KISSING-THE-FROG SYNDROME
CHAPTER 4: SPECIALISTS & TECHNOCRATS

 
　

By Mr. Alfred Shum, Chairman & CEO

Mr. Shum founded Onpress 10 years ago and expanded this recruitment and pharmaceutical services business from a one-man band to 15 staff with 3 offices in Beijing, Shanghai and Hong Kong.  He is a master’ s graduate in biochemistry and MBA from Sydney Australia, has worked for many well known multinational companies in senior management roles, and is a popular speaker and writer on China, recruitment and pharmaceutical issues in international forums.  He has recruited many senior managers and technical specialists across many industries in China and Asia.

In this Chapter, we will describe the type of candidates we classify as Specialists & Technocrats.

In an emerging market such as China, we do see many of this type of candidates.

In Chapter 2, we advocate that the client must define their requirements.  That is, the client, and/or the hiring manager, should define the  “core competencies” of the new hire!

Questions such as what is the candidate good at?  What experience level the candidate must have? Are these experiences mandatory?  Essential, or discretionary?  What are the qualifications?  Is a degree obligatory? Why?  Is an MBA mandatory, or discretionary? Male, or female? Age group?  What is the age and sex distribution with the current situation?

Unless the hiring manager is clear about the type of people he/she needs, then it is like finding a needle in a heap of hay!  And, perhaps, the recruiter will never be able to find for the client “the right person”.

It goes without saying that one must take cognizance of the hiring, employment and staff turnover (such as orientation, function disruption, re-hiring, etc.), and other hidden costs.

If the position is for filling in the gap, i.e., a replacement position, then the core competencies are usually well defined.  For instance, if it is for a sales manager job, then the parameters are well defined, such as the sales territory, the number sales representative the sales manager will manage, the reporting relationship, the sales target, the remuneration package such as Rmb10-20K p.m., and a sales bonus of 25%, to be paid quarterly, etc.  The core competencies should be people management, distribution channel development and management of customer service and service levels.  The job description should include:
  •  A summary of responsibilities
  •  Detailed description of key responsibilities
  •  Reporting relationship
  •  Location
  •  Qualifications
  •  Experience
  •  Personal qualities

And the hiring manager must approve of this job description.

Under normal circumstances, such job description should be provided by the HR Manager, or the Hiring Manager.  If no such position description can be provided, then it might be a new position (because there is no precedents), or the company has been too busy to keep such records, or no such records are available and the Hiring Manager is too busy or cannot be bothered to think about these issues.  In such case, the recruiter should be in a position to provide such job description, and ask the Hiring Manager or the HR manager to approve of such a job description.

In our experience, many jobs are related to “Specialists & Technocrats”, such as sales manager, HR manager, marketing manager, government affairs manager, production manager, engineering manager, QA manager, etc.  They are essentially traditional jobs, that are clear in their functions and level of responsibilities.  And it is easy to detect and define the core competencies.  For instance, if the position is a HR manager, then we would target people with experience in the HR field such as labor laws, recruitment, compensation and benefits (C&B), training, termination laws, appraisals, etc.; people who might have occupied previous positions such as administration, HR assistant, training supervisor, etc.  We will also target graduates with some training in HR, psychology, sociology, etc.  For these issues, the core competencies of the candidates are very important considerations.

Based on our experience, the remuneration package for Specialists & Technocrats at the manager level in China is approx. Rmb8-20K per month.

As a recruiter, we should test if the candidate can satisfy each of the core competencies, by validating the experience level and the duration of each job the candidate has had.  For instance, a person who has been involved in the C&B field is very different from someone who has done it for 2 years.  In the field of lean manufacturing we have been recruiting for our client, we have a set of lean manufacturing questions and ask each candidate to respond;  we have our “expert” to evaluate the responses to these questions from each candidate.

We believe that many companies and hiring managers failed to carry out the validating tests, or does not spend enough time, or lacking the discipline to do the checking, on the candidates, and they can miss out on any of the requirements of the core competencies.

In the case of HR manager, we tend to ask the candidates the type of employers, the number of employees, the nature and complexity of the products/services of the current or previous employer.  Also, we tend to evaluate the candidate’s intelligence, ambition and personality traits before we make a recommendation.

In order to hire the right Specialists & Technocrats, watch out for the bureaucrats, the nor-performers and laggards; try your best to stop them from “sneaking” into your organization!