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Expatriates. Your next executive talent source?
"It’s time to set aside stereo typing and clichés."

We all do it. ‘He’s an interior decorator’, ‘She’s a socialist’, ‘They went to a public school’ and so on.

This dinner table talk with its shorthand description of people works well enough over red wine and animated conversation. It is entertainment and it would take a brave person to risk cries of ‘boring’ when they try to point out that the human person cannot be explained with a name tag.

When the same shorthand flows over into business, it’s time to pause and take stock. In a tight talent and skills market it makes no sense to pigeon hole or to set aside candidates on the basis of name tags. The word ‘expatriate’ evokes a range of clichés in recruiters, many of whom have little or no real knowledge of the motivations and qualities of people who choose to take time out to advance their careers ‘off shore’. There can be assumptions that expatriates are money hungry or by implication even that they are somehow disloyal to Australia .

Then there is the fear that having tasted life ‘over there’ it will only be a matter of time before they go again. There can be grains of truth in those fears but there is of course a much bigger and better story to be told. Simply, many returning expatriates offer a great resource for scarce skills and qualifications. Each candidate must be assessed on what they have done, and what their needs as aspirations are now, rather than by their history or their name tag.

The Australian Diaspora
"...one of the largest diasporas in the world..."

Relative to our population size, Australia has one of the largest diasporas in the world, with some one million Australians, or five per cent of our population, currently living outside our national borders. In 2002/03 more than two-thirds of Australians departing our shores went to just five locations: the United Kingdom (21 per cent); New Zealand (17 per cent); the United States (16 per cent); and Hong Kong and Singapore (both around 6 per cent).

On a pure numbers basis, more than 200,000 Australians were based in the United Kingdom, 135,000 in Greece, 106,000 in the United States, 68,000 in New Zealand, and 46,000 in Hong Kong. More recently we have seen a major exodus to the Arabian Gulf and to the Emirates. Movements into China and to the Indian Sub-Continent too have grown substantially.

Many return. Less well known is the number of expatriates who are returning to Australia each year and what happens to them upon their return. Needless to say, the numbers are large. Why do they come back? What are they seeking? Are they home to stay? Do they make good employees? There are no general, easy answers to these questions. However there are very good reasons to seek out the answers in an interview setting. Do less and you risk missing a top employee.

Consider these facts to balance off real and imagined negatives as you interview expats. Many returning candidates bring with them a history of self motivation and personal decision making above the norm. They decided to go and they decided to return. Many have satisfied their income and saving goals and want to live in Australia . The life style for their families now takes precedence over the lures of high income and low tax regimes. Many are prepared to accept lower remuneration packages as part of their return plans. They have been enriched by their off shore experiences and built their skills. They are ready for the next stage of their career back ‘in Oz’.

Clearly, when the CV on your table says ‘Expat’ ,
‘It’s time to set aside stereo typing and clichés.’

Skills shortage bites Elephant and Tiger
Opportunities open up for skilled Australians, and others.

With Australian unemployment at record lows there are skill shortages "everywhere" within the economy creating serious headaches for employers and promising salary blow-outs as employers compete for talent. The other side of this problem are the best ever opportunities for skilled workers in this sellers' market. Those opportunities are spread well beyond Australia to the wider region and most markedly in India and China - the elephant and the tiger.

Burgeoning Asian economies suffer chronic skill shortages on a vast scale. This problem is exacerbated by emigration of workers. Simply, the local economies can't generate the required skilled workers to meet the present or future demands. Three areas of particular concern are Engineering, Accounting and Information Technology.

There are great employment opportunities for Australians wishing to re-locate to Asia. Remuneration is attractive and employers prize Australian workers. Australian companies working in China offer particular opportunities for expatriate Australian workers. Chinese workers, educated in Australia are generally keen to work for Australian firms.

Opportunities exist in all major centres including Beijing, Guangzhou and Shanghai.

Human Resource Management - key to corporate success.
‘The cream has floated to the top’

For those of us with a lot of kilometres on the clock or students of business history, it is fascinating to watch the successful growth of the HR function.

In a simpler age, we saw the development of a ‘personnel officer’ function followed soon there-after by a department. This grew out of the pay office and started life by managing staff record keeping. Later it expanded to include recruitment, induction and so on. The ‘human resource’ epithet had yet to enter popular business language.

It might have been that in those days the notion of ‘people as assets’ was intuitive, at least for some managers. Certainly there was much more stability in staffing and arguably more respect between management.  There were several applicants for each job and staff turnover was low. Once a ‘good job’ was won in a ‘good company’ employees could look forward to many years with that employer and a career path, often to retirement.

Today the position could scarcely be more different. There is a shrinking pool of talent and employers can no longer rely on their brand to attract the best. No longer do employees and especially senior employees anticipate a long association with each employer. In today’s world it can be regarded as a negative, to have stayed too long with an employer. Employers now, more than ever before need to compete for talent from a mobile and shrinking pool.

Once each employee is recruited another series of challenges awaits the organisation: induction, training, motivation, on-going employee communications and more. The establishment and maintenance of a stable, skilled and motivated work force are now strategic concerns and the domain of trained ‘Human Resource’ professionals. Perhaps more than ever before the importance of effective Human Resource management is seen as pivotal right through to the board room where directors seek regular reporting against key performance indicators and bench marking.

Into their already challenging role, Human Resource Managers are regularly required to embrace the management of personnel cataclysms caused by take-overs, mergers, reorganisations and such.  The importance of a staff aligned to the strategic goals of the business cannot be overstated. Achieving this however is complex enough even in more or less stable staffing environments. In say, a take-over of a competitor and the integration of two previously hostile work forces the desired result can be beyond the resources of in-house HR facilities. The task is to say the least, difficult.

It is to the credit of the Human Resource profession that qualified HR Managers and Directors are generally equal to the slings and arrows of modern business people issues. Of course, as in all business areas, adequate in-house or out-sourced resources are needed to match the size of the challenges as they occur.

Given the right tools the modern HR executive is well placed - come what may - to demonstrate that the ‘cream has floated to the top’.