Pacific Rim Employment Market Shopping for Asian Americans
The people Larry Wang is looking for may not be looking for work. And the jobs they are eligible for probably won’t show up in the classified ads of their local newspapers.
That’s because Wang is trying to fill jobs in Asia, where double-digit economic growth, particularly in such areas as investment banking, consumer products marketing and telecommunications, has created an enormous appetite for people with the right mix of language ability, cultural knowledge and professional and management expertise.
Instead of working the traditional headhunting avenues, Wang has focused his search in the Chinese-expatriate and Chinese American communities, working through such groups as the Asian Business League, National Assn. of Asian American Professionals, M Society and the MBA programs at major U.S. universities.
His clients include Nike Inc., Microsoft Corp., Walt Disney Co., Merrill Lynch & Co., Philips Electronics and Standard Chartered Bank.
Although Asia offers these foreign firms a large, low-cost labor pool and rapidly expanding markets, there is also a severe shortage of skilled technicians and management expertise, particularly in the less-developed economies of China and Southeast Asia.
Six months ago, a large U.S. bank placed an advertisement in the South China Morning Post, a leading Hong Kong newspaper, for an analyst’s position. Six hundred people applied. But too often, the applicants answering these ads do not have the right combination of language skills and professional experience.
“The type of people we need we can’t find in Asia,” an executive of a leading U.S. company told Wang. “We need to find them in the United States.”
Other economic forces are also being felt in the Pacific Rim employment market. U.S. companies tightening their belts back home are looking for ways to reduce their personnel costs abroad, particularly given the huge expense associated with moving a U.S. employee abroad.
Wang said companies are starting to balk at spending $250,000 to $500,000 a year to provide an expatriate with American-style housing, a car and driver and private education for their children. One way to avoid that is to hire someone who is willing to live like a local.
Wang said these jobs are ideally suited for Asian Americans or Asians who have studied and worked in the United States and are willing to relocate. Close to 70% of the 4,000 to 5,000 people in Wang’s database are Asian-born and U.S.-educated. The rest are Asian Americans or “Asiaphiles” who have lived in Asia or picked up their language and cultural expertise in school.
“What matters is whether or not they have the right background or job skills for us,” he said. “It doesn’t matter that they’re Asian or not.”
Often, he said, these people feel they have hit a glass ceiling in the United States and are looking for opportunities to move ahead more quickly. The base salaries are comparable in Asia but the opportunities for advancement are better, particularly in such countries as China where management expertise is in high demand.
Frank Chen believes his bicultural upbringing is a huge asset in Asia, where he has spent the last seven years working for American Express and Richemonde, a liquor distributor in Taiwan. With Wang’s assistance, he recently landed a job as a marketing manager with Nike in China.
“My own value is much greater in China than in the United States,” said Chen, 36, who was born in Taiwan and raised in the United States. “I have on-the-ground experience in Taiwan, and my American mentality creates a lot more value for multinationals seeking someone who can speak Chinese and at the same time communicate well with their American executives.”
Richard Drobnick, director of the International Business Education and Research Program at USC, agrees that the job prospects are indeed bright for Asia’s top students, who are being hired by U.S. and foreign companies after graduating from U.S. universities.
To compete, American students interested in working overseas must develop a language and cultural expertise before they graduate, according to Drobnick. This fall, students in USC’s master’s degree program in business administration will be required to take a Pacific Rim business course that includes an overseas study trip.
“What business schools need to do is produce people who are very competent in standard business skills and have this extra layer of knowledge,” Drobnick said.
U.S. executives interested in the fast-track are discovering that the same rule applies. Last year, USC management professor Larry Greiner interviewed 24 chief executive officers in the United States and Europe to find out what type of people they would be hiring and promoting in the next decade. All of them said their top personnel challenge was finding senior managers with strong international backgrounds.
“Several of them made statements like, ‘To be CEO of this company in five or 10 years, you must have a great deal of experience overseas,’ ” Greiner said.
That type of expertise is not always available within the company, which is why many Fortune 500 companies are looking further afield to fill their top executive slots, according to Greiner. He said the rapid overseas expansion of many of these U.S. firms has also created a demand for people with regional expertise who can work across borders.
At Levi Strauss & Co., the newly created position of senior consultant for global leadership planning and development was filled by Yayoi Masuda, who was with the firm’s Japan office for three years.
Masuda, who moved to the firm’s headquarters in San Francisco three months ago, said the apparel giant is looking for innovative ways to encourage ideas and talent to move within the company and across borders. Levi’s overseas operations account for half of the company’s revenues.
“The traditional way of looking at things was a one-way street in which a U.S. expatriate would go abroad,” said Richard Woo, Levi’s senior manager of global communications. “We’re moving toward a two-way or more multidirectional approach.”
