Evaluating
Asian Candidates
When assessing senior level candidates, there are certain attributes that are
consistent across most cultures. However, there are some important differences among the world’s different regions and Asia is no different. Some of the special differences that are unique to the Asia Pacific region are discussed below.
1. Career
Stability
Frequent job changes are considered a concern in virtually all regions of the world when it comes to recruiting senior management people. For various reasons, job stability is perhaps more important in Asia than elsewhere.
Economies of Southeast Asia (mainly Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand, Indonesia, Philippines and Vietnam) are relatively small on a global scale and are usually dominated by a few family-owned conglomerates. As a result, there are a small number of possible employers (as well as customers and suppliers) in each industry sector.
Because of these limited employment options, senior managers tend to stay with their employers for longer periods of time.
Another reason senior managers are inclined to be stable has to do with the importance of relationships to doing business in Asia. Job-hopping is a notorious bridge-burning activity and too much of it is seen as harmful to a senior manager’s career.
Exceptions to this rule have become apparent over the past few years in Singapore,
Vietnam and Hong Kong. These countries have experiencing extraordinarily strong demand for experienced managers
because of high rates of economic growth and foreign investment. The result
has been that a habit of frequent job changes has developed among
desirable (and undesirable) candidates. International managers building businesses in these 2 countries should not be disappointed if the candidates they see have uncomfortably high rates of employer turnover.
2. Local Company Experience
Within most of Asia, there are still a lot of perceived differences between the quality of managers developed in “local” companies as compared to multinationals. This distinction is slowly fading as more
locally-owned companies aspire to become international in their management styles. These days, each country in Southeast Asia has its own successful companies with superb senior managers. The most obvious examples of this is Singapore
and Hong Kong where leading local companies would be considered internationally
competitive by any measure.
Despite these exceptions, the perception of international hiring
managers is that only people with multinational company experience should be considered for management positions
in multinational companies. There are various reasons behind this and some of the stereotypes of companies in emerging countries include: overly hierarchical management style, promotions based on personal loyalty rather than performance, hiring of friends and relatives, overly centralized decision making,
etc, etc.
International managers who are hiring leaders need to ensure that candidates have experience working at, or very close to, international standards. Otherwise, they may end up with an organization functioning in a stereotypical third-world company manner.
3. Blames Past Employers
Most people would agree that something is very wrong when a senior leader points his finger at others for mistakes that were made
while he was in charge. While this is true in all societies, it is particular true in Asia.
It is reasonable to say that Asians are generally more concerned with matters like good manners and relationship-building than people in many other regions. They are diplomatic people and usually very cautious about what they say about others.
It should be considered a great cause for concern if a candidate denigrates a past employer or its senior managers during the interview process since it indicates that he could have burned bridges at previous employers. If he has done so with employment relationships, there is a risk he may have similar harm with other relationships such as with clients, suppliers, regulators, etc..
4. Decision-Maker or Order-Taker?
Unfortunately, there are some international organizations that do not empower their local managers to make decisions of any consequence. In these companies, important decisions are made in a far off office and local management merely carries out instructions. Across Asia, there are many senior managers with impressive sounding titles who are mere figure heads – they do have the authority that their position would normally entail.
It has long been a grievance of regional managers that some of their Country Managers behave like “relationship managers” rather than leading sales initiatives. In these situations, local managers simply maintain customer relationships with people who they already have long-term relationships with. They rarely prospect for new clients or even try to introduce new products and services for existing clients.
A disproportionate number of large Asian companies are family-controlled and family-run businesses. Decision making is often centralized among family members and a few personal confidants. Employees outside this narrow sphere
are not able to develop what would be considered by multinational companies as management accountability. When assessing candidates from local companies, it is critical to determine the exact nature of the organization’s
reporting structure.
5. Can’t Describe Career
A primary duty of virtually all senior managers is to communicate their ideas and instructions to others in a clear and compelling manner. Successful managers typically have a high sense of self-confidence and can usually be expected to talk on and on about themselves and their amazing achievements. If a manager representing himself as senior is unable to describe his own career history in an understandable and convincing manner, it should be cause for concern.
