Recruiting Techniques in China

China Economy Rising, Salaries Declining

Brian Fenerty — Sun, 12 Apr 2009 23:54:25 -0400

Premier Wen Jiabao said China's economy was showing "positive changes" today and that matches what we are seeing in our Industrial clients' job orders and interviews.

As if in contrast to this we have been facing a growing number of offers to candidates well below their current salaries and expectations. It would seem that the pendulum has swung and HR officers and administrators all over China are now trying to exercise leverage on the market salaries of prospective candidates.

In several cases this month we have seen gainfully employed "passive" candidates work their way through the usual five-plus meeting interview process only to be offered salaries 30-40% lower than their current packages. (A stark contrast to last year's norm of 30-40% increase.)

It is my belief that this is due to the drastic cost-cutting we have seen in corporations throughout the Industrial sector in what is a traditionally cost-conscious set of companies.

While there is room in the market for a salary cool-down, what we have been seeing is more likely to continue as companies have been lowering salaries and slashing bonuses.

I would look for a much lower salary increase/bonus percentage in the coming financial quarters in 2009 that coincides with an improving economy.

This is good news for recruiters if you know where to look for the silver lining: the talent market has been overheated for years and if companies are able to capitalize on the current cooling in salaries it may help maintain China's profitability as a manufacturing center in Asia and keep the hiring trend moving in the right direction.

Industrial companies looking for candidates in the market now will be better positioned than ever to take advantage of the quality candidates China has to offer. The only caveat I would add at the moment is that low-balling candidates is not the best strategy for moving high-potential candidates - interested companies should work with their recruiters or RPM consultants to target candidates at the right level to make a move make sense.

China Earthquake Donation Tips

Brian Fenerty — Thu, 15 May 2008 22:16:14 -0400

While the purpose of this blog is to share ideas and techniques with regards to recruiting in China I have been getting a number of questions from concerned friends regarding the best way to help.

I heard on the news this morning that the Chinese government has requested help from international rescue operations and that teams from Japan are on the way. With the death toll rising and current estimates at 50,000 lives I am sure that there are many survivors that can use our help.

The following post is an excellent start:

China Earthquake Donation Guide: 24+ ways to give - UPDATED - "There has been a tremendous outpouring of energy from the blogosphere and on Twitter to determine the best way to help out. Having given to relief organizations after the Indonesia tsunami, and then hearing about the waste associated with relief efforts, I wanted to evaluate how to best contribute toward China earthquake disaster relief efforts."

Thanks, now get back to work! - BSF

Bacon in China (Kevin!)

Brian Fenerty — Wed, 07 May 2008 23:32:23 -0400

I like blogging, it is the only medium where I can quote myself, link to an article I wrote, and comment on it in order to maintain and update content.

I had a post picked up by China Success Stories that outlines some of my opinions and experiences on candidate care and how taking care of your candidates can lead to a better employer brand. (here is the shamless promotion:)

Competing for Candidates in China

May 6th, 2008 by China Business Success Stories

Tags: Chinese Employees, Company Image, Recruitment

Building a talent pipeline is not easy in China and you will need all the help you can get.

(This is where I get to quote myself:)

"Based on the well known Kevin Bacon theory of separation we know that we are all 6 contacts away from anyone we may need to reach. While I am not here to prove or disprove this theory (which must be true because I googled it on the interweb), I am here to tell you that if you increase your level of candidate care you will inevitably increase your market reputation."

(end of shameless self promotion.)

Make more placements by offering housing in China

Brian Fenerty — Tue, 29 Apr 2008 22:57:27 -0400

Creative Salary Packages in China
The devil is in the details...

The difference between an accepted offer and the frustration that comes with a declined offer can often come down to the details.

As salaries continue to rise and companies scramble to match internal equity and hire the best candidates a little flexibility can go a long way. Get creative to get ahead.

We have been having a good measure of success restructuring offers that are too low into a base + housing package. This has the effect of lowering the base, and thus lowering the tax exposure of the candidate. The candidate must provide an official invoice to the company, monthly, to account for this expense and it must be clear on the offer letter.

The effect on the employer is minimal in that it creates a little more accounting work but they will not complain, our friends in accounting, as this method will also lower the bonus paid by the client to the candidate as it is usually based on the monthly salary.

When this is structured well the savings in taxes will make up for the lowered gross and the candidate is happy, they live in a happy place where their concern is limited to the take home amount they receive. The client will save on the gross and this will make for happy clients and will allow them to do more with the money they have to offer.

This is not rocket surgery but, until recently, has not been used at the manager level to entice candidates. I think we will see more and more of this as the market continues to tighten and I will keep you updated if I see any changes.

