It’s a historical moment for Apple, as it supersedes the world’s leading wireless operator – China Mobile. Seventeen-thousand young professionals carried out more than 48,000 individual company evaluations, judging them on their employer credentials and image, and have nominated the company that has been described as having an “I” for revolutionary technology – Apple.

In the business ranking, Apple takes over the top spot from China Mobile (now third) by climbing three positions, while SGCC keeps its second place. In the top 10 ranking, Chinese companies dominate – seven out of 10 employers are Chinese: Bank of China, PetroChina Company, Sinopec, CICC and Alibaba.

“The talent market for business career seekers is dominated by Chinese firms, which are perceived by talent as companies that offer secure employment, good work/life balance and a comfortable/friendlier working environment, much more so than their international recruitment competitors”, says Martin Lingner, President Asia-Pacific at Universum.

In the engineering ranking, Apple again finds the way to the top, relegating China Mobile to second place while Google holds strong at third place. Again Chinese companies seem to have an advantage, as the remaining top 10 positions are taken by six Chinese companies: SGCC, Sinopec, Baidu, PetroChina Company, ChinaTelecom and TENCENT. Yet the world’s leading software company, Microsoft, is still a worthy contender in China, obstructing others from entering the top 10.

“Engineers seem to be attracted to companies with financial strength, which offer professional training & development and good prospects for high future earnings. Career-seekers want to develop and improve their employability and prospects for a better and balanced career”, says William Wu, VP at Universum China.

Top 10 Ideal Employers—Business

1. Apple (4)
2. SGCC (2)
3. China Mobile (1)
4. Bank of China (5)
5. PetroChina Company (6)
6. Sinopec (9)
7. Google (10)
8. Procter & Gamble (3)
9. CICC (16)
10. Alibaba (13)

Top 10 Ideal Employers—Engineering

1. Apple (4)
2. China Mobile (1)
3. Google (3)
4. SGCC (2)
5. Sinopec (9)
6. Baidu (8)
7. PetroChina Company (7)
8. ChinaTelecom (5)
9. TENCENT (6)
10. Microsoft (11)*

In parentheses are the companies 2010 rankings. Click here to see the full list of China’s Top 100 Ideal Employers

Universum’s research shows three trends in China

1. Salaries are up by 14% in China

Annual salaries in China are growing fast and are well above inflation. From 57,750 CNY in 2010, participants now report an annual salary of 65,890 CNY. Engineers still earn the most, on average 69,500 CNY, followed by business professionals making 67,300 CNY and people working in the Health and Medicine sector taking home 64 000 CNY.

“The increased cost of talent reflects the high demand that qualified professionals have in China. Generation Y is ambitious when it comes to their living standard – they know they are needed in the job market, so they are not afraid to ask to be compensated for that. Companies that wish to prevail and secure their workforce without entering this salary competition need to find other ways of compensating their employees”, says Jessica Hedlund, Senior Sales Executive at Universum China

2. Traditional business companies are more attractive to China’s business professionals

Management Consulting firms, the big four professional services firms (Deloitte, Ernst & Young, KPMG and PwC) and financial organizations are becoming more attractive employers among business career-seekers. They now gain ground from engineering companies, which are still competing aggressively for the same talent pool.

“This new trend reveals that the war for talent is now conducted in a broader scale and companies are tapping into talent pools that they have not considered before. This year’s results show that business companies seem to be winning the war for talent, but in this volatile environment engineering companies might be getting ready for a quick comeback”, adds Mr. Lingner.

3. Engineering & Manufacturing companies are less attractive to China’s engineers

Although companies from the Oil & Gas industry look stable, business companies are competing for engineers at the expense of employer in the engineering and manufacturing sector.
“In a world where top performers are becoming a scarce commodity, finding the right people is critical for business success. At a time when low birth and death rates are significantly shifting world demographics, the dilemmas of the 21st century are not only ‘Who will make-up the workforce?’, yet more importantly ‘Who will own it?’. Corporations are aware of the current and future challenges of a shrinking workforce. To counteract problems in securing their talent pipeline, companies require a talent attraction and employer branding strategy”, advised Mr. Lingner.

Business week, in a December article entitled “China Business Schools Hit Their Stride“, explains that Chinese business schools increasingly match the Western quality of education. It’s been an arduous journey, since the first business programmes in 1991, but results are now starting to show.

Although much has been done, the demand for talent is still high in China – 20,000 MBA students graduate each year, whereas 75,000 graduates are needed. Truly, the market cries out for business professionals, with international companies and Chinese employers (having operations abroad) being the neediest.

In terms of quality, schools in China succeed in two ways: 1) capture the domestic talent that once preferred to study abroad and 2) attract Western talent that is interested in knowing more about the world’s second largest economy. With this approach, allied to the networking possibilities offered by the programmes (40% international students, 60% Chinese students), China will keep talent inflowing.

Seems like the next smart thing to do is take an MBA in China…

By Christopher Van Mossevelde.

Due to a critical shortage of experienced staff, attrition is an “every-day hazard for companies operating in East Asia”, reports the FT.

In her article, “Aggressive hiring keeps the talent moving”, Elaine Moore, gives the example of RBS Coutts, which lost one third of its staff to its rival BSI.

According to her, the war for talent is not only affecting private banking and big corporations, but also small businesses where employees are known to switch jobs for minimal salary increases.