That said, it should be understood that Asians are not as comfortable
with self-promotion as (say) American-style managers. Asian culture demands a softer approach that avoids being seen as boasting. As well, English is a second language to most Asians and this will somewhat limit their ability to make a strongly-worded western-style sales pitch.
Another important consideration is that people who have a history of long-term employment within one or very few high-quality companies can be bad interviewers. These desirable candidates may not have interviewed competitively since graduating from university and are understandably out of practice with what is expected.
On the other hand, someone with a career history of frequent job changes or sales experience will usually be experts at selling themselves. If not, it may indicate that the candidate is less impressive than he seems on paper.
6. Overly Eager for Job Change
Successful senior managers are generally entrenched in their roles and usually cautious about entertaining other opportunities. Within the tightly-knit economies of Southeast Asia, it is not uncommon for managers to be wary even about meeting to discuss new opportunities since they realistically fear negative impact of a privacy breach.
If a candidate seems overly enthusiastic for a role, it may because their current employment relationship is either flawed or ending. This may not be a bad thing but it is useful to understand why.
Helpfully, international managers (westerners or otherwise) representing multinational companies will usually not be perceived as a confidentiality risk by local managers since they are seen as coming from outside. People are naturally interested in meeting someone representing a multinational company to talk about a possible role with a successful multinational company.
7. Risky Loyalty
International managers who are new to Southeast Asia are often impressed when a newly hired
local Country Manager brings team members with him from his previous employer. Group transfers like this are not
uncommon since managers in Asia often have very close relationships with their staff.
The short-term savings are obvious since an organization can be built from scratch quickly and inexpensively. However, the risks should also be evident. Employees are loyal to their local manager and less so to the organization. Some of these employees will almost certainly be long-term friends and possibly even relatives of the manager.
If the international manager tries to make necessary changes to “his” organizational structure or replace staff, he could experience tremendous resistance to change. He may also discover that when the
local Country Manager leaves the company, he will leave with everyone he came with.
Across Asia, there are international managers who feel they have lost partial (or sometimes complete) control of their organizations because they did not understand the nature of the relationships
of their staff. It is important to understand ahead of time whether your new senior hire will attempt to build staff loyal to
the company or to himself.
8. Poor
Developer of People
It used to be a common negative perception of some Asian managers that they were more interested in building a fiefdom for themselves than building capabilities of their people. For various reasons, traditional managers in emerging countries used this strategy to ensure tenure of their own employment. They hired and promoted staff based on assessments of personal loyalty rather than on performance. In this way, everyone would cover everyone else’s backs and the boss would never have to worry about someone showing him up or threatening his job.
Gladly, this self-retention strategy seems to be losing favour as managers come to understand the benefits of modern management practices. Nevertheless, work is required of international managers to research the practices in the candidate’s past work-places.
9. “Connected” Candidates
When meeting candidates for senior positions in Asia, international managers will notice some who describe their personal or family connections with supposedly high-powered local
people. They may mention an uncle who is the head of this or a friend from school who is the head of that. They may also emphasize their last name as part of some prestigious family.
Many international managers are perplexed how to determine whether such
relationships exist, first of all, and then whether they have more value than
risk to the organization. To people from egalitarian countries, it might seem revolting for candidates to pride themselves on supposedly unearned advantages rather than on earned achievements. Nevertheless, relationships are important to doing business in Asia and the international manager will need to determine which ones are important to his business.
In general, if a business involves large contracts and agreements with high profile people in government and the private sector, then candidates with established personal relationships will be
critical to success. In that case, it is necessary to assess the suitability and quality of the candidate’s relationships through extensive background checks. It is not enough that the candidate is beneficially connected – he needs to be willing to use those relationships for the benefit of his employer.
If a business requires a hands-on manager to drive a sales business, then a manager who has worked his way up the ranks will be required.
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The
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The 7th Asia Pacific Mining Conference put on by the Asean
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Richard
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Dan Reyes is easily one of most experienced Business Process Outsourcing (BPO) managers in the Asia Pacific region and the world. He is head of the extremely successful Philippine operations of Sitel, the world's largest call center organization. Among other things, he is a founder and former president of the Business Processing Association of the Philippines.
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