I have created an excel sheet that can be used to calculate the net pay available to a candidate when different amounts of housing benefits are applied and I am happy to provide a copy to anyone who needs it.

Make sure that you follow the new labor law when it comes to the offer letter and keep your paper trail and this should be a great technique to bridge the gap between candidates and clients at offer time.

Brian Fenerty has experience recruiting in candidate-short markets in Asia, North, and South America. For more insights specific to recruiting techniques in China please visit his ERE blog at: http://blog.recruitinginchina.com.cn/

- or visit Brian on LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfenerty

We got options in China!

Brian Fenerty — Tue, 01 Apr 2008 03:23:22 -0400

In October I wrote about getting creative with compensation in China, see Get Creative in China!

? I am happy to report that since I wrote that piece I have seen a lot of clients coming up with more creative ways to get money into the pockets of their employees without breaking their internal equity and by using more advanced compensation plans. Looking forward I would say the days of the base salary times thirteen months packages may be soon coming to an end.

This year I have seen the emergence of the spot bonus, an increase in signing bonuses, and more and more companies getting creative with housing. In the last two months I have been dealing with several companies that are using stock options to attract talentEven State owned companies are getting into it: www.chinaeconomicreview.com/dailybriefing/2006_02_24/State_firm_executives_to_get_stock_options.html.

I wrote about some of the more common issues that come up here, and some feedback I received here.

In all I have heard a great deal from candidates of mine who (for whatever reason) read my blog and the reactions have been mixed. It seems that at the highest levels options are seen to hold good value and be a great want to round out a package that is already well over US$ 150K per year. At the lower levels of management options are viewed with more skepticism. This will change with time and when employers and recruiters have more success stories to point to in the China talent market. But it is still early and the following quote sums up my experience pretty well:

"Stock options don't really work with young people," explained one HR manager. "Saying we'll give it to you in five years doesn't fly. They want options and cash." Ongoing education about the value of stock options will likely increase their usefulness as a retention tool, particularly in the case of employees who have remained with a company for a few years and have seen the value of their stocks appreciate.

Their efficacy as a retention tool aside, stock options increasingly form part of compensation packages at major multinationals. Corporate policy often dictates who receives stock options; in some companies all employees get options, no matter their level, while in other companies options are reserved for upper-level management. Most companies that give options award them according to position and performance.

? China Business Review (http://www.chinabusinessreview.com/public/0111/melvin.html)

Cash is still king with candidates at the moment and while options may be a great way to round out an already great package they are not, in the current market, enough to attract the best people. Talent is short and candidates have a lot of options when it comes to employers. And at the end of the day what matters most, in my humble opinion, is a comprehensive compensation package that is competitive in the market. Most of the candidates that I deal with are looking for short-term gains with a long-term potential. With respect to stock options it may take some time for the market here to develop to a point where they are adding value as a compensation tool.

(Brian Fenerty has experience recruiting in candidate-short markets in Asia, North, and South America. For more insights specific to recruiting in China please visit his blog at: www.recruitinginchina.com.cn - or visit Brian on LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfenerty )

Recruiting in China: more resumes!

Brian Fenerty — Mon, 25 Feb 2008 23:18:45 -0400

What is your recruiting strategy for China?

It seems like such an easy quetion to answer but for many of our potential clients (and maybe some current ones) their strategy sounds more like a market summary than a plan of action: "It is hard to find good people." Beyond that there is often the usual discussions about how, when they do find people they often can't meet their salary requirements. While tis is certainly telling and, to some degree, surmountable it is not a strategy.

The Problem:

The way I see it, today, right now, is that many firms are overwhelmed in China and are not able to segment their own hiring needs into manageable parts-of-a-whole that can be addressed individually. While some postings are met with thousands of job seekers and the main task is that of screening, others are met with none and the third party recruiters are brought in for "more resumes." This is the usual request for more candidates who match the job description of a position that is extemely hard to fill and may be open indefinatley.

We don't have more resumes

We have search strategies, passive candidates, and recruiting processes. These work best when they are meeting up with their counterpart at the client side. They become downright useless when they are only used as a way to get "more resumes."

Create a strategy

I was reading an artice about the talent shortage in the supply chain sector that mentioned that Coca Cola Bottling (not a client, yet) is looking at candidates that match the personality profile of the candidates for whom they are searching rather that the skill set. Look here: http://www.supplychain.cn/en/art/?1673

"Ainsley Mann of Coca Cola Bottling disagrees with the idea that there is a talent shortage. "With recruitment, I think it's possible that we are looking at too narrow a field. Maybe we need to find people from other sectors that can be retrained for positions in logistics."

