Tag Archives: China Headhunter， Asia Recruiting Agency
Robert Parkinson on EasyFM Round Table Show
- Tuesday, 24 September 2013 01:07
http://player.youku.com/player.php/sid/XNjEwNjIxMDE2/v.swf
罗迈国际商务咨询CEO Robert Parkinson 又一次做客EasyFM啦！本次Round Table Show，Robert将和大家一起讨论职场中的热门话题！蓝领VS白领，上大学到底值不值得？职场新人对新工作的满意度大解析！快来围观小罗吧！
Rober Parkinson, the founder and CEO of RMG Selection has been invited by EASY fm to attended the RoundTable to talk about The Newbies Complain So Much by CRIezfm.
The Bull is Back! Why Hiring People Currently without a Job might be a Jolly Good Idea – Business Tianjin
- Monday, 22 April 2013 07:39
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To my great relief, as the owner of a recruitment firm active throughout China, 2013 is looking like it’s going to be a good year: The Europeans seem to have adverted the ‘nuclear’ scenario being touted last year of a multi-country Euro exit (there are even positive noises about Greece’s economy now); the Britons and the Germans seems to be talking sense over the EU budget; the stock markets around the world have rallied so far in 2013; Obama is pursuing a growth agenda alongside encouraging data coming out of the US and there seems to be increasingly and repeatedly positive news about the state of the Chinese economy; albeit with simmering concerns over local government debt.
We can, therefore, take comfort in the fact that there is at least some good news for the average white-collar professional working in China (unless you’re a banker), as the renewed confidence in the economy translates into greater hiring numbers; particularly in mission critical / demand-creation roles. I would expect this confidence to grow quite considerably in Q3 & 4 of 2013. So with this likely need to hire, I’d like to offer a different perspective on taking on hiring individuals who are currently not in work.
Traditionally, there has been an assumption amongst many executives that those not in work are in some way tarnished, and therefore to be avoided (I know this having talked about it to thousands of clients over the last 15 years in many different countries). An assumption that their lack of work is in somewhat related to poor performance either directly or indirectly, and ‘they’ are therefore ‘best’ avoided. Maybe a reasonable assumption in a developed economy, not so here!
Let me present to you the current scenario in mainland China, and then some reasons why it might just be the best thing you’ve ever done to hire someone who’s not working:
Firstly, the Chinese situation at present: The ratio of cost of living to income amongst affluent, educated professional people is just about the highest I have seen anywhere in the world. What I mean is this, although yes, food prices have risen of late, the cost of food, particularly when consumed in restaurants, is tiny compared to the average professional’s income. You can eat well, with wine for CNY 200, (USD 30) whereas the same would cost you 4 times that in major western cities. My car (a ‘full-sized’) costs me CNY 400 to fill up in Beijing, whereas in London my (by comparison) tiny VW Polo costs me CNY 600 to fill up (and it’s tank is half the size!). Taxes, when you factor in indirect taxation, are much lower in China than in most European countries.
You get the picture, if you don’t have an army of Children in international schools in China, the cost of living is cheap; and even more for the many Chinese who invested in down-town property developments 10-15 years ago for a 20th of the current prices, when the developers were enticing people to pool their family money (and so created a slew of dollar millionaires in the process). And then there’s the family. Chinese people are very skilled at sharing their wealth within their extended families to facilitate property purchases and other investments; there is a group attitude to wealth creation, and it often seems to have worked to many families’ advantage.
So, what does this mean for the jobs market? Well it creates a quite unique situation, on the one hand, you have a lot of people who could live very cheaply yet live in premium property, often without a mortgage, and still maintain a very nice standard of living (particularly in respect of time spent on things like fun, travel, exercise and the family etc); and yet on the other hand many of these people are skilled, highly educated and in demand in the jobs market. It’s a perfect storm in many senses, and the result is that ‘taking a career break’ becomes a perfectly acceptable thing to do, sometimes almost encouraged because the immediate need to put ‘bread on the table’ and pay the mortgage just simply isn’t there as it is in most middle-class families in the western world. The strain of ‘career-breaks’ and ‘having a rest’ on employers is compounded even more by those families who espouse the Confusionist values of ‘balance’. ‘Having a rest’, which would be an anathema to those addicted to the US-style rat-race, is quite a normal concept here, because simply put, most middle income people can afford to.
