China Staff Sep.Issue

While losing your key employees to headhunters is trying at best but hardly surprising in a dog-eat-dog China talent market, what happens when the hunters themselves become the hunted? Marlene Ye of Boehringer Ingelheim examines how search firms stand up to scrutiny.

The effects of China's rapid growth are prevalent. The demand for qualified local talents is far outstripping supply. Foreign companies in China need local talents to help them with the right local business strategy and in strategy execution; likeweise, fast growing domestic companies are expanding on a global basis more quickly than ever before. In their expansion, they also need well-trained talents with a global business outlook to be able to compete more effectively with foreign headquartered multinationals.

With so many opportunities,it is normal for highcalibre talents,especially managerial taletns, to jump ship every two to three years.Of course,search firms have played a crucial role in moving these taletns around but have you ever wondered how search firms manage to attract, develop, and retain their own talents to meet their own demands for business growth?

Think out-of-the-box
In fact,search firms face increasingly fierce competition in sourcing taletns as there are more new search firms (roughly 1,000 per year) set up annually, more than in any industry. Besides this, search firms only go back as far as 10 years in China. So the talent pool with direct search firms jump ship every 1 to 2 years because of the heavy demand and there are not many candidates to choose from after all,"say Gao Yong,President of Career International."So we have to search for candidates with no direct search experience."Accordingly to him, only 10% of his staff has direct experience."Most candidates have specific industry background and experience and therefore can better understand the business model of our customers. We also hire quite a few candidates direct from campuses, which has also proved an effective recruiting source," he explained.
Besides candidates from customers with industrial background, in-house HR is also a key resource for their talent acquisition."Many of our consultants come from in-house HR," says Benjamin Lan, Regional Director of Manpower, adding that Manpower doesn't normally try to source candidates with direct search experience as many come from smaller search firms that cannot meet its standard of competencies. "We generally tend to source candidates with greater calibre and high potential," Lan said.

With a very similar recruiting philosophy, Sndy Sun Li of BISearch Group, a newly set local search frim, looks for candidates with entrepreneurial spirit and a risk-taking mindset. "We would source candidates in the search industry; however, we also found that people from non-search industry would be more interesting. It means our talent pool would be expanded," said the managing director.

Jumping up to reach the apple
Since most candidates don't have direct search experience, training them up on the professional search process and the HR-related skills is a must so they can start up as quickly as possible. Therefore, the learning curve is comparatively shorter than other industries. Fast-track development has become a common motivational tool for these search firms.

"We like to stretch our people in more challenging roles before they are 100% ready," quipped Lan, believing that this helps motivate them to reach their full potential and see the career advancement opportunities ahead.

Gao of Career International shared that its company provided different types of training programs to new hires according to their individual background, deeming it more effective to throw them into their role right after training so they can quickly pick up the knowledge as needed. " We had a new hire who successfully filled three positions only two weeks after he was trained,"he said.When talking about developing people,Gao proudly shared that even one of the partners of his company joined the company fresh our of college. "We are willing to give our people the opportunity and platform to advance in terms of skills,knowledge,and management scope. You can see quite a few of our management members grew up with a very steady career path in our company."

Equality,transparency and a high level of trust
Most search firms mentioned in this article have less than a 10% turnover rate amongst their key staff, way below the industry average. A secret weapon is to foster a working environment with equality,transparency and trust. As most search firm consultants are well educated,yong and ambitious, a working environment with a high level of trust,transparency,and collaboration is paramount in motivating and retaining them.
At Career International,the average age of consultants is 28 years old.Where equality is an outstanding characteristic in their culture, Gao and all the partners have no private offices; they also travel in the same class as their consultants. According to Gao, he also shares a room with his colleagues when they go outings.

Building trust via transparent management mechanisms has also proved very effective. Egon Zehnder International China successfully runs a 360-degree assessment and feedback system to help the average or lower performers quickly catch up. "We provide open, specific, and constructive feedback to our colleagues on where they need to improve,"says, Denis Qihua Ku, adding that they are collectively action to help them solve problems. Accordingly to Ku, this system has developed very successfully over time and is well accepted by his staff.
Career Group has a transparent description of each team's targets and responsibilities to avoid internal conflict and to encourage more cooperation. They also have a transparent reward and recognition system to encourage more cross-team cooperation and synergy. For example,they reward consultants who add candidates in the database for sharing purposes. Needless to say,their quarterly and annual best performer awards,widely posted on the company website,are based on a set of transparent criteria.

Beyond job descriptions
Every job can be perceived as routine and tedious over time if the job-holders only look at the job description itself.However,it'd be different if the job-holders can view their roles and responsibilities beyond the job description by identifying how they can add more value to the organisation. The job of researchers and search consultants can also be perceived as a "dead end job" if their job is not constantly enriched. According to Ku, making the job more rewarding and challenging has been one of his most powerful contributors to his 0% turnover of key staff in China."We constantly encourage our consultants to do high value added job and lower value added jobs are mostly covered by junior staff."

What advice can search firms share with candidates?Sun of BISearch vividly expressed, "Wine will become more precious after they are stored for a long period."Consistenly, other interviewees also advise candidates to have a more rational career plan instead of jumping ships only for monetary reasons. "Most employers have started to pay more and more attention to a candidate's performance track record in their previous companies instead of just looking at the company name,"said Lan. It is more critical to assess the value the candidate can potentially bring to the business,especially senior positions."The more senior the position and the more complex the organisation is, the longer it takes to achieve,"maintained Ku,"So we'd encourage candidates to stay for a longer time in a position and really make a difference before they consider moving to a next job."

As for what is deemed an acceptable standard of changing jobs in China,Steven Zhang Hai,Managing Director of Vastsea Consulting commented,"Generally speaking,candidates should not have more than 3 jobs in 10 years. Nowadays, our clients pay more attention to the stability of the candidates. Candidates who make changes every 1 to 2 years will barely have the chance for interviews."

Looking into the crystal ball
When asked about the future trend of talent demands in the next 5 to 10 years,search professionals interviewed share a similar view that the talent war will continue unabated in the next decade,especially for senior local management positions. However,with more multinationals entering a mature phase in China, more attention wil be shifted to profit and cost control. Consequently, employers will be more cautious in offering candidates higher salaries.

In the mean time,many multinational companies have started to send more qualified expats to China to take on senior management roles. "The trend of localising senior management positions is slowing down nowadadys with more high calibre expats coming to China,"said Lan. "The caliber of expats have also witnessed significant improvement with more strategic focus being shifted to China."

For middle management and professional positions, the observation from search professionals is that the supply of these positions is growing stronger."With more univesity graduates entering the workforce,the supply of entry level staff has exceeded demand,"Lan said,continuing that although middle management talents will be as high in the next 3 to 5 years, the taletn pipeline of this group will also be stronger.

As far as can be said ,talents with more stable work history and a good performance record will still be in high demand, so candidates need to have a better and more comprehensive understanding of their future position before making a decision to move," advises Zhang."If they think they ended up in a wrong position, they will probably leave the new position within 6 months, which will trigger off another round of the job hopping cycle."

Marlene Ye is Director of Human Resources at Boehringer Ingelbeim in Shanghai.