This is a strategy and when these candidates are met by the Coke recruiters they will not be screened out as having the wrong experience because they will understand they are looking for this type of person! An elegant solution that is all to unusual in China at the moment.

So what?

So if you are having trouble finding candidates in China for a specific role and are ready to get beyond the "candidates are hard to find" stage of recruiting you need to get a strategy and see it through. All strategies do not work as well as you hope but as you continue to measure their effectiveness and modify the techniques used to locate, motivate, and evaluate these candidates it will provide you with hireable candidates that meet your needs.

I recommend to my clients working with a firm they can trust and developing a recruiting strategy together and then making it work. This will have the added benefit of creating a communication channel between your internal recruiters and external, third party recruiters, that is based on more that a need for more resumes and higher salaries.

The future of recruiting in China is Dutch!?!

Brian Fenerty — Fri, 01 Feb 2008 01:43:43 -0400

I have seen the future of recruiting in China and it is Dutch.

As markets tighten and candidates with hard skills grow harder and harder to find it will take global initiatives to make a local impact in recruiting. One of my favorite new companies leading the way in global recruitment is ForeignTalent.

ForeignTalent was set up to recruit talented Chinese university graduates and young professionals for jobs in Europe. They target candidates who have obtained a Masters or PhD in science. This hits a sweet spot for European companies that are having more and more trouble filling this type of position. This is a trend that is sure to continue, cross-border recruitment is in its early stages of development but it is here to stay.

Global talent solutions will have to be put into practice in order to sustain growth at some of the largest global players and this will call for recruiting partners who target a countries top talent in order to send them to positions half-way around the world. That is bold thinking, the kind that is usually met with great initial resistance and, ultimately, imitated when it is successful.

"ForeignTalent was founded in 2007 to become the first company in The Netherlands entirely focused on foreign talent and knowledge migration. Gregor van Essen is the founder and director of ForeignTalent. During the past ten years, Gregor developed new markets and established organizations for various companies in Europe, Asia and The United States." - check it out!

I like big, bold, solutions to problems and this is one of the most elegant solutions I have seen in years. You saw it here first!

(Brian Fenerty is the General Manager of AdMark China, he has experience recruiting in candidate-short markets in Asia, North, and South America. Brian can be reached at briansfenerty@hotmail.com For more insights specific to recruiting techniques in China please visit his ERE blog at: http://www.ere.net/blogs/Recruiting%5FTechniques/ - or visit Brian on LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfenerty )

Technorati Tags: cross-border recruiting, global talent, china graduates

They are never late for the Movies

Brian Fenerty — Wed, 30 Jan 2008 01:11:45 -0400

I had a meeting this morning with the President of a Fortune 50 company in China. We had a 30 minute chat while we waited for a candidate of mine to show up. The candidate was late and it wil probably cost him the position. The title of this post is a direct quote from the president of the company. He was willing to meet my candidate at 7:00 AM at a hotel near the airport.

It was snowing and sleeting out and we both made it on time. I was early because I wanted to meet with the president, briefly, and get a couple words in his ear while showing him that I was the kind of client manager that will get up at 5:30 in the morning to say hi and make sure the meeting I scheduled went off with out any trouble.

I made it.
The president of the company made it.
The candidate was twenty minutes late.

Candidates in China are scarce and in demand but it is no excuse for being late for an interview. When I worked in the US I was often told by my boss there, "if you don't have candidate control don't even send them into the interview." He was right and I made a mistake yesterday when I prepped the candidate. I failed to take the time to re-visit the concept that until he receives a job offer he has no opportunity with this client. It might have made a difference if I had explained, again, that he was going to meet the president of the company and that we were all aranging our schedules around him for this meeting so punctuality was a must.

When candidates get popular I often see them go through a prima donna phase where they act as if every call from a headhunter raises their market value and every meeting will result in an offer. Many times their actions begin to betray an arrogance that ends up costing them the jobs they want. I have seen candidates ask for bigger offices before they receive an offer, show up late for interviews, make outrageous salary demands at initial stages, and the list (unfortunately) goes on...

Most of the time these candiddates could have been brought into line early in the process with a little humbling and some sage advice. After this morning I need to revisit my notes on the candidate and see if I missed any obvious signs I was losing control of the candidate, I will also need to revisit the tactics we all use in my office when we prep candidates to make sure we are getting across to them that without an offer they have no opportunity.

