ASIA JOB SEARCH CASE STUDY
The executive in question was a 42 year old HR executive from the UK with employment experience in Dubai and Hong Kong. He was made redundant as part of the merger of 2 major multinationals. He received compensation for loss of employment of approximately US$ 100,000.
Thereafter, having worked continuously for over 20 years he decided to take some time off and visited some old friends in the Far and Middle East. By the time he got around to planning his job search 6 weeks had already elapsed. Having worked for a US corporation he decided to target major US and European corporations at their headquarters and also at their regional offices in Hong Kong, Singapore and Dubai. So far so good for his job search.
His first mistake was to assume that as he was a HR executive he had the necessary skills to conduct a job search. HR executives are usually skilled in hiring and firing but managing your own job search is very different to finding a new executive. To illustrate the point we often work with executives from headhunting firms. You would imagine that headhunters could source a position for themselves relatively easily. Not so. If headhunters and HR executives struggle you can imagine the difficulty executives from other functions have when faced with a job search. One senior headhunter made the following statement regarding conducting an international job search; "Dreadful to confess, but with 20 years in the recruitment industry, the hardest person for me to sell is me."
Our HR executive decided to conduct his own job search and set about researching his targets, placing his resume with some headhunters he knew, posting his resume on some internet job boards and replying to newspaper advertisements.
To cut a long story short after 6 months he had not secured a new position. He had become depressed, his self esteem was low and his redundancy payment had shrunk by half. Panic was setting in. He had kept notes on his job search which he shared with us. Over a 6 month period he had done the following;
Placed his resume on 10 internet job boards - No interviews were secured.
Replied to over 40 job advertisements - One initial interview was secured but no job offer.
Written to 235 corporations who he thought he would like to work for - No interviews were secured.
Written to 40 headhunters in London, Hong Kong and Dubai - No interviews were secured.
The HR executive sent an email to our office and enclosed his resume. He was utilizing a format that we refer to as "Old Colonial". This format was popular 15 years ago but in today's competitive executive job market it is of little use. We prepared a new resume and drew up a marketing plan. His original plan was sound but he had targeted too few corporations and headhunters. The new plan was as follows;
Write to 3000 major employers and 500 headhunters in the UK, France, Netherlands, Germany, US, Canada, Australia, Dubai, Bahrain, Hong Kong and Singapore.
All this was accomplished in under one month from first contact. His first interview was arranged 6 weeks after first contact. His first (of 3) job offers was received 3 months after first contact. He finally accepted a position in Hong Kong which was sourced through one of the letters to the US which was passed on to a regional office in Hong Kong. In total he attended 12 job interviews. His salary in Hong Kong was 30% higher than the salary in his previous position.
Learn from the often repeated mistakes of the HR executive. Do not delay your job search. Seek professional advice from Asia-Employment.