As the epidemic has repeatedly brought uncertainty to the global business world, employment environment, etc., what difficulties Chinese companies face when going overseas and what choices should they make? What challenges have Chinese companies encountered in attracting and recruiting international students, and what new attempts have they made?
Recently, the well-known recruitment platform LinkedIn held an event on the strategic layout of corporate overseas talents in Shenzhen, and disclosed some of the 2022 "Insight Report on Job Search for Chinese Students Returning to China". After the meeting, Wang Qian, general manager of LinkedIn China's Talent Solutions Division, accepted interviews with reporters from Southern Daily and Southern+.
language talents VS technical management talents
Data shows that LinkedIn entered China in 2014 and has served more than 1,000 Chinese enterprise-level customers in the past 8 years, of which 75% of the companies also have overseas demand. Among these companies, LinkedIn found some common trends:
's first phase is the product going overseas, represented by "Made in China".
The second stage is the brand going overseas, the most common ones are mobile phones and white household appliances. Many cross-border e-commerce headquarters are located in Shenzhen, and there are many companies that only work in overseas markets. Transsion mobile phones are particularly popular overseas, but domestic users do not have much contact. The third stage of
is very obvious in the "Internet +" going overseas, and e-commerce, games, mobile game APPs, etc. have formed a very strong main force going overseas.
The fourth stage is to go overseas more comprehensively. There are many new consumer and domestic brands that are doing better and better, such as biomedicine (including vaccines) under the epidemic, upstream and downstream industries such as protective clothing, etc.
At the same time, new changes have taken place in talent demand.
Wang Qian said that in the past, what was very important to "going to sea" was language talents, such as whether they understood the local language. Now with the upgrade of translation machine tools, language talents are no longer the strongest talent demand for overseas travel. There are three types of talents that have grown very significantly:
The first category is the technology category, and about 87% of Chinese companies on the LinkedIn platform have opened up technical positions.
The second category is management. In the past, the products were just out, and the management was sitting in China. Now overseas companies need to use local talents and manage local talents. In 2020, the demand for management talents on the platform doubled compared with 2019, which reflects that overseas companies are becoming more and more mature and require management talents.
The third category of growth is obvious in laws and regulations and government public relations. As Chinese companies go overseas, the scale is getting bigger and bigger, including more laws and regulations, and the demand for talents in government relations and compliance has grown rapidly.
Interestingly, "language talents are no longer the strongest talent demand for overseas students." In this year's college entrance examination application, the civil engineering scores of many universities were disappointed. Wang Qian reminded this that from the perspective of the employer, majors are not the key considerations. Overall, the employer company will consider "hard skills" to open this door, and "soft skills" will really let you enter this door. For example, the first thing an employer considers is teamwork ability, expression ability, and ability to solve complex problems. On the contrary, he will not pay special attention to what major he studied in school. As long as he truly reaches the professional level, such as doctoral recruitment, he will pay attention to it.
Tell the brand story well VS Talent transformation
Around the epidemic, enterprises went overseas to see new changes in talent reserves.
Wang Qian said that in the past, the conventional practice of Chinese companies going overseas was to decide which area to go to, and then consider how to recruit people locally; and with the help of "big data insight", it can help companies provide insights before going overseas, such as where new energy vehicles go overseas, and where the Chinese talent reserves of mobile game companies go overseas are rich. Some Chinese companies are not that well-known overseas. Their inspection indicators for whether to join a company are different from countries and regions. They hope to have a strong salary before. In the past two years, especially after the epidemic, salary is not the first factor that everyone considers. Many regions hope to be able to balance their work and life.
The stages faced by enterprises overseas are different. Some are very successful in the global development, such as white household appliances going overseas. As the world's leading manufacturing industry, many white household appliance companies have been overseas for decades, completing the changes from product overseas to brand overseas.There are also some new overseas companies. When entering a new market, LinkedIn can help provide big data insights in new markets, such as talent matching, whether there are better development suggestions if there are no matches, how to recruit locally, how to accurately collect the talents you want, etc., and provide a complete and comprehensive solution.
LinkedIn summarizes the four major challenges of attracting overseas talents in the medium term, namely four links: where is the person, who am I, how to do it, and whether you can do it.
For example, "Where are people?" Overseas talents are distributed in many countries around the world, but Chinese companies do not know the talent market situation in the destination country. At the same time, the talent recruitment needs proposed by the business department are often emotional, and it is difficult to collaborate with the recruitment team to formulate an executable, implementable and successful plan and strategy.
Next, Chinese companies always repeatedly solve the topic of "Who am I, what kind of company I am" to candidates in overseas talent attraction. It is necessary for companies to tell brand stories to target candidates efficiently, quickly and accurately, and what kind of stories they need to tell in order to attract candidates from different backgrounds and cultures in different regions.
Wang Qian said that the target candidate surfaced and eventually became an employee of the company is a certain transformation process, but Chinese companies pay too much attention to efficiency, forcing the recruitment department to quickly acquire talents, which will lead to a phenomenon: the recruitment team of Chinese companies often only focuses on the last two links and does not do the first two links. The last two links are the transformation of talents, such as asking them to consider our position and sending an offer for them to accept. There are also very important solutions to corporate brand awareness issues in the first two steps of the long conversion process, as well as telling the brand story well, so that candidates can consider our problems.
"China Speed" VS Planning in advance
What other details do enterprises need to pay attention to during overseas recruitment?
Wang Qian said that companies developing overseas should have a good understanding of local talents’ judgments on good employers. Even local Chinese will be influenced by local culture, so accurate data matching should be made.
For example, many offers were issued for 2,000 candidates, but few offers were signed back, indicating that there were many rejected offers, which was a warning.
In addition, after the epidemic, employees have a consistent tendency to "flexible office", and flexible office has become a new consideration for many candidates when choosing companies.
There are also great differences in corporate business promotion and management in different countries and regions. "China's speed" is still a strong competitiveness for Chinese enterprise development, but at the same time, the globalization of Chinese enterprises also requires adapting to local conditions and more professional talent strategic planning.
She further explained that for Chinese companies, "China speed" is often done first and then optimized. But we must also see that in many mature markets, making good plans first is often more in line with the needs of this market.
In addition, in actual work, many Chinese companies going overseas may face other difficulties, such as recruiting an executive and offering very competitive salaries, but not giving enough authorization, so the executive may not stay.
[Reporter] Gao Xiaoping
[Author] Gao Xiaoping
[Source] Southern Media Group Southern + Client
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-
-