(Brian Fenerty is the General Manager of AdMark China, he has experience recruiting in candidate-short markets in Asia, North, and South America. Brian can be reached at brian@admarkchina.com. For more insights specific to China please visit his blog at: http://blog.recruitinginchina.com.cn/

- or visit Brian on LinkedIn at: http://www.linkedin.com/in/brianfenerty )

Can you afford doing business in China?

Brian Fenerty — Mon, 21 Jan 2008 04:25:23 -0400

While taking job orders is always an exciting part of our jobs here in China it has taken on a much more important role for most of our China-based search consultants over the last 8 months as prices rise in the land of Mao and money.

Can you afford China?

This is, increasingly, where the line of questioning takes us when we are dealing with clients new to China and also, increasingly, with clients who are looking at higher levels in China to fill roles that have been traditionally filled by ex-pats.

I recently had a case where the candidate that (almost) got the offer was making more than the VP he would have reported to at the global HQ.

Why?

Good question. The fact of the matter is that while you may have the "latest numbers" in hand to back up the salaries you would like to pay in China what many people fail to realize is that the top candidates here are the same as the top candidates anywhere else (just more valuable.) When looking for a Senior Manager with market experience in a Fortune 500 setting and a degree from a top business school you will find no bargains in China. For most of my candidates like this the decision to work in China was made with an eye toward making more money than they would in the US or Europe.

What is the point?

Well, the point is this: Top local Chinese candidates are now making as much or more that ex-pat managers and are often commanding salaries higher than those of the management back home.

What to do about it?

Do your research and talk to some people here who are in the know. If you are not looking to China to add value to your operations and do not have a need to be in this market it may be wise to stay out. I see many firms open and close in one year because they get priced out of the market. Much of this comes because they do not do their homework and they are not prepared for the market realities they find here.

The truth is out there...

I recommend contacting local experts in China the same way you would if you were a Canadian firm opening in the US or Brazil. Send a consultant or project manager in to create a market reality report and see if it matches your business objectives. Better create a strategic recruiting plan as well to make sure you have considered where your staff and management will come from and how much it will cost to get them on board. But you would have done that anyway, right?

Speed Dating in China

Brian Fenerty — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 22:08:22 -0400

Speed Dating our Clients in China

Relationships in China are as essential to business as they are in any other market and there is much already written on the subject of building relationships and the Chinese style of doing business. While I see much written on the subject of how to approach potential business partners in China I have found little on the subject of evaluating these partners once the initial meetings have begun. Most of what I see has to do more with not offending potential business partners through cultural gaffs than it does with how to know when one of these potential partners is wasting your time.

While I believe strong relationships are as important in China as they are anywhere else I have worked in the world I see more people here trying harder to make the wrong connections than anywhere else on Earth. In China it seems we often ignore the objective information we are receiving as we try to enrich and enhance the subjective. My in-house solution is speed-dating.

Speed Dating

I like the idea of speed dating, I never tried it but I hear it goes like this. Participants spend a fixed amount of time with potential partners over the course of an evening in order to narrow down the field of prospects and concentrate their efforts with the people they felt offered them the best chance of success. Brilliant. The thought being that we can gain a great deal of information about a potential partner in a short period of time and use this information to focus on the most promising scenarios.

Speed Dating our Clients

In my office we use a similar system when we take on a new client. In a contingency situation a new client is one who has met with us, given us the appropriate amount of information to decide whether we can work together and signed our fee agreement. What comes next is our version of client speed dating.

We begin looking at the reaction speed of the new client, measuring their feedback - is it good, useful, market-correct? We question them on their prerequisites in order to see if they really know what they are looking for or if they are just writing up an imaginary candidate they would like to see.

What is the point? (Everyone does this.)

The point is that we do this as quickly as we can to see if this is a prospective business partner and we do it as objectively as we can. We use their actions to realize their intentions, not their words. This is a real time saver and I am happy to share the technique with you here. We actually use a simple spreadsheet to rank new client performance.

What I have found is that this is particularly useful with new consultants, it is a nice, clear way to measure client performance. We have yet to look back with regret on a situation where we cut off a non-performing client.

Life ain't fair. Get over it.

Brian Fenerty — Mon, 12 Nov 2007 02:02:56 -0400

I really dig what the guys over at ChinaSolved.com have to say - I just caught this post on compensation options that really nails the concept of variable pay (as in more pay for performers) as far as I am concerned.

It?s not supposed to be fair.
You know this ? now they have to. You will be treating some members of your staff differently. They will get better compensation, better opportunities and more responsibility. Some of your young managers may find this stressful. Others will become power-crazed monsters. You will need to manage both...(http://www.chinasolved.com/blog/?p=275)

Anyone in sales understands that top performers make more.

It is my hope that two of my consultants will bring home more money than I do next year that is the risk/reward world in which we operate as revenue producers.

