‘Chris is easy going, aggressive, very good stuff!’
When ZTE, a global telecommunications solutions provider headquartered in China, wins a contract for a big project, Candice Xianghao, in her role as Overseas Project HR Manager, might be given just two weeks to find 100 engineers. With such impossibly tight deadlines, and only one or two HR managers doing the roll call, she needs all the help she can get.
When she’s under pressure like that, Candice appreciates Chris from First Point, because, she says, ‘He’s aggressive!’. While aggression may sound like a strange attribute to praise, she says that Chris, a fluent Mandarin speaker, ‘understands Chinese culture: his approach reflects the Chinese way of getting things done, and suits the pace of global telecoms’.
First Point in Hong Kong works very differently from agencies Candice has worked with in Europe: ‘Every day ZTE bids for contracts in Australia, Taiwan, Russia, Africa and Europe, so response time is key. Chris gets things done: he’ll call directly, work out what’s needed and solve any problems. The others send emails, and we might be too busy to respond to them, so things happen slowly.’
Candice is amazed that so few agencies have fluent Mandarin speakers on their staff: ‘There are so many Chinese living in Europe and the US, it’s surprising agencies don’t employ them to service their Chinese clients’, she says. While all ZTE’s HR Managers can communicate in English, they obviously work more quickly and effectively when they can use their native tongue, and the translation of job descriptions drawn up in Mandarin by Project Managers also eats into the time available to recruiters who can’t read the language. HR’s heavy workload, and the short timescales involved in a major project, can mean it’s sometimes beneficial if Project Managers and Project Heads can communicate directly with agencies, but, as many of them speak very little English, that’s only possible if, like Chris, the agent speaks Mandarin.
Candice’s previous role was Country HR Manager, focused on Hong Kong: she took up her new, global role 6 months ago, and that’s when she first met Chris: ‘He’s market-oriented, and made a very good presentation of First Point Group to me as a new client’. Chris handles challenges very well, she says, and provide cvs more quickly than other agents: ‘He’s very good. Once he gets the job description he replies within the week.’ She adds that Chris is ‘a good communicator, and thorough: he gets to grips with the requirements of a project, and draws up a proposal for a total solution.’ Unlike some agents, who ‘just sell people but don’t care how well they do the job’, Chris is one of those who cares about the success of the project, ‘not just about getting money from the client.’
And James? ‘James is different from Chris. He’s bright, friendly and hard working. He is young but has just come from London, where he’s been working on technical projects in Europe, so he understands the technology side very well.’ Candice thinks that James and Chris will make a good team: ‘There’s a lot to grasp but he’ll learn from Chris. Chris knows how to run a project and knows how things are done here.’
As for the future, Candice says she doesn’t see the pace relaxing: ‘There are very big 3G and 4G projects coming in the next couple of years, and if ZTE wins them we’ll need 100 senior people a year, as well as 1000s of engineers.’ All the more important to have agencies like First Point, which understand the market, communicate well and work with her effectively, and a Mandarin-speaking agent like Chris, who is, she says, ‘easy going, aggressive, very good stuff!’
Interview dated: March 2010
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