The open HR market is becoming more and more professional
Interviewed with Robert Parkinson, Manager Director of ANTAL International China
Journalist —Li Min
Antal International Co., headquartered in the UK, is one of the most famous head-hunting companies in the world. Since inception in 1994 Antal has placed executives in over 75 countries and offers clients a choice of recruitment & staffing solutions from Retained Executive Search, Search & Selection to Contingent Recruitment in Permanent, Interim & Contract / Temporary staffing. The Antal’s executive recruiters combine their recruitment knowledge, search skills, proven headhunting & selection methodologies with knowledge & experience of your industry to deliver a truly value added service. We focus on more than 12 industries: including Media, IT, Automobile, industry, FMCG, sales & marketing, banking, accountancy, legal and logistic, etc. This approach ensures Human Resources Managers, Hiring Managers & Candidates all deal with specialists who know the talent market, the top performers in it and importantly, understand your business.
DEVELOP CHINA MARKET
JOURNALIST LI: How did your company develop the China Market from 1994?
ROBERT PARKINSON: When I came to China two years ago, Antal just had 6 employees; we did the same as our competitors using the traditional way for headhunting, that is: rush around to find the fit person to meet our clients need. As time passed and experiences accumulated, we are very excited to find that it is really a big HR Market here, there are so many energetic youths who have full of working experiences and industry knowledge, and at the same time, more and more foreign enterprises troubled in finding the right person in China. So we come here to build the communication bridge. The authorized data shows that our company’s turnover in 2007 is 10 times than those in 2005. We now have nearly 100 professional consultants from different countries worldwide in Beijing, who could help to build smooth communicated channel in case meet the cultural and language diversity. Our target is: we will have 200 consultants in Beijing office and 150-200 consultants in Shanghai Office.
Three years of hard exploitation shows that the Chinese environment is quite fit for the development of foreign enterprises. More and more clients and candidates all very appreciate our “Initiative Launch” business mode, which help our clients to find the right person, and vice verse, help the candidates find their ideal job.
BUSINESS CODE AND SUCCESSFUL EXPERIENCE
JOURNALIST LI: What’s the unique business code and successful experience of your company?
ROBERT PARKINSON: We set our marketing target as “youth, rising and promising candidates”, whose salary between 20,000-10,000 RMB per month.
Our business code is quite different from our competitors’ traditional code, it is a kind of client-oriented, through which they rush around to meet our clients need, and it will be finished till they find the fit guy.
But we are quite different: For example, our client have a position for CFO, we find 10 candidates for him, our client choose the very fit one, but we don’t just throw the rest nine’s CVs to the trash, instead joining in a deep communication with each potentials, to help them find other appropriate positions. That is to say: we are candidate-oriented. We build a strong database through long times of communication and abortive selection, which is our unique outstanding advantage.
For instance, last month one of our clients of mine industry tug in finding a senior CFO, this company had a long term contract with one of our competitors, who did this case 9 months without any good news. Fortunately, we got an excellent candidate to the moment, and he is not quite fit for its current position, so we went on digging out the possibility about the new match. To our great surprise, he finally succeeded in winning the position. What’s more, our client was quite satisfied with our working ability and job-hunting wisdom.
We don’t introduce our company at the very beginning, we introduce our candidates. And what’s more, we would like to provide those candidates a personalized career plan strategy, which could help them to get what they really want. Frankly, we would like to apply to our clients those who are willing to work permanently.
The difference also shows in big city, because there are more elites in big city, which could contribute to our huge HR database. Not only do we apply satisfying work to our clients, but also we wish we could help our candidates to find their right place. What also have to be stressed out is: it is not salary unsatisfying that most of the candidates prefer to leave their current position, but as to the unhappy communication with their direct manager that make up the point. So we suppose it is quite necessary to give a senior manager some kind of training, especially focus on communication skills.
COMPETITIO OF HR MARKET
JOURNALIST LI: When the Chinese HR market opens to the world, the competition between the head-hunting companies is more and more fiercely worldwide, and some of the head-hunting companies don’t follow the industry criteria. What should your company do in case of the situation?
ROBERT PARKINSON: Generally speaking, the overseas head-hunting market is more mature than China national market, the leading market of overseas HR market is those big and brand name head-hunting companies and those small ones mainly rely on the personal relationships. The rank list of the head-hunting worldwide is: No.1 is New York, No.2 is London, and No.3 is Amsterdam. I believe, the Chinese head-hunting market will become more standardized gradually.
Now, one top issue focus on there is so many small and online head-hunting companies in China, and most of which are low-level and they prefer low-price-war for competition. Such innormative environment, leave a great development space for us, we believe only those who could apply valuable, high value added service can survive the active competition world.