What I would like to see is more attention being paid to variable pay options rather than salary surveys in today?s fast-moving talent market. Aside from the fact that salary surveys are obsolete the moment they are created we seem to be missing an incredibly important point in this talent driven market.

Point: There are not enough top candidates to go around.

The rest is all supply and demand economics in action. It is getting pretty simple in today's market. The companies that are willing to offer something special to the hard-to-find-even harder to recruit-top-talent are the companies that are able to get them and keep them.

If you are able to quantify the contribution a top performer will make you should be able to find a way to get him or her on board and keep him or her happy. If this upsets the "internal equity " of your department you may need to revisit the goals your CEO put in front of you. I am willing to bet that "equity" in terms of equality was not on the list.

There are a number of options out there to address this issue and I think it is about time that more companies in China took the time to look into them. I have seen several companies miss out on talented individuals because their company?s compensation policies did not allow them the option of paying top talent the rate they are getting elsewhere.

Let me know if you have any good suggestions to combat this and I will happily post them here and on my personal blog, www.recruitinginchina.com.cn, in order to spread the word.

In the mean time, get back to work. No one is paying you to be average.

Brian

Web 2.0 and Recruiting in China

Brian Fenerty — Thu, 08 Nov 2007 02:04:50 -0400

Ed Frauenheim's reported on the state of HR software in a recent Workforce.com article: http://www.workforce.com/section/00/article/25/18/55.html

The biggest leaps forward seemed to be in the incorporation of social networking technology. Lawson's Human Capital Management suite even allows your employees to post jobs from your companies website on their Facebook pages and receive commissions for referrals. That is cool and there is no way to deny that we need more great ideas like this in recruiting.

Of particular interest to me, though, was the following quote from the Workforce.com article,
"Partly because of potential talent wars, HR applications are now the hottest area of business software."

While it is great to see such rapid innovation in HR software it is only part of the battle. Putting these candidates and contacts to use is the most important part of the recruiting process.

I don't fault the vendors for providing a linear solution to HR departments but there is more to closing hard to find talent in candidate driven markets then giving them more places to apply for jobs. The solution to most recruiting challenges is in making every effort in bringing candidates into a well run recruiting process. If your employees friends are applying and getting run through a sub-standard process you are going to waste the power of the network. Worse, you may alienate not only the candidate but your own employee. One of the least talked about barriers to employee referrals is the fear employees have that their friends will not be treated well and they will be held accountable.

What about China?
In candidate driven markets, like China, more candidates are not always available and it falls to recruiters to build networks of their own in order to get the word out and also (!) to engage potential candidates and past candidates in their corporate space.

The R&D market is so tight in China that I was recently tapped to write up a plan to engage top high school studentswho are on track to get into top universities. The thinking being that if you bring them into your network early enough the exposure and connections you foster will aid to your recruiting efforts later. Word of mouth is big in China and you can't start building relationships too early.

The next level of recruiting has as much to do with offering top candidates the chance to get to know your firm during the interview process as it does providing new conduits to generate the referrals. Add to that earning the candidate's respect, even if the current position is not a good fit or you are unable to offer them the type of position they need to grow, professionally.

I would like to see the next round of software improvements include more CRM - like features that can be used to engage candidates (friends) throughout their careers. Tapping an informal network of friends in the industry for referrals will bring in another layer of referrals that is currently unreachable.

This is not achievable for most companies that are using the traditional, linear/screening model. Most HR departments are only now realizing, if at all, that in candidate short markets they need to re-think their recruiting methods and make every contact count.

So What?
So before we all buy a solution to a problem don't really have, take a good look at what a candidate experiences from the time he is identified to the time he receives an offer letter. If you are certain that you are doing everything you can to ensure that every candidate you meet leaves the experience with a positive impression of your company and you are making efforts to keep in touch with candidates who do not get hired then you are ready to start meeting your employees friends via Facebook, MySpace, LinkedIn, ERE, Plaxo, or your own social network.

Get Creative in China!

Brian Fenerty — Tue, 16 Oct 2007 04:45:06 -0400

I had the pleasure of being invited to attend the CCBC, Shanghai's "War for Talent" event today and was, once again, overwhelmed by the amount of head scratching that was going on with regard to compensation and retention.

China 's talent market is a tough one, to be sure, but we should be moving from a discourse on "why do salaries keep going up?" to "what specific strategies that we can use to attract the best people?" Peter Arkell of the Swann Group was kind enough to leak some information from an upcoming salary survey his firm will release any day now that found that local (PRC Chinese) Business Unit Managers in China are being paid as much as, if not more, than their ex-pat counterparts. Astonishing? - Not if you are on the front lines of recruiting the truly talented market movers in China. The fact is that many more companies will soon be faced with the fact that the best and brightest in China will cost them at least as much as they will back home. Few companies are instituting strategies to deal with it.

