Too Few Fish in China HR: Part 2
August 31st, 2006 | by This is China! |Yesterday I shared a story of a General Manager friend of mine that shed some light on the murky happenings of today’s China HR market.
The story of the recruitment scam reminded me of an episode that happened early on in the Kunshan operation of an American client. One of the first hires the American General Manager had made was a personal assistant. The personal assistant was not a local, but was instead from North China, as was her husband.
Her husband was an unhappy engineer at another operation in the small city. The husband had many of the same qualifications as a position that was open at my client’s company, though his English language ability was questionable.
The wife, a kind person with a strong, forceful personality, knew what recruitment agency her employer was using. She had her husband slip his resume into the pile at the recruiter’s, in a manner of speaking, and apply for the job at her employer’s. When the husband was called up for interview, the wife coached the husband on the answers she knew her boss was going to ask her husband during the interview.
The boss liked the fellow’s qualifications, the General Manager told me after the interview. The engineer’s English was weak, though. He didn’t know until his personal assistant brought it to his attention days later that the fellow was her husband. It was the Chinese HR Manager of the company that unearthed the mechanics of the deception.
The General Manager in the end chose not to hire the husband on the grounds, ultimately, that the fellow was not quite right for the job. Sure, there was the gray nature of the way the fellow had gone about getting the job, and then the question of nepotism within the company, and of spouses working together on the same team, reporting directly to the same boss. The General Manager though, had just married a woman he had met in his workplace in the States five years before. He knew then that couples could successfully work together in the work place, despite company policy prohibiting the practice. The GM subsequently suggested the engineer apply to the sister operation of the company, just across town. Less than a year later, the Chinese husband got the job at the sister company.
Western company’s requirements for experienced staff – especially those that can speak English – combined with the shades of ethical gray in which Chinese business operates force Western managers into hiring considerations and decisions they would be hard-put to find in the West. Nevertheless, Western operations in China need to invest in the country to remain competitive; and they’ll need to accept the refractive realities of the Chinese Way sometimes to succeed in a competitive global market.
William Dodson
Suzhou, China
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