Mr. Shangkong | Breathe easy, smog is not key issue facing China recruiters
The main concern, a hiring specialist says, is the need to find people – foreigners or locals – who can make a real contribution to a business
Is air pollution really the most important reason some foreign executives are considering for leaving China? Let’s continue the debate.
I received about 100 comments from readers, who were roughly evenly divided on the issue. Soon afterwards, I happened to meet an expert on international relocation and asked him for his thoughts.
You may not have heard of a firm called Egon Zehnder, but those in the chief executive’s suite will know it well. It is one of the very few headhunting firms that focus on those top-level positions for some of the world’s most important firms.
I met Claudio Fernandez-Araoz, one of the Egon Zehnder’s senior partners, during a visit by him to Hong Kong, and we talked about the latest hiring trends in China.
Fernandez-Araoz, who wrote the best-selling book Great People Decisions and was once invited by the Chinese government to advise on the process of selecting and promoting officials, said his firm still received a lot of inquiries from senior industry people who wanted to pursue job opportunities in China, signalling the country was not losing its attractiveness, let alone scaring away people because of air pollution.
He said people went for job opportunities for various reasons, but there were two major ones – industry outlook and money.