So, here’s my advice to employers, and a few reasons why hiring people who aren’t currently at work, might just be a jolly good idea: Often people with a job who look around for other jobs don’t do this for the most laudable of reasons: lack of performance, a desire to collect offers, to get a raise or obtain ‘market worth’, or simply a lack of drive or loyalty are all reasons why it might not be a good idea to hire a currently employed person. Conversely, people who aren’t currently in work are more likely to buy into the vision you offer, because, in a sense, they are starting afresh.
Do you really want someone from a competitor? Yes they might know what to do, but in my view, industry knowledge is over-rated in China, and in fact transferable-skills are more important to the modern enterprise so that people can deal with the very inevitable change when it comes. Also, if you offer a competitor’s employee more money to come and work for you, what happens when the next competitor does the same to you?
Hiring from different industry sectors brings fresh, new, valuable ideas and may prove to be much less of an ‘information security’ risk.
If people can afford to take their time over making their next career decision, then this assumes two things:
1. They have the financial means to support themselves whilst they’re doing this (and many people do because of the super-strength family organisation), which in turn assumes that money will not be the biggest deciding factor when it comes to changing jobs (good news for the employer).
2. They have a genuine interest in making a good decision about their future, and again from an employer’s perspective this is good news; we all want our staff to be there for the love of it rather than just the cash (or at least to some extent!).
Do we, as employers, want happy, healthy, relaxed staff; or do we want stressed-out, unhealthy, functioning alcoholics – aka – rat racers?! I don’t need to answer that one! I think the Chinese may well be on to something when we look at their take on life, and businesses can make the worst of it, or they can make the best of it.
China surely is a unique and special place, particularly for the jobs market. The normal rules of HR in the western world don’t seem to apply here, and therefore we have to truly think ‘outside the box’, or at least make an effort to understand ‘the box’ to generate anything like above average results!
Link to the article: http://www.businesstianjin.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=6177:hr-the-bull-is-back-why-hiring-people-currently-without-a-job-might-be-a-jolly-good-idea-&catid=184:2013-april&Itemid=100
RMG China Talent-flow Report on Recruitment International
- Wednesday, 27 March 2013 01:51
Chinese Recruiting Pattern & Trends – Bachelors Beat Doctors!
| According to the statistics of RMG China Talent-flow Survey, among the online job seekers, only 9% employees with bachelor’s degree receive no responses in the last 6 months |
| Chinese Recruiting Pattern & Trends – Bachelors Beat Doctors!RMG Selection initiates China Talent-flow Survey 2012 – 2013 Report. China Talent-flow Survey is designed to understand the current talents flow trends on region, company type, industry and positions within Greater China Region, and get an insight of changing job and how do candidates engage with headhunters. According to the statistics, among the responses from online job seeking, employees with doctor’s degree are less popular than those with bachelor’s degree. MBA does not show its advantage in online job seeking. Employers have different requirement in the aspects of education background for employees of different positions and different type of work. Higher education background doesn’t mean better job opportunities. Finding one’s niche in life, making a timely judgment, and then the education background will become the assistance of your career. |
Link to the article: http://www.recruitment-international.co.uk/news/chinese-recruiting-pattern—-trends-%E2%80%93-bachelors-beat-doctors-18687.htm
Download the full report: https://www.rmgselection.com/tfs
RMG Video – This is the World of RMG Selection 2012
- Tuesday, 19 February 2013 02:32
罗迈国际RMG Selection祝您新年快乐、心想事成！回顾2012，总有点点滴滴难以忘怀。有汗水，也有喜悦，有困难，也有成绩。借此15分钟的视频，感谢每一位RMGer 2012年的努力付出，相信2013我们会创造更杰出的成绩。感谢您的观赏！
Watch the video on Youku: http://v.youku.com/v_show/id_XNTE1NjAyNTcy.html
Watch the video on Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b74rFnEkVmw&feature=youtu.be
Finding the Right Fit for Growth – RMG CEO Robert Parkinson on China Daily
- Thursday, 01 November 2012 05:33
Enterprises must have a balanced hiring strategy to stay ahead in China
Everyone in the sphere of professional staffing and human resources in China seems to talk endlessly about a shortage of “talent”. Indeed it seems that this problem is an assumed consequence of a fast developing economy. However, it is simply not true that China lacks talent.