I liked the thinking behind Julia Correa's concept of adapting to the local market when creating selection criteria for employees in China. Julia is a Business Manager with J.M. gemini and was a presenter at the event. Among other ideas she tried to get across to the audience was the concept of adapting to the market as it is and the risks (of not hiring the best you can and not retaining them) of trying to apply a template from "back home" to the China talent market.

I was struck by the fact that while so many attendees seemed to dwell on their retention problems no one had any success stories regarding flexible retirement plans, signing bonuses, day care, elder care, etc, etc. In fact, the one idea from the floor that got the most attention in this regard was a question regarding the legality of charging employees for the training they received as an employee.

China is quickly becoming a global driver of the world economy and more and more companies are rushing into this market not only to save money but to drive R&D and marketing. It is time to move to a more candidate driven view of the market as they are the ones who are calling the shots right now and it will take quite a while for the market to catch up, if ever it does.

For more ideas on getting creative with compensation you can scroll down or click here. It will take you to another post I made earlier this year about getting flexible with salries.

The Hiring Managers can make the difference in China

Brian Fenerty — Mon, 08 Oct 2007 06:39:19 -0400

While it is well noted and often quoted that "employees don't quit companies, they quit managers," it is the less explored concept that candidates don't choose to work for companies they choose to work for hiring managers that I have been looking into the last few months.

To be sure a top driver of company choice in China is brand recognition, and this is probably not going to change anytime soon. We work on a lot of marketing positions at my company, we are known across Asia for our expertise in consumer goods and luxury brands so you would expect this to some degree but I am willing to stand by the statement above. In China brands sell and for many candidates only a "brand" company will do.

When we move higher though, into senior management roles and positions in more technical fields like supply chain, strategic marketing, and finance, the manager that will be leading a candidate for the next few years becomes very important and is often overlooked as a selling point.

When we work with a candidate and talk about opportunities that will move their careers forward we usually look for a few standard criteria to make sure a position is a good match. The basics are job fit, job stretch, opportunity to learn, and compensation.

I like to make sure the candidates I introduce will keep in mind that they are interviewing their future boss as well as being interviewed so it is my practice to provide them with some insights into the hiring manager's background and style. This should be used as a starting point in the interview and lead to further questions that will help show the benefits of working under the manager.

I would like to see more time being spent in interviews sharing the background of key team members and leaders to show what they have gained from working at the hiring company and where their experience may take them.

The move from a paradigm of selection to attraction may take a bit longer to catch on at most firms around the world, in the mean time we can feature the hiring manager as a selling tool to top candidates as a way to increase the job fit and address the candidate?s skills gap. You do sell on the skills gap, right?

The "Business of Recruiting" in China

Brian Fenerty — Thu, 04 Oct 2007 00:59:45 -0400

Increase the effectiveness of your recruiting in China..

One of the most interesting things about being a third party recruiter is the opportunity to see into the business practices of so many different companies. Over the years my focus on client development has changed to one of finding the companies that my team can work the best with and focusing our resources on these clients. We are often unable to work with potential clients based on their staffing strategies, or, often, lack thereof.

When I find a company with a professional, proactive, and effective staffing strategy I am always impressed. I believe that the internal staffing functions of most large firms I have worked with are not evolving as quickly as the talent markets in which they work.

I found the following article incredibly insightful and wanted to share it here: How a Former CEO Built A World-Class Recruiting Department

The article is based on a case study performed by Doctor John Sullivan (an ERE contributor - here) at Valero Energy.

The Article is entitled How a Former CEO Built A World-Class Recruiting Department, it was written in 2005 but it has never been more applicable.

I recommend any business that is operating in China take a look at the article and begin re-purposing their practices immediately. There are so many good ideas contained in the case-study I wouldn't know where to begin but here are a few of the best and most-necessary in our China market if you want to move ahead of your competition and recruit the best available talent:

- Use recruiting-specific metrics to measure performance

- Get senior management's attention by producing results

- Create a sourcing channel report

- Use a simple SLA to quantify recruiting efforts of all involved

These are only a few ideas that will have a huge impact on the recruiting efforts of your organization in China.

Reality Check, China vs. US Recruiting

Brian Fenerty — Thu, 13 Sep 2007 04:50:14 -0400

This is China...