Michal Kalinowski, UNIVERSUM’s CEO, was quoted saying “In 2010, the first Chinese company entered Universum’s World’s Most Attractive Employers list (a global index of Employer attractiveness). An interesting sign of things to come is that for the first time ever there is a Chinese company in the top 50 – Lenovo at 44 among engineers”.

The report featured UNIVERSUM’s data on East Asian Students’ Career expectations and the ideal employers in Hong Kong, Singapore, China and Japan.

Quoting various experts in the field, however, the article’s main arguments were: 1) salary increases do not guarantee retention and 2) employers should assess cultural & motivational fit between candidate and the organisation prior to employment.

As Chinese companies continue to dominate the indexes of employer attractiveness (rankings here), it is with some dismay that I notice only a few western companies getting ready to address the challenge of talent attraction in the medium term.

Furthermore, looking at the business plans of some top western-world companies, a major growth is expected to come from BRIC; but how these companies are expecting to deliver in such big markets remains partially a mystery. What I know is that attracting talent will be a major challenge and without human capital, how are the companies going to deliver on such different markets?

Long gone are the days where being an international company represented a competitive advantage in the talent market. Nowadays, Asian talent has career expectations that they perceive only achievable in local companies. If western companies want to achieve success in Asia, the time to start building their talent pipeline is… right… now!

According to the institute of international education, more and more Asian students are moving to the US to study:
- 103 260 from India
- 98 510 from China
- 75 065 from South Korea
- 29 264 from Japan

In a recent study by Universum, we identified that around half of the Asian students in the US wanted to stay in the countries where they are currently studying an pursue an international career. For those working in the field of talent attraction and employer branding this represents a huge opportunity (for US companies) and a big headache (for the Asian companies needing this talent).

How should US companies use this opportunity? As imigration rules are being tightened, this can be a great opportunity to counter-balance the difficulties of hiring talent from abroad – internships might be a great solution.

How can Asian companies react? Something has to be done to avoid a bigger problem: understanding why students are pursuing an international career and not wanting to return home should be the first step; offering competitive opportunities to get them back wil be the natural second step.

Read more about the study here:
http://www.iie.org/en/Who-We-Are/News-and-Events/Press-Center/Press-Releases/2009/2009-11-16-Open-Doors-2009-International-Students-in-the-US

On an unprecendent move in the talent management field, today Google announced a 10% raise for all employees worldwide, plus a 1000 USD Christmas bonus. The reasons? First to reward their employees for a fantastic year and a job well done; secondly to try to avoid losing talent to competitors. This salary increase has a cost of 1 billion USD… It’s clear that the war for talent in the IT industry is on and the price for employee retention is not cheap.

My question: is a payraise the best way to keep the top talent?

Read more about the raise here:
http://www.businessinsider.com/google-bonus-and-raise-2010-11
or here:
http://uk.ibtimes.com/articles/80323/20101110/google-gives-employees-1000-cash-bonus-10-salary-increase-in-2011.htm

If you’re working in the Employer Branding field or if you’re interested in talent attraction, here’s a must read story: imagine a country where only 60% of the female graduates aged between 25 and 64 are at work. Imagine that in this country, women earn on average 63% of what men do.

At the same time, also in this country, fertility rate is down to 1.15 children.

With this clear trend for a shrinking talent market and if female talent is undervalued and available, firms that hire more women should gain a competitive edge. A proper talent management strategy, based on an adequate employer value proposition that aims at this big gold nugget, can be your weapon of choice in the war for talent.

This is happening in South Korea. Read the full article “Profiting from sexism” in The Economist here:
http://www.economist.com/node/17311877

While reading the FT.com, I came across an interesting article written by Glori Ye: Concern over China’s ‘job-hoppers’. According to this article, in the US, the average working life for a fund manager at the same company is 4.8 to 4.9 years, while in China it’s only 1.68 years. These challenging HR conditions are one of the reasons for the poor results in the funds’ performance and have also forced fund managing companies to have two fund managers per fund – one “old” or existing manager plus a “new” fund manager.

For the employer branding arena, this is a clear sign that talent retention is a strategic issue: not only industries that fail to retain their top talent incur in higher HR costs, but also their performance is weaker. Definitely interesting to think: how much one’s company losing / winning due to bad / good retention strategies?

Employer branding is not a fully independent marketing tool. By being one of the brand components,  it’s still influenced by the company’s corporate and consumer branding strategies. To integrate your employer brand with your consumer and corporate brand is a challenge that companies have to manage to communicate effectively with employees, customers and investors.

Companies with strong consumer or corporate brands often have an advantage when it comes to employer branding. However, a strong consumer brand might sometimes skew the employer image and lead to misconceptions among the recruitment target groups. In this case, the company needs to establish an employer brand that differs to some extent from the corporate and/or consumer brand.

In other cases a strong consumer brand can inflate expectations among candidates, which means that the company faces the risk of falling short of expectations and thereby undermining the employer brand. Believing that a strong consumer brand will automatically translate into a strong employer brand is very risky.

It is wise to:
Use Common Messages
Dare to differentiate
Track expectations

To be continued…

Congratulations to Lenovo for being the first Asian company to make it to Universum’s most attractive employers!

Who wins this year’s title as being the World’s Most Attractive Employer?

Find out by clicking here