According to thefreedictionary.com, talent means “A person or group of people having natural endowment or ability of a superior quality”. Therefore, when we use the word talent in the context of the general employment market in China, I think what people mean about a “lack of talent” is a lack of workforce engagement exemplified by:
A generation of particularly highly skilled employees who are spoiled for choice and not afraid to show it;
A general trend in the labor force toward uncontrolled and unjustified increasing compensation;
A lack of sense of loyalty to companies
So I would prefer to redefine this group more accurately as a group that is short of motivation, not talent.
When we look at what talent actually means, the key is having skills or experience of a superior quality. China has a huge population of 1.3 billion and has been successful in educating those people. There is no dearth of Chinese “talent” seeking admission to the Ivy League and other top European educational institutions. There has also been a steady flow of Chinese professionals from abroad to the mainland in the last seven years. Most of them are highly educated professionals, in other words real “talent”.
So, combining the huge number of home-grown Chinese graduates with returnees, together with the millions of blue-collar employees who are highly skilled, I find it hard indeed to believe that China lacks talent.
In fact, the case is that China has not yet had the time to properly understood how to manage, motivate and retain the human resources it does abundantly possess. The problems of the enterprises are not that they lack “talent”, it is that:
They do not know how to retain employees;
There is a lack of engagement in the work;
The preoccupation with the belief that money motivates;
The lack of leadership experience within different corporate hierarchies;
Obsession with status
The true talent for a company is those who best fit the corporate culture and values rather than those who are simply the “smartest” or best-educated. Those who fit the company best means that their skills, knowledge and vision are in accordance with that of the company. For a company to produce and retain as many of these types of staff as possible, it can take measures such as good quality new employee training and induction, leadership training, apprenticeship programs and a focus on “good” corporate culture, etc. These actions will help the company create highly engaged, highly motivated employees.
Companies need to think seriously about how to keep employees, otherwise there is no point in hiring them in the first place. All of the actions and systems need to be based on the fundamental point that it is important you select the right person.
Based on my eight years of experience in China, I have found that there are some key factors needed to transform the existing workforce into one that is highly motivated and engaged and also to retain talent.
1. Money just cannot be the only reason for people to join a company. It is important to understand what it is that really drives new hiring and if it is just money not to proceed with it.
2. Use a fair and clear salary scale.
3. The perceived value of the total pay package is important. Load it with other incentives such as overseas trips, teambuilding nights or recognition systems.
4. A manager should spend more time with new people and know their needs.
5. Once you account for the overall costs, you will understand the necessity to have a well thought-out hiring process.
6. Be aware of the non-verbal communication in hiring and induction process and pay attention to the body language.
7. Trust your instincts.
8. Pay them enough.
Enterprises that are most successful in China today have a good culture, focus on matching values and people rather than obsessing with people’s experience and education. Most importantly, the employers seriously believe in a long-term approach to business.
The author is the founder and managing director of RMG Selection, a recruitment consulting company based in Beijing.
Read the whole article: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/weekly/2012-08/31/content_15722774.htm
Read the magazine: https://www.rmgselection.com/images/rmg%20news_cd-sep_rp_3.jpg