Bettina Wassener/International Herald Tribune
Jan Mezlik, 29, moved to Hong Kong from the Czech Republic for a job as a trainer in a physical therapy studio called Stretch.
By BETTINA WASSENER
HONG KONG — Shahrzad Moaven quit a public relations job in London and moved to this teeming metropolis four months ago to take up what she saw as a more exciting post: communications director at the exclusive jeweler Carnet.
Jan Mezlik, 29, moved here from the Czech Republic in late April for a job as a trainer in a physical therapy studio called Stretch. For him, the move brought a secure job and the chance to learn to become a yoga instructor.
Charlotte Sumner, a lawyer, arrived eight months ago, thanks to a transfer within her firm. She had spent six months in London and another six in Moscow and had jumped at the chance of a stint in Asia, which she felt would lead to more opportunities than a posting elsewhere.
Before the global financial crisis, none of the three had thought seriously about moving to Asia. But growth in China, India, South Korea and many other countries in the region is outpacing that of Europe and the United States. Many local companies are enjoying rapid expansion, while international employers are shifting positions to Asia and are hiring again. So increasingly, European and American job seekers are hoping that Asia is a place where opportunities match their ambitions.
“Things are just so much more dynamic here,” Ms. Moaven, 28, said. “Back in London, there were fewer resources for P.R. events or advertising. Here, everyone is expanding and spending on marketing activities. That makes my job here a lot more interesting.”
In Hong Kong, the recruiting firm Ambition estimates that the number of résumés arriving from the United States and Europe has risen 20 to 30 percent since 2008. These now make up about two-thirds of the more than 600 résumés its Hong Kong office gets every month, said Matthew Hill, Ambition’s managing director for the city. Similarly, at eFinancialCareers, an online job site, applications for positions based in Singapore and Hong Kong have jumped nearly 50 percent in the last year, its Asia-Pacific chief, George McFerran, said.
Landing a position in Asia, though, is not just a matter of being willing to make a new life halfway around the world. Many employers prefer candidates who have track records in the region and who bring language skills and local contacts to the job.
Mike Game, chief executive in Asia for Hudson, an international recruitment agency, said the number of Westerners actually making the move was still fairly small. Many employers, he said, are more demanding than they were during the economic peak of 2007 and are “setting the bar very high in terms of what they want.”
Nevertheless, many Westerners seem to be looking to make the move.
No wonder. The jobless rate in the United Stands is 9.5 percent, Britain’s is at nearly 8 percent and Spain’s is 19.9 percent. In Hong Kong, by contrast, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent. In Singapore — another hub of banking, legal and other white-collar positions — only 2.2 percent of people are registered as being out of work. In Australia, the jobless rate fell to 5.1 percent in June, the lowest level in nearly a year and a half.
During the downturn, millions of people in Asia — from factory and construction workers to bankers and architects — lost their jobs as demand for the region’s exports plummeted and multinational companies cut back. But with most Asian countries free of bank failures and the crippling debt loads that governments and households in the West are trying to pay down, economies in the region have bounced back quickly. (Japan is an exception.)
“The speed of the recovery has caught people slightly by surprise,” Mr. McFerran of eFinancialCareers said. “The jobs market is starting to be candidate-driven again.”
Hudson said in late June that the percentage of companies in Hong Kong that planned to hire workers soon was at the highest level since it began monitoring the data in 1998. Two-thirds of companies queried in Hong Kong and in mainland China in May said they planned to add workers in the third quarter of this year. In Singapore, the figure was 57 percent, the highest proportion since 2001, Hudson said.
Many companies in Hong Kong said it was hard to find qualified candidates and complained that salaries were rising, Ambition said in another report.
The renewed hiring has been especially strong in the financial industry and in legal services. But there is movement pretty much across the board — in architecture and engineering, marketing and sales.
Hardly a day goes by without news of expansion in the hospitality and luxury goods sectors, where companies are seeking to tap booming demand in China for luxury handbags, clothes and hotel accommodations.
“You have to staff up now, ahead of the curve, to be ready for the sort of company you will be in five years’ time,” said Pradeep Pant, head of Kraft Foods in Asia-Pacific.
Lauren Kwan left San Francisco to take a position at the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller in Hong Kong last year.
“I was seeing the hiring freezes and layoffs happening all around me, so I cast my net wider and wider to see what was out there,” she said.
“We’re seeing the beginning of a trend here,” Jeffrey A. Joerres, chief executive of the employment service Manpower, said by telephone from Milwaukee. “With prospects so weak at home, people are considering different options and looking for where the action is. Sure, there is still a lot of hesitation; people want to stay within their comfort zone. But the pressure is on.”
A Westerner hoping to move to Asia often needs to have a profile that fits the region. Employers want people who are familiar with the local culture, as well as the business and regulatory environment. For many jobs — like sales and marketing, or investment banking and wealth management — they are looking for candidates who bring contacts and clients.
Local language skills are a plus — and often a must — for anything China-related, especially jobs that involve interaction with customers.
As a result, local candidates and Asians raised overseas tend to stand a better chance. Ms. Kwan at Burson-Marsteller is just such a person: she grew up in the United States but is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese.
“Employers don’t want to have to do a lot of baby-sitting and training,” said Matthew Hoyle, who runs his own company, which specializes in hiring senior staff members for banks and hedge funds. “There are plenty of local people with good qualifications who speak Mandarin and Cantonese — you’d have to bring something pretty special to the table to top that.”
Those who have the qualifications to secure a position in Asia will find that jobs are unlikely to come with the sort of lavish benefits they once did. So-called expat packages, which used to include school fees for children and generous housing allowances, are pretty much a thing of the past.
Still, wages in many countries and sectors are starting to rise as the search for qualified personnel intensifies. For example, Ambition found that nearly three-quarters of respondents to its queries had received both salary increases for 2010 and annual bonuses for 2009. In the firm’s previous examination in Hong Kong six months earlier, only 60 percent said they thought they would get both bonuses and raises, indicating that pay had risen more than many expected.
Employers are also increasingly willing to make counteroffers to dissuade important staff members from resigning. Hudson, for example, found in its recent examination that many companies in China, Hong Kong and Singapore were prepared to raise salaries by more than 10 percent to retain top talent.
With taxes rising in other parts of the world — the European Parliament approved one of the world’s strictest crackdowns on bank pay this month, and Britain recently announced tax increases — parts of Asia are beginning to look increasingly attractive in financial terms, too.
Mr. Hoyle’s advice for those interested in working in Asia is to spend time in the region and knock on doors, rather than rely on long-distance networking. If possible, he said, get an internal transfer to build up at least 12 months’ worth of experience in the region.
“Treat Asia as a medium- to long-term project, not just as a stop-gap solution,” counseled Mr. Game of Hudson. “If you’re prepared to learn Mandarin, and if you have a genuine interest in the region, the long-term prospects here are very good.”
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