I had a chance to sit down with my old manager in the US last week and enjoyed getting his perspective on a lot of the issues I face in China. To date, I have been a recruiter in Japan, The Southern Cone of South America, the USA, and China. By far the most challenging and rewarding market has been China. It was good to have someone to lend an ear and give me the sagest of advice on recruiting: make more phone calls, get more clients, introduce more candidates to those clients, and work with candidates and clients you can control. I am pretty sure that is the same advice that managers have been giving their recruiters forever. I know it is the same advice I give my recruiters on a daily basis and it doesn't change too much in China.

We use the same metrics that I used in the US to measure our activity in order to keep our recruiters here on track; the only difference is that we have adjusted them to match the market here. We use the same matching skills and try to achieve the same close ratios. We even use a lot of the same techniques and rebuttals that we used in the US (Japan, and South America for that matter.)

But this is China...

So what are they paying me for? The biggest difference that I face day to day in China that I haven't faced in any other market is the "rising tide" syndrome we face with many assignments. One of my clients was explaining to me a couple weeks ago that they have to work very hard to realize an increase in profits of 0.5% in Europe where as in China if they do nothing at all they will grow by 10%. I understood immediately why his sense of urgency in filling a couple of positions we worked on for him would, well, ebb from time to time and why he was able to "re-think" the positions endlessly.

In order to overcome this phenomenon we have been constantly focusing on companies that are truly engaged in the China market. This list is slowly growing and the strategy has worked for us this year, the companies we choose to work with are those that put a premium on talent in the China market and are able to attract this talent. Usually this includes money but is not limited to the companies with the deepest pockets. It is often the companies that offer the best career path to their employees and a chance to work at the global level.

As China heats up and more and more companies enter this market there will be less growth built into the market from year to year and the companies investing in their talent structure will be easy to recognize.

Time kills all deals in China Talent Market

Brian Fenerty — Tue, 14 Aug 2007 23:48:01 -0400

Ready, fire, aim, offer, wait, miss out!

This is the current "hiring style" of many of our largest clients in China. Too many are not acting quickly on the candidates they choose to hire and, because of this, are missing out.

I had a good client lose a candidate today for a job they have had open for over one year. The candidate met there criteria and they had the opportunity to make an offer the candidate would accept but they let internal bureaucracy slow down the process to the point where the candidate, faced with internal issues of his own, declined.

This is unacceptable and it is a sign of the times that even companies that are engaged in the China market are making novice mistakes when it comes to hiring. Until companies here learn to act quickly on available candidates they will continue to miss out on talent.

Here are a couple things I tell my clients to do to increase their hiring speed:

Take a hard and honest look at your offering process and cut out any internal bottlenecks. Too often I see clients who need to negotiate packages internally and worry over start dates that will never arrive if they do not stream -line this part of the process. If you are bringing a candidate in for a final interview you, as a client, should be ready to make the best offer you can and let your staff know how much you can negotiate. You should also know the candidates expectations and never make an offer that will be declined. If there is an internal struggle every time your negotiators are at too low a level and you need to find a decision maker to do this job. (In my opinion corporate recruiters in China are, in most cases, not trained in this part of the deal and need to be made aware of the decision making process in their own companies before they try to close a candidate.) Internal recruiter should be a commissioned position.

Speed up the offer process and separate this from the "time to lose" metric everyone seems to worry about. When you have a candidate that you want to hire in front of you you have entered a different phase of the recruiting process and should act accordingly. Hire recruiters with a sense of urgency. Too often at many companies here, the recruiters look at the hiring of candidates as an internal process rather that the deal making that it really is. When a deal is on the table it is best to act on it as quickly as possible.

Until the organizational pain of missing out on available candidates reaches the appropriate level much of this is so much hot air. A change will only come to organizations when the pain of change is less than the pain of conducting business as usual.

I have to get back on the telephone...

Get Flexible with Salaries in China

Brian Fenerty — Fri, 20 Jul 2007 05:10:18 -0400

While there is very little to be gained in Chinese negotiations in "leaving something on the table" there is much to be won in remaining flexible. When it comes to candidates in China's talent short market I am constantly encouraging my clients to be more flexible with their job mapping and/or variable compensation schemes.

I am not always encouraging them to pay more in salaries however. In our current market there will always be another company willing to pay more in compensation and there will always be a candidate willing to move for more money.

The best compensation schemes are designed to reward top achievers by allowing them to earn more and keep them achieving by giving them more responsibility when they do.

Too many of the foreign firms operating in China brought their US style compensation plans to this market and they are not working. As the market gets tighter these schemes actually lead to salary inflation in most cases.

