Global Talent in Industry Environment

By Cyrille Breard

First of all, I would like to share a small story with you: when I arrived to COMAC, my adaptation and understanding of the daily operation were very slow. I had conversation with the human resource team, Wang Mengmeng multiple times to propose my plans and suggestions, and he always said to me with big smile: “we know you have ideas, keep up with the good work and be patient!” And Larry also gave me the similar feedbacks. We all need to learn from each other and here in China, the fastest growing economy in the world and in history, we must also learn to be patient! What a dilemma!After almost seven years in China, I come to realize that patience is essential. As talents, we are hired to make a difference, but we can’t do it if we can’t adapt ourselves to the system!

During the 19th congress, President Xi Jinping assured the world China’s commitment to globalization, and One Belt One Road is the realization of globalization, which means more talent acquisition.

I have the honor to discuss some of the challenges in recruiting and assessing global talents, especially for industry needs, as well as ideas on how to overcome those challenges.A new era of reforms has been introduced by SAFEA to allow State Owned Enterprise to employ global talents in specialized fi eld in order to become innovative players in the global competitive market.

Generally speaking, most of experts in industry do not show tangible and publicly available results of their expertise,which makes the assessment of their expertise relatively hard for public or for people who know little about their fi eld. With this in mind, 3 main topics are particularly critical: First, talent recruitment or acquisition; Second, talents as leaders with change or adaptation skills, and finally the expectation of career path.

Talent recruitment/acquisition

Recruiting people with high skills requires supplemental understanding of the different forces that influenced them along their careers. The environment such as fi nancial, organizational, and managerial, etc. systems where the experts were successful, contributes greatly to their success.

Understand the environments where the talents come from AND where the talents will work are equally important.

From recruiting perspective, critical questions need to be answered: Are the talents ready to explore new ways to succeed, do they have a pioneering spirit?

The process of Talent Recruiting is, in my view, more about having the talent to work on well-defined scope of work or tasks, in such it is a passive way to receive talents. On the contrary, Talent Acquisition is more of a proactive talent searching process by focusing on not only intelligence quotient (IQ), but also emotional intelligence (EQ). People with high EQ usually make great leaders and team players because of their ability to understand, empathize, and connect with people around them, such quality is approved to be particularly important for cross border hiring.

Studies show that success rate of highly skilled talents in a new environment is highly correlated to if they exhibit empathy in a new environment and being very passionate of their work. Organizations utilize many sourcing strategies to attract and engage top talents. Some of the highest quality driven processes are through employees’ referrals and professional network sites, such as LinkedIn. In western companies, employees’ referral is a preferential mean to recruit highly skilled people, because the referee is accountable of the success of the candidate.

Thus it becomes clear that advertising is not enough. Branding and reputation of the company, as well as its working,social and living environment are equally important. Nowadays, with social media in our pocket, social tools can reach more people than we could ever imagine. Connecting the dots between talents and HR through social media requires more sophisticated human resource management software package than manual and automated system. Leveraging the technologies that have been highly used in marketing and sales, building a digital employment brand, and creating a compelling candidate experience, are keys to successfully attract talents in the new digital world.

Leaders with Adaptation and New Skills

Expectations of the newly hired talents are very high. They are hired through recruitment or acquisition, and they have the expectation to make changes within the organization to make things working better. This is the most common understanding of hiring talents.

Increasing the value of chains of products made in China,like C919 for example, means that change is needed in order to comply with international standards, such as aircraft safety standard. In China, change shall happen through a consensual process, not just through an individual performance like in some Western countries. From my experience in COMAC, I found that it is more pragmatic to adapt first,and then to change. The adaptation process is an important step for the foreigners working in China, as they come with so much misconception about China both in culture and corporate governance.

And it takes time to adapt in order to reach a comfortable or acceptable level of understanding to the complex and sophisticated culture in China. However, quite often, some talents are too much hurry to demonstrate their ability in order to gain trust of your peers and to achieve goals that were set by themselves, but not necessarily in line with the goals t company level. This is where the expectation clash may happen.Change should happen gradually so that acceptance level is reached by your peers. Patience, patience, patience…

My suggestion to the talents is to focus on positive thinking and action, on leading by example, as well as on delivering tangible outcomes. At the company level, it needs to be the strong support to its talents, cultivates the talents by planning, matching and managing their expectations to maximize their values to the organization.

China teaches me to explore alternatives and new ways to achieve goals. Thus we should together, focus on winning with small steps by redefining what means success working in China: As Deng Xiaoping said “Crossing the river by feeling the stones”.

Talent Career Path: Authority and decision making are different in academic and industry environment.

Finally, understanding differences in attitudes towards authority, hierarchy and status are critical in acquisition and retention of talents. Having 10 years’ experience in USA at the Boeing company, quick and flexible decisions are favored and are vested to the individual level. This is based on the belief that any decision is better than no decision.

However, in China, decision is synonym of commitment, it can’t be decided without consensual agreement. Career path is defined around those principles of authority and decision making that are strongly linked with the culture of each country.

Thus, Global talents will work in the environment where authority and decision making may be immensely different from where they come from. So many misunderstandings and confusions could be encountered only because of the lack of awareness in those fundamental differences. Talents tend to foresee what they will be and what they want to do in the coming 5 to 10 years, while they plan their career path,they should have a clear understanding of authority and decision making process within the company.

Obviously, this is very difficult challenge, but I believe it can be done by company HR and the talents working together, increasing the talents’ radius of influence in the decision making process within the organization. This will bring authority to the talents and values added to the industry. Again,small wins are important to establish trustable base between talents and company at every levels.

Challenges in acquiring and developing talents are actually real opportunities to bring people together, we are so fortunate to have such opportunities. The One Belt One Road initiatives enable us to flourish as better persons, as we can use our knowledge and skills to bring better life to so many people in the world.

Thank you for the opportunity to share my thoughts.