In the midst of the ongoing financial recovery, Shih Wing-ching has offered advice at both ends of the job market ladder: job-hunting prospective employees at the bottom and the companies at the top that are their prospective employers. To those who are looking for jobs, his advice is pragmatic: given the meager "supply" of jobs, take what you can get, wait for advancement and compromise on salary. Reinforcing the idea that salary should not be the preeminent concern, he cited the example of his daughter, who has a first-class honors degree in economics from Cambridge University. "Her present job is not related to her area of studies," he disclosed. "She is also unhappy that her schoolmates who do not have an honors degree can get a salary higher than hers; but I tell her that a person's achievement is not measured by the salary of his or her first job."

His advice to the companies who do the hiring is different--indeed, quite the opposite, reflecting a key difference and reversal on the "supply" side of the opportunity equation. The mainland, spared some of the worst ravages of the recent financial meltdown, offers, he believes, significant business opportunities to be explored. There, markets await the initiatives of bold companies that are willing to make them and to take advantage of the larger population and markets on the mainland. Unlike the existing employee situation of too many job hunters chasing too few jobs, the corporate employer's challenge and imbalance is the reverse of the job seeker's--not to find and settle for the rare opportunity, but to choose from and capitalize on the many that exist or can be created.

(HK Edition 07/31/2009 page4)