The Asia Pacific Headhunter

Friday Links

Some great articles for you to take in over the weekend:

Evidence from Japan that companies that offshore operations are more successful at maintaining and growing their domestic workforce. This is worth a read for all the anti-offshoring types. Offshoring has been a big issue in Japan since the 80's thanks to all the manufacturing done there. And while the study can't say what type of employees are hired in the domestic operations, the results do show that perhaps not offshoring is a bigger risk to the growth of a company in their country of origin.

Immigrants Fuel Workforce Growth in Canada - Canada's foreign-born population has reached it's highest point in 75 years with 20% of the population born overseas. They have given a much needed boost to an ageing workforce.

South Asian Blood Sweat and Tears in the Middle East - A damning article on the treatment of nearly 600,000 Sri Lankan domestic workers in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Lebanon, and the UAE. The Sri Lankan government reports that 50 domestic workers return to Sri Lanka "in distress" every day! More needs to be said about this, it's disgusting that this type of abuse of workers continues.

Indonesian Economy on The Rise But Jobs Scarce - Quick article on economy growth in Indonesia but also how that growth has been confined to certain parts of the country. In some cases people can make more money offering themselves as passengers to commuters so they can use the car pool lane, than they can from working near their homes.

Dow Chemical cuts 1000 jobs - Includes leaving the automotive sealers business in Asia. Hardly even causes a blip on the share price which always seems to be the case when there are layoffs.

UK Investment Bankers Predict Doom in 2008 - But they still think they'll personally get bigger bonuses!  You've gotta love their optimism. Not that those bonuses weren't bad last year either.

Indians and Filipinos Happiest People in Asia - Who would of thunk it? Filipinos in particular are happy about their career prospects and families but are most of all happy about their health. Unfortunately they came last in "preparedness for retirement". Still at least they aren't unhappy about it.

Career Success Resources

I'd like to put together some pages and/or blog posts to review and list career success resources. I get a lot of questions on career management and career success and while I have some strong opinions and ideas myself I'd be really interested in any readers thoughts on books, blogs, podcasts, speeches, guide books or anything else you've read or seen that you felt made a difference for you in your career. So please leave a comment with the resource, and if possible a couple of reasons why you like it and I'll let you know once I've put together the final list. I think in particular if you have resources that you feel are more relevant to motivated employees in the Asia Pacific I'd really be keen to hear about them.

PayPerPost on Your Blog

HRSEO genius Joel Cheesman recently started an ad network for Recruiting blogs called Cheezads, and now he has also spread the word on PayPerPost (see update below for why this link doesn't work). For me personally Cheezads is a good idea. It's HR and Recruiting focused and therefore I hope the ads are relevant to my readers. PayPerPost also looks like a really interesting idea and one that I think could take off. It would also seem to legitimately threaten some aspects of the PR industry.

PayPerPost is a marketplace where Advertisers ask you to blog about their products or services and bloggers can choose which opportunities they want to write about. Once they have posted they get paid. All bloggers like to evangelize the products and services they like so there could be a real chance for them to get some reward for that in the future. Industry specialists would also seem to get a bit of motivation to evaluate new products and services and then share their findings. Without a doubt it will depend on the credibility of the bloggers. You will know I have lost all credibility when I start blogging about the benefits of driving a Ferrari...

This post is my first using the PayPerPost system. You can't buzz a product without using it, and now I am giving it a chance. So far it has looked interesting but I will let you know if it lives up to it's billing.

UPDATE: I can't seem to get the "Custom Link" working above. This is pretty important for the advertiser I would think. Try here for PayPerPost.com, it's not my "Custom Link" though.

UPDATE 2: A couple of people (including Jim Durbin) have already commented on Joel's blog that it will kill Blogger credibility. I don't doubt that if advertisers are paying for positive posts only. But I think there is a fine line. Journalists by definition get paid to write, and there isn't any doubt that they can be influenced.  And just because a Blogger is getting paid does that mean they have to write something positive? I don't think so. Just because a blogger is unpaid that doesn't mean you don't need to use critical reading skills to read their writing either.

Tony Robbins and 9/11

The TED blog from the creators of the annual Technology, Entertainment Design Conference is a can't miss educational opportunity. Today I watched one of the first of six TEDtalks that they have uploaded onto their blog. They are expecting to provide even more in the future. The talk was a 20 minute session with Tony Robbins. Robbins roasted Al Gore (in person as he was another speaker at the conference) and also told a story of what he was doing during 9/11. Only a very hard hearted person could fail to be moved by it (jump to the 18th minute if you want to catch that story only). I recommend the entire session because Robbins is truly a great storyteller and because he definitely has a lot of wisdom to share.

Hat tip to the Typepad Featured Blogs Blog for putting me on to TEDtalks.

Seen Not Heard - Blog on Living, Learning and Investing in China

I came across this blog a while ago, Seen Not Heard, by Calvin Chin, who manages Strategic Ventures for SMIC (Semiconductor Manufacturing International Corp.) – China’s largest chipmaker. Based in Shanghai, Calvin (an American ex-pat) gives a personal account of life and business life in Shanghai.

His most recent post is about his experience with his telco's customer service. He had problems with his network, called up, and surprise, 30 mins. later a serviceman shows up. He didn't mention if he had to pay for it. Here in New Zealand I have had the exact opposite experience with various companies’ customer service, I'm envious! But I digress, since his point was that China, with its abundance of skilled technical labor, needs to work on inefficiencies like “throwing people at problems” in order to compete with international companies.

Sounds like they could compete pretty easily with my current provider. Either way  Calvin's blog is an excellent read and I highly recommend it.

Passion and Work

I am a junkie for hearing about other people's stories. I always have preferred great stories over straight out facts and I guess that is what makes recruiting interesting for me. Great stories can change your own perception of life. The stories that I love the best are stories of passion for what people do. It is the reason why I love Steve Jobs recent Stanford Commencement Address (and stand in awe of a school that can provide that kind of speaker) and of Steve Wozniak's interviews on IT conversations. In both cases these guys exude a passion for what they do long before anyone noticed what they were doing.

To me that is one of the lessons of life. While I read a lot of career advice that implores people to improve their self-promotion skills and sales ability in order to further their careers, I think there is another way. Be utterly passionate about what you do, be the best whether someone is watching or not and you will find the rewards that come with mastery. Modern life seems hell bent on pushing us at faster and faster speeds but ultimately slowing down and concentrating passionately and with attention to detail in the little areas of life I think can help bring better results.

I am sure some people will disagree with this but I will give you a great example where it makes a difference for me. I see a lot of CV's and Resumes. But honestly very, very few actually give me cause to pause. When I think about that it is a shame. After all it is a written reflection of a person's body of work. CV's and Resumes are definitely an area where an injection of passion would be great for a lot of people.

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