for our global clients and a potential base for serving the region because of the" Chinese script, he said.

China's exports have soared as foreign companies, including many of Infosys' clients, have set up factories in the country to benefit from low labor costs.

Expansion in Line With Strategy

Expansion in China may also help Infosys boost business in Japan, the world's second-largest economy.

India's second-largest outsourcer, Infosys plans to increase its staff in China to 6,000 over the next five years.

"The expansion is in line with our strategy to tap local talent as well as to expand our global delivery model to other locations," said Bani Paintal Dhawan, a spokesperson for the company.

As of June 30, Infosys had 39,806 employees altogether, most of whom were located in India.

The company is setting up a center in Hanghzhou, China, at the Hanghzhou Hi-Tech Development Industry Zone, the company said in a statement.

The company said on Wednesday that it would set up a new center in Shanghai with seating capacity for 1,000 engineers over the next two years. That facility will be in addition to a facility the company already has at the Shanghai Pudong Software Park that employs about 250 people, according to Dhawan.

Low-Risk Delivery Model

The initial investment in the new Shanghai facility will be $10 million over the next two years, while the initial investment in Hanghzhou will be $15 million, according to the company.

Infosys provides consulting and IT services to clients globally -- as partners to conceptualize and realize technology driven business transformation initiatives. With over 58,000 employees worldwide, it uses a low-risk global delivery model to accelerate schedules with a high degree of time and cost predictability.

CHICAGO, Sept. 1 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. (Nasdaq: HSII), the world's premier executive search and leadership consulting firm, today announced that Karen Choy-Xavier has joined the firm's Singapore office as a Partner in the Industrial and Technology practices. Choy-Xavier will focus on building relationships with Southeast Asia-based businesses and on the placement of chief information officers with companies operating throughout the region.

"With the hiring of Karen, we have doubled our consultant teams in Singapore to six in the past eight months," said Charles Moore, Managing Partner, Singapore. "With her extensive background in executive search, Karen is a significant hire for Heidrick & Struggles in Asia, particularly given our growing market share in the region."

Choy-Xavier has 18 years of experience in executive search. Her depth of focus with companies based in Singapore and across Asia Pacific is highly regarded, particularly in the technology, industrial and consumer spaces. Prior to joining Heidrick & Struggles, Choy-Xavier spent 10 years with Spencer Stuart as a Partner. Her network of contacts and relationships in Asia Pacific has served her well, exemplified by her numerous senior-level placements within both locally based and Fortune 500 companies.

Choy-Xavier's formative years were spent in sales and marketing for technology pioneers Wang and Digital Equipment. She holds bachelor's degrees in computer science and psychology from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario, Canada, and speaks fluent Mandarin, Cantonese, Malay and English.

About Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc.

Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. is the world's premier provider of senior-level executive search and leadership consulting services, including talent management, board building, executive on-boarding and M&A effectiveness. For more than 50 years we have focused on quality service and built strong leadership teams through our relationships with clients and individuals worldwide. Today, our leadership experts operate from principal business centers in North America, Latin America, Europe and Asia Pacific. For more information about Heidrick & Struggles, please visit http://www.heidrick.com . SOURCE Heidrick & Struggles International, Inc. Local, Jennifer Tow of Manifesto Ltd, +1-852-2526-1972, jennifer@manifesto.com.hk , or Corporate, Christina Stratinsky of Heidrick & Struggles International, +1-312-496-1646, cstratinsky@heidrick.com

Only one-third of company directors in Asia outside Japan have taken formal steps to ensure an orderly succession when a chief executive leaves, a recruitment firm's study said Monday.
The findings are a stark contrast to some Western countries where up to 80 percent of directors have steps in place to see that when one chief executive departs, a replacement is ready to assume the post.

Among the markets surveyed were China, Hong Kong, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Australia and New Zealand.

The board of directors study was produced by Korn/Ferry International. It looked at boardroom practices of major companies, covering 1,200 directors from 15 economies. Compared to Asia's 34 percent of directors who had taken formal steps to ensure orderly succession, the Americas, including the United States, Brazil and Colombia, emerged with 76 percent, according to results published in The Straits Times.

Eighty percent of companies in Australia and New Zealand have a process for management succession.

"Boards in the Asia-Pacific are beginning to take a more calculated approach to board governance, adopting more Western practices to improve the performance of their boards," Marta Grutka, regional director of marketing at Korn/Ferry, was quoted as saying.

Noting that much of Asia has handled management changes through family ties, she said that the process is changing.

Analysts International, which provides business information about Technology, Media and Telecom (TMT) industries in China, says that China’s online recruiting market reached RMB 160.9 Million in 2006 .

As the overall online recruiting market keeps on increasing, online recruiting service vendors turn to focus more on the applications of mobile Internet, and come to provide SMS services one after another. The rapid growth of employees brought great development potential for the online recruitment, and overseas investments come to pay attention to the online recruiting market. Analysts International thinks that vendors who have the capability to provide personalised services will become the first ones to charge the users for the services. And meanwhile, more online recruiting websites will put more focus on the exploration on the regional market.

According to Analysts International’s research, the China’s online recruiting market reached RMB 160.9 Million in 2006Q2 with a growth of 8.44% over last quarter. Among which, online recruiting revenue from recruiting web sites whose services are targeted at national scope took 76.4% of the overall market size, and revenue from recruiting web sites with service targeted at provincial scope took 19.3%.

Figure: China’s Online Recruiting Market of 2006 Q2

Analysts International thinks that combination of online services and offline promotion is a major profit model of online recruiting. “As the rising of the online recruiting industry, online recruiting gradually transfer to industry segmentation, industry-based professional services become popular among users. Advantage becomes more obvious for those online recruiting service providers who focus on industry services,” says Huang Yongtao, analyst from Analysts International, “If we look from the aspect of industry competition, we can find that more communities and search engine portals start their business expansion to online recruiting in hopes of making good use of their advantage of accumulations on interpersonal relationships to achieve business value in HR field.”