The Asia Pacific Headhunter

Worst First Interview Question Ever

"Why do you want to work for us?"

It seems a lot of employers still ask this question, but I personally can't work out why. It may be appropriate for graduates who are looking at a variety of companies and are basically choosing based on brand names at a job fair, but here is what goes through the mind of an experienced candidate with choices when they are asked this question:

1. You think I need this job and want me to beg you for it.

2. You think your company is so great I should want to work here before you tell me anything and you want me to explain to you why.

3. You think I'll give you some new ideas as to why you should stay.

4. You're not sure how to sell me on this job or company so you really hope I already want it so badly that you don't have to tell me why to take it.

5. You're on an ego trip because you get to choose who gets this job and asking this question makes you feel important.

 I guess a good candidate could have a serious answer to this, but what could you possibly learn from it? You might learn that the candidate has done some serious research on the company before arriving. But you could find that out from asking them, "what do you know about us?".

I've had feedback from other recruiters that the question is used to make sure candidates are serious about their organisation. But at a first interview with candidates that have choices it's too presumptious to ask this question. A lot of times in recruiting we use the analogy that recruiting is like getting married. Asking this question is the equivalent of asking someone, "why do you want to marry me?" on a first date. Anyone tried that with any success?

If the position is important enough for you to get the right person then getting them to join for the right reasons for them is just as important. That kind of symbiotic result is what produces success, a meeting of equals. But the question of "tell us why you want to join our company" isn't the kind of question that demonstrates a meeting of equals, it's a question that demonstrates the power of interviewer. Most candidates don't want to feel dominated at work. They want a place that will be fair and allow them to achieve while helping the company achieve.

Employers can go on asking this question when times are tough and when they feel the upper hand, but it'll backfire when you need intelligent candidates with choices to join your company.

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Need intelligent candidates? Email me: [email protected]

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Get paid for going on a job interview

Getting paid to go on a job interview... by the company that's interviewing you???! Sounds like a far-fetched fantasy for candidates, but that's what start-up NotchUp.com is basing it's whole business model on. Candidates (preferably happily employed ones) can sign up for free, put up their (LinkedIn) profile and calculate what their interview fee would be with an interview-price calculator. This is based on your industry, job, highest educational degree, years in industry, time in current position, and current salary.

This platform is meant to cut out the recruiters and headhunters. Since companies need only pay the interview fees set up by the candidates they choose to interview, the comparable fees are supposedly lower than the recruiter's traditional placement fee which is a percentage of the new hire's first-year salary. As a recruiter, I should really discredit this model (after all, it's going after my job!), but I'm a fair person and see that everything has its merits and disadvantages.

First off, sure -- throw money into the mixture - and changing the roles of who gets paid, you'll get some interesting results. I'm sure in some cases companies -- esp. start-ups who's future depends on excellent talent can save money in placement fees by paying lower interview fees. Passive candidates (happily employed who are successful at their job) who otherwise would not put their profile up may be enticed to put their profile up if there's money in it for them. In it's best light - it may work well over regular online job boards and with a companies that work with lame recruiters who just slap up job ads everywhere and wait for whatever comes in - only to send out high-volumes of low-quality candidates to their client.

Now, here's where I see the model lacking:

First off, the point is to attract good candidates right? Good people aren't attracted just by a few hundred dollars for their time. They are attracted to good opportunities that help grow their careers and their strengths. I'd say 9 times out of 10 the candidates I recruit are attracted to the opportunity, the challenges, and the company rather than just the money.

Secondly, recruiting and headhunting isn't just about getting the right candidate to the job or vice-versa. I doubt any recruiter would be paid just for that. (Contingent recruiters usually get paid ONLY when THEIR candidate gets hired, and they usually provide a guarantee for up to 3 months - it varies of course). The hard work doesn't end there (which is where NotchUp does). Job interviews don't automatically lead to a job offer. And a job offer doesn't necessarily lead to a successful hire. There's a whole process in making the successful hire go through. Recruiters and headhunters manage people (candidates, HR managers, hiring managers, other decision-makers), people's expectations, timing, and other factors that are crucial in making a successful hire. A lot of wasted time, energy and money (in terms of lost productive work time for everyone) happens not only in the search for getting that first interview, but in the follow-through that happens after the initial job interviews. This is another part of where recruiters and headhunters provide value and service.

In the end, I seriously doubt this online platform will make a dent in the demand for good quality recruiters and headhunters out there who provide very targeted, high quality service for their clients. It certainly won't replace third party recruiters. If anything, this will probably become just another tool for recruiters to use in research.

Interview with Doron Vermaat of NewChinaCareer.com

At Asia Pacific Headhunter, we try to be a source of useful information for those wanting to work, network or research career opportunities and the recruiting/executive search market in Asia Pacific.  I'm working on putting together a series of interviews with some key people in the recruiting industry giving insight into the uniqueness of the Asia Pacific market.

As we know, the recruitment market, especially the online job boards in China has been heating up over the past couple years with the increasing demand and shortage of talent - read Workforce.com's article on Recruiting on Asian Job Boards.

So to get behind the scenes, first up is Doron Vermaat, Managing Director of English-only China-based online job board NewChinaCareer.com which started up early this year. He talks about the online job board market in Asia, the importance of English as the medium, and gives some advice for both employers and candidates.

