Flight or fight?

Recruiter says Chinese office workers need to be more patient

George Fifield, a veteran in the recruitment field, has one key piece of advice for Chinese job hunters: be patient.

George Fifield advises China's young generation to be patient in building a career. [Feng Yongbin / China Daily]

"Stay where you are, build a career, build a track record that you can be proud of it," says Fifield, managing director of Korn/Ferry International's Beijing office.

The company is the world's largest executive search firm and one of the first international headhunters to establish an office in China.

Fifield, who had 19 years of experience in recruitment consultation in the United States, Europe and Japan before coming to Beijing seven years ago, says that the newly employed in China need more patience when waiting for a promotion.

Chinese people, he says, have a tendency to change jobs every two years, while office employees in the West typically stay at the same company for four years.

"They are very anxious to change jobs. Sometimes I think people here, there's optimism, but there's an impatience to forward their career," Fifield says.

He says that young workers need at least 15 years to rise to a management level position in Western countries, but Chinese people hope to make it in about 10 years.

Fifield, who focuses on recruiting senior executives and building leadership teams for both Chinese and multinational companies in the industrial, high-tech, life sciences, consumer electronics and finance sectors, says the office culture in China is very different compared to the work environment in Western countries.

He says he often has to convince people to stay at their job rather than move on.

"Because (staying longer at a company) will serve you over the long run. It's much better than moving from time to time," he says.

Today's young generation of workers in China - and their tendency, he says, of being impatient - poses a challenge to his work.

Recently, he says one of Korn/Ferry's clients handled a case of a young man who had just graduated from college and had been working at an IT company for only a year. He wanted to change jobs because he didn't see any chance of being promoted.

Fu Yuhong, a 27-year-old accountant who came to Beijing from Shangrao, Jiangxi province, changed jobs after working for less than a year at a bank. She is another example of the flightiness Fifield talks about.

"I couldn't see a chance of promotion there, so I want to move, to seek a quick promotion and make more money," says Fu, who is starting from scratch at a State-owned company but admits that she doesn't know if a promotion in the near future is a possibility.

To Fifield, jumping from job to job doesn't really help with one's career.

"If people change jobs because they can't see promotion opportunities in their old company, then it makes potential employers nervous because they cannot see someone has achieved or accomplished," he says.

What results is an unstable staff at companies. Fifield says that because Chinese employers aren't fully aware of executive search services, it makes building a strong team that much more difficult.

"This (talent search) is still a relatively new profession in China," he says. "I think there's a sense of (recruitment services), but I don't think there's an understanding of what we do and how we do it. We still do a lot of education here, what we search, how we do search and what's important."

Fifield recalls a recent request from a client who wanted to hire a dozen people by just providing job titles without job descriptions.

"They don't know they have to tell us what they want these people to do, what the organization looks like, what are the key requirements and metrics for the job," he says.

Fifield does see a growing awareness of recruitment services. He thinks there is incredible growth in the Chinese market and "an energy in China that you don't see in most markets. The economy here, the business here, is very optimistic".

Fifield says that growth in the market for recruitment service firms was slow in the years before the recession. But once the global economy tanked, more Chinese companies, believing they could now compete with multinationals, began using firms to recruit employees.

He says Korn/Ferry now has three offices, located in Beijng, Shanghai and Guangzhou. Revenue from its Beijing office has reportedly been growing by 20-25 percent over the past three years.

Last year, the company helped recruit approximately 1,200 people for senior positions. It is also looking to open two new offices in China this year.

Jiang Hong, human resources director of Beijing Oriental Garden Shares Co, says her company has been working with headhunting companies for four years.

"We just wanted to have a try at first, but then we gradually realized that they are quite effective and professional," she says.

To Fifield, the toughest part of searching for talent in China is the different job culture, which includes different management and leadership styles.

"You have to understand the cultural difference, the organization, to understand people here, and how they think and values they hold, how people is going to respond to global communication or leadership," he says.

chenyingqun@chinadaily.com.cn