SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA JOB MARKET : THE NEW JOBS : EMERGING CAREER OPPORTUNITIES : WORKING THE PACIFIC RIM
Three years ago, Sergio Regalado was a dentist. Today, he is wrapping up a four-month business trip to Asia to look for products for his Van Nuys-based import-export business.
“I decided I was more of an outdoors person, not an indoors person,” Regalado explained from the Taiwan office of Inter-Global Import-Export.
Regalado’s career change may be more dramatic than most, but it underscores the continuing lure of the Pacific Rim. Even as nations such as Japan and the United States continue to slug it out over trade barriers and policies, jobs related to trade and foreign investment are becoming a bigger factor in California’s economic picture.
Direct foreign investment in a variety of industries accounted for 335,000 jobs in 1988, up 11,000 from the previous year, according to a new study by the California Council for International Trade, the California Department of Commerce and the California World Trade Commission figures. Total employment in the state stood at 15 million in 1988.
The jobs range from the obvious--dockworkers who unload containers of VCRs and TVs from Asia--to the not-so-obvious--Silicon Valley-based consultants who smooth negotiations with Asian companies wanting to launch joint ventures with U.S. companies. In between are a myriad of jobs in tourism, banking, law, auto and high-tech manufacturing, engineering, construction, marketing, distribution and research--all related, directly or indirectly, to trade with Pacific Rim countries.
And there are growing job opportunities in Pacific Rim countries themselves, both with foreign and U.S-owned firms.
“In general, I think we are seeing significant growth in Asia,” said Andrew W. Knox, a managing vice president of Korn/Ferry International, a Los Angeles-based executive search firm.
“In North America, you have many firms laying people off, but in a number of Asian markets you have double-digit growth,” Knox said. “And this includes certain sectors of the financial business, particularly credit cards.”
Knox recently returned to Los Angeles after five years in Tokyo, where he was manager of the firm’s activities in Japan and Korea. Knox is heading a new group in the Los Angeles office that is handling executive searches both in the United States and Pacific Rim countries.
Job seekers looking to get aboard the trade bandwagon will find a wide variety of positions requiring equally diverse skills and education.
Santa Clara-based TriGem Corp., which is owned by South Korea’s largest computer maker, TriGem Computer Inc., employs high school graduates in clerical jobs, junior college or technical school graduates in technical posts and engineers with undergraduate and graduate degrees.
TriGem Chairman Young M. Kimm epitomizes the new globalist. A U.S. citizen since 1960, he was born in Korea, reared in Manchuria and schooled in Wisconsin, Minnesota and California.
Kimm oversees more than 30 employees who design personal computers to be manufactured in South Korea and shipped to the United States for sale.
TriGem recently established joint ventures with companies in Irvine and San Diego to market and manufacture some of its products. Kimm hopes that those operations will swell to nearly 200 employees by the end of the year.
The demand overseas, Knox said, is for technical skills and general management skills.
Specialties such as chemicals, pharmaceuticals, manufacturing, research, computer software and consumer products are among those growing quickly, Knox said. Asian firms are also very interested in local nationals for their subsidiaries in the United States, he added.
Being able to speak a foreign language and understand another country’s customs will help workers surge to the front of the pack. Increasingly, those who join firms engaged in exporting or importing or supplying services to trade-oriented firms can look forward to living abroad during their careers.
“We’re looking for Asian-language speakers with an intensity we didn’t have two to three years ago,” said Michael A. Jacobs, a partner with the San Francisco-based law firm Morrison & Foerster, which does business with many overseas clients. “People who are willing to live abroad have tremendous opportunities.”
But Knox believes that language skills are not as important to overseas employers as they were 10 years ago.
“If you’re an excellent software engineer, that’s infinitely more important than speaking Japanese or Korean or whatever,” Knox said.
“It’s one of those things that’s on the wish list, but it isn’t mandatory,” he said. “I think language is less important than what I would term cultural and interpersonal sensitivity and flexibility.”
James Barkett, who was hired as a U.S. sales representative for Diners Club of Japan about six months ago, found that his lack of Japanese-language skills was not important to his new employer.
“They were looking for a good salesperson” to persuade more merchants to accept the Diners Club card, said Barkett, who wants to study Japanese.
Knox advised that job seekers “have got to be realistic about what skills and experience they bring to Asia.” Then, he said, approach search firms that specialize in the area or go directly to the individual companies in which they are interested.
As for Regalado, whose business card lists phone numbers in Chicago, Taiwan, Mexico City and Van Nuys, his career change has been a rewarding one.
“As a dentist, I could only service an individual or several individuals at one time,” Regalado said. “As an importer, I can service many, many people with products that can help the environment and help the individual.”
Times staff writer Martha Groves contributed to this story.
BEGINNINGS
Pat Underwood is senior vice president of Pacific Atlas Management Corp., a Los Angeles-based developer owned by the U.S. arm of a Tokyo-based Pacific Atlas development company.
“It was never in my plans to work for a developer, let alone a Japanese developer.
....I really didn’t know that the Japanese were developing as heavily as they were until I moved to Southern California.” But a recommendation from an outside architect took Underwood to Pacific Atlas. “I was hired for my technical expertise” in contracting “But my responsibilities have spread” into the development and planning end of the business.
SEARCH FIRMS Here are some executive search firms that specialize in the Pacific Rim. All are worldwide firms with offices in California. Boyden International: San Francisco Egon Zehnder International: Los Angeles Korn/Ferry International: Los Angeles Russell Reynolds Associates: Los Angeles Spencer Stuart & Associates: Los Angeles