1. Doron, can you tell me a bit about yourself and NewChinaCareer.com?

I’m a Dutch national and have been working in the field of online recruitment for quite a while. I was part of internet startup NationaleVacaturebank.nl, a leading Dutch job board that was acquired by VNU Business Publications in late 2005. When I left after the buy-out I joined an international recruitment company where I was responsible for all online and offline marketing and branding strategies. When they wanted to expand their business to the APAC region, I found out that there wasn’t a serious English language online recruitment platform for the Greater China region. The idea for NewChinaCareer.com was born.

NewChinaCareer.com went live in January 2007 and is currently listing over 15,000 (mostly executive) jobs from over 400 companies.

2. Why come to Asia to start a job board?

We’ve been seeing the growth of online recruitment in Europe for some time now. On this side of the world, I also expect the trend to continue.  (The number of Internet users in Asia is approaching 400 million, up 241 percent from 2000, according to Internet World.)

There’s more and more demand for native English speakers by foreign companies but also by local Chinese operations who are increasingly looking to do list in Europe and the US. We are also seeing that there are a large number of Chinese students who have studied overseas and are looking for jobs back in China. NewChinaCareer.com hopes to capitalise on the fact that English will be their medium of application preference.

 3. With the boom of career sites and online job boards coming out of China, how does NewChinaCareer.com set itself apart from the other big players in Asia, such as ChinaHr.com, 51job, JobsDB etc, etc?

 Although we are new on the scene, there’s no doubt that we are already a serious player in the market. By using English as a platform medium, I am positive that NewChinaCareer.com will appeal to a particular type of sought-after professional in Greater China. For both jobseekers and recruiters, as far as I’m concerned, there is now no other alternative.

There are a variety of job boards out there, but normally the English they use is just for the site’s menus. When you get down to the details of the listing, it can often be very disappointing for users who don’t read Chinese. We offer an easy, one-stop shop for China’s top jobs and China’s top professionals.

We did a lot of research in China and it seems that the top-end multinationals are all desperate for highly-educated people. One of the things that helps us, is that because we are an English-language site, we have a built-in selection filter. You can’t post or apply on the site if you can’t read or write English.

For years, more and more expatriates, highly-educated locals and returning students have been seeking top positions in Chinese companies. By using English, the site is in the exclusive position of being able to narrow down a particular type of candidate and vacancy.

4. How do you find the online recruiting market in Greater China different from other markets, such as the US or Europe? Or is it not different at all?

The volume is extreme. The major players are job boards such as ChinaHR.com, which posts nearly 1 million jobs each day and offers 10 million registered job seekers. Another thing that surprised me at first was the usability and the look and feel of most China based job boards: Looking at them is like walking through a Hong Kong night market, with every neon advertisement hoarding trying to capture your attention.

5. What do you think are the biggest issues facing employers hiring in Greater China from an online recruiting perspective?

Hiring is through the roof in Asia, particularly in China and India.

China’s major cities generated 12 million new jobs in 2006, according to the National Bureau of Statistics of China. This volume of hiring is possible only when sourcing is fully automated through employment sites.

Multinationals recruiting for professional positions on local job boards like ChinaHR.com and Zhaopin receive an extraordinarily large volume of responses and need to be prepared to target individuals.

6. What about employees? What do you think is the most important thing they should know about using the internet to find a new job in Asia?

 Be careful with using social networks to jump start your career. They attract millions of visitors every month providing lots of opportunity for individual interaction and relationship building. While this activity is indeed networking, however, the most important aspect of its description is the adjective that defines it: "social."  They should be aware that it can harm their reputation or even jeopardize their employment if their profile is full of pictures from late night party adventures or other “social” activities.

7. There is a lot of argument in the recruiting industry at least about the effectiveness of job boards. Certainly they provide a cost benefit over print advertising but they have proven to not necessarily be great source of talent. Still the huge advantage I personally see for job boards is the ability to tweak a product over time and improve. Where do you see the greatest changes and improvements coming from for Job Boards and online recruitment within Asia in the near future?

 I personally think you can only deliver a large percentage of qualified candidates if you are a niche player with a certain focus.  The problem with the large general job boards will always be the extremely large amount of unqualified candidates that apply to their clients' job postings. The biggest challenges for these job boards is to help their clients to filter this large amount of applicants. 

8. There seems to be a lot of ways that job boards are trying to change online over the last few years, with advertising on social networking sites, vertical search, paid referral systems, and social networking sites that are also job boards (phew, that was a mouthful). Despite all this change and creativity many of the larger players strictly advertising based services still continue to produce excellent revenue results. What's your opinion on all the new models that are appearing? How much is hype and how much is here to stay, or ahead of it's time?

So far the most successful job boards in terms of revenue are still the traditional web1.0 job boards like Monster.com, Careerbuilder and for Greater China ChinaHR and Zhaopin.com.

From a user's perspective I do believe in vertical job search engines like indeed.com or social networking sites like LinkedIN, but as an entrepreneur I prefer to make some money. Something that still seems to be a huge problem for web2.0 startups that are based on the Freemium business model.

9. Doron, do you think Headhunters like me (and Harry Joiner) are eventually doomed to be replaced by the internet or online savvy guys like you and Joel Cheesman?

Definitely not. I think that especially recruitment agencies and headhunters like you benefit from recruitment tools like job boards and social business networks. Besides this there will always be positions that can not be filled by companies themselves, simply because they don’t have the expertise. I think guys like me and Joel are serving both the HR community and the recruiters / headhunters but I am convinced that the last will benefit most. Simply because it’s their core business.

10. I really appreciate you talking with me Doron, is there anything else you'd like to add about NewChinaCareer.com?

 Thanks for having me Steven.

And thanks to Doron for taking the time to answer my questions.