I found an article by Irv Beiman entitled "Strategy Management & the Talent Contradiction: An Alternative View on How to Catch Mice" - you can check it out here: www.cbiz.cn/NEWS/showarticle.asp?id=2433

In this article he says, in reference to successful Chinese companies like Bao Steel, Qingdao Beer, China Resources and China Union Pay, that "Most of these organizations have a strong variable pay scheme that drives performance improvement. They do not rely on salary surveys to set their base pay."

While this does not take into account the need for English skills and the more pressing needs of foreign firms to hire at the senior manager level I think that his observations are very timely to the recruiting community and I am going to pass the information along to many of my clients.

My candidates are lying to me, and I know why!

Brian Fenerty — Tue, 10 Jul 2007 06:08:21 -0400

Negotiating with Chinese Candidates

My candidates are lying to me. I know this is true because I find out later when they contradict themselves. I do not judge, rather take what they present for what it is, information used in a complex negotiation.

I found the following very useful in negotiating with candidates and clients and welcome any feedback with regards to my observations:

"There exists an intrinsic paradox in Chinese negotiating style which reflects the Yin Yang thinking. The Chinese negotiator has a cultural capacity to negotiate both sincerely and deceptively and he/she changes coping strategies according to situation and context, all depending on the level of trust between negotiating partners."*

Too true. I find that as we proceed throughout a negotiation with a client that the level of trust that develops with my candidate actually changes throughout the process with the highest periods of trust coming at the earliest stage (when I have decided to introduce a candidate) and the latest stage (when the offer has been signed and the candidate is on board.) My candidates seem to adjust their level of honesty based on how they perceive my motivation in the process, early on we are working together as a team to get the candidate an introduction to a company that interests them it is very high. Throughout the negotiation, especially at the salary stage, the candidate will often introduce information that is untrue in an effort to increase the size of the offer from the client. During the counter offer/ other offer stage candiates will often withhold information from me so that they can keep their options open. Finally, when the offer is signed and the employment term has begun the candidate will present a more realistic view of his/her actual situation, options, and feelings about their current role and any other offers that were on the table. In some cases further negotiations with the employer are necessary to make sure the candidate will stay in the company. (In China the negotiation often begins when the contract is signed.)

"The Chinese negotiating strategy is essentially a combination of cooperation and competition (termed as the ?coop-comp? negotiation strategy in this study). Trust is the ultimate indicator of Chinese negotiating propensities and role choices."**

This "coop-comp" can be seen in the above examples and it can be very valuable to keep them in mind throughout the proces and not be blindsided by them. It is important to realize the fact that the client may be behaving in the same way with regards to their own interests and their perceptions of their headhunter's motivations.

*, **

Title: Negotiation: the Chinese style
Author(s): Tony Fang
Journal: Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing
ISSN: 0885-8624
Year: 2006 Volume: 21 Issue: 1 Page: 50 - 60
DOI: 10.1108/08858620610643175
Publisher: Emerald Group Publishing Limited

Are your fees negotiable?

Brian Fenerty — Fri, 06 Jul 2007 01:09:14 -0400

One of the things I enjoy most about my job is meeting with potential clients. When these meetings go well they can be learning experiences for both sides and we can gain a good deal of market information and some valuable contacts. When meetings like this go poorly they can be frustrating and a waste of time, or, when we make the best of them, they can be learning experiences that give us an insight into doing business better in China. Meeting with the wrong person at a potential client is one of these learning situations.

As a professional in the search process with a lot of experience in candidate short markets I spend a good deal of time (in the latter, frustrating meetings) trying to engage people who are not up to speed with what is important in this area and, as a result, are difficult to deal with. They can be nice as pie but may be lacking an understanding of the market or how third party recruiters can add value to their hiring process. It is not unusual in these cases to end up discussing points of business or terms that have little to do with the matter at hand. Usually, thankfully, these people will default to the one issue they understand: price. When this occurs after 30 minutes or so of questions that seem to be a little left of center for our purposes, and the conversation moves to us lowering our price it is usually time to go. We don't negotiate our fees with a client until we are sure we want to work with them and even then it comes after a period of specific discussion regarding our search process and how we can work together to find them the people they need. When they default to our fees and start negotiating before they know what we have to offer we take them off the list of potential clients and excuse ourselves as politely as possible from the meeting. Sometimes we will wait an appropriate period of time and try to find a more appropriate contact in the potential client's company, this is not always possible

There is a lot of business to be had in the China market and I think it is more important to continue to find the companies with which we work well rather than try to educate a potential client to the realities of the market in which they operate.

Not all of the companies operating in the China market are going to be up to your standards as a service provider and sometimes it can be helpful to realize that going in the door.