The Crying Game: HR Recruitment in China

 by William R. Dodson

1 August 2004

She was practically in tears. Actually, I think she had been crying. At least, she was near hyperventilation. My British colleague said to her, “Here, now, let’s have a nice cup of tea.” He placed a paper cup with a limp bag of English Breakfast on the conference table, in front of her. We were interviewing local candidates for consulting associate positions in our Suzhou office, an hour’s drive west of Shanghai. We were finding the going tough.

Now we found ourselves having to soothe an interviewee who had sounded fearless on the phone in English, but who was a weeping willow when confronted with having been late to her job interview by an hour. But it was ok: at least she had made it. The first interviewee hadn’t even shown for her designated slot.

Interviewing candidates for job positions in China is an adventure at best; sheer Hell at its worst. A job description can be as detailed as an accountant’s ledger and still will attract the most bizarre candidates. “Spoken and written English a must” will often attract to the interview table candidates who cannot even put two words together in English; however, their "Japanese is quite good", they will assure interviewers.

One of my favorite “English Spoken Here” interviewees forcefully opened the interview with a two minute soliloquy in moderately accented English. The position we sought to fill was for Engineering Manager. Two minutes can be a long time in such a circumstance; still, the interview panel of American managers sat patiently while the Chinese engineer waxed lyrical on his strengths and pleasing attributes. When the questioning began, though, he looked over at the managers’ interpreter hopefully, and asked her to translate for him the questions and his responses.

Miss Jin (not her real name) tearfully finished drinking her English Breakfast tea and completed the oral portion of the interview. I informed her she needed to take a short translation test. She looked like the proverbial deer caught in the headlights; shocked, unsure of herself, of her very existence. Just then the first candidate for the consulting associate position poked her head in the door. You remember the one: she hadn’t shown nor had she phoned for nearly three hours. It was already 7pm: I was hungry. I was grumpy. Still, we soldiered on, separated the two candidates. Miss Jin carried on with the text translation. The Latecomer had all the right answers, but was impatient to jump ship from her previous position as a translator and project manager at her current job. Now why was that? we pondered.

Latecomer sat to take her translation test … and finished before Miss Jin, who was quietly sobbing on the damp translation dictionary she had asked for.

China is very young when it comes to understanding the job market. For many management level positions, if a job description asks for six years’ management experience, interviewers will be out of luck finding candidates that match the requirement. However, ask for five years’ management experience and you’ll hit pay dirt. In other words, it wasn’t until the end of the millennium that many university graduates became old enough and experienced enough to qualify for management level positions in Chinese companies. Many of those individuals – especially those with an applicable level of written and spoken English – are now in their late twenties. Hardly hardened veterans of the corporate wars.

More senior Chinese managers typically gained their experience in State Owned Enterprises (SOEs), and so have developed bureaucratic states of mind and very very seldom have any English fluency at all. They are teenagers of the Cultural Revolution, when education was considered passee – actually, it was literally deadly to study at the time.

Miss Jin asked me cautiously, “Who will be traveling with us to Wuxi?” I looked at her curiously. “Why, just you and I,” I answered nonchalantly. My colleague, ever more perceptive than I, quickly chimed in, “I know with my own junior staff sometimes they are a bit nervous about traveling with foreigners the first time.” Was he talking about me? I wondered. Later my co-worker and I determined the young woman had probably never even been alone with another man, leave alone a foreign man. She pulled herself together enough to respond she would be up to the second part of the interview: working with the boss.

The China market highly values Chinese employees who speak English and have more than five years experience. The Financial Times in a June 2004 article cited just such a manager in the booming Chinese automotive industry who was already making a six-figure salary: he demanded $500,000 per year to yet again jump to another position. The hiring company balked and the Chinese manager never did get hired into the opening; however, the story underscores the growing awareness of local Chinese vis a vis their value in the global marketplace.

The night before I was to take Miss Jin on the final stage of her test for the opening I had in my company she sent me a text message on my China mobile phone: “Can I take my classmate with me tomorrow? She is a very nice girl with work experience.” I slapped my forehead in disbelief and messaged back: “that would not be appropriate. If you are not comfortable coming tomorrow it is ok to cancel now.” “No problem. See you tomorrow 9am,” came the text-reply.

Concurrent with the rising self-awareness of the value educated, English-speaking Chinese have in the Chinese economy comes the growing danger of a company losing its investment in human resources more quickly than one would in more mature Western markets. No sooner than a recent University graduate gains some real-world business experience and commensurate confidence than they may be demanding from employers twice or even thrice their entry-level salary. This happened late in 2003 to a Chinese partner of mine in Jiangsu province: a talented young lady who had discharged her duties well and received loads of positive reinforcement for her results quickly believed herself indispensable to the business – which, of course, she was not. Her employer told her he would give her time off when she required it to find work that would pay her the trebled salary she was angling for. She could not find such work, but left the company anyway. Six months on and she was still unemployed and still looking for the same salary.

I passed Miss Jin a business card while our taxi glided along the highway from Suzhou to Wuxi, a forty-minute drive. Wuxi is about an hour-and-a-half’s drive to the west of Shanghai. She sat in the front seat of the sedan, passenger side. She had been chatty with the taxi driver, nervous.

“Please contact this government official and ask him at what exit we should get off the highway to get to his office,” I asked her.

“Now?” she asked hesitantly. I nodded, settled into the stiff back seat.

I watched her mumble something to the taxi driver. The driver palmed her something. She began vomiting heroically into the plastic bag the driver had just passed her. I sent a text message to my British colleague: “she’s vomiting in the taxi now. is this a dream?” I slumped into my seat with visions of carrying her limp body back to her parents at the end of the day. “I’m sorry,” I would mewl, and hope they would not call the local security service to haul me away.

Later she confessed she was easily car-sick; that and a nervous stomach had launched a day with local Chinese government officials during which they and I tried to make her feel comfortable until the close of business.

Needlesss to say, she didn’t get the job. But one day in the not-too-distant future the nervous, tentative girl who was easily made motion sick will find work appropriate to her ability and interests; and then a couple years on she will want more from potential employers. And a cup of English Breakfast Tea will not be what she’s asking for.