Matching Talent to the Job

Beijing Foreign Enterprise Service Group Co.Ltd.(FESCO) is a large, specialized international service/trading corporation which provides staff and numerous other services to foreign enterprises, businesses from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan, and to various other overseas representative offices in Beijing. To date it has provided more than 32,000 Chinese employees to 4,000 foreign and other business entities. In this interview, FESCO was represented by Xiao Linguang, deputy general manager of its human resources company, and Li Yiguang, HR department manager.

BB: Some dotcom companies also focus on Beijing's human resources market. What are FESCO's advantages over them?

FESCO: Mainly that we offer foreign businessmen a complete range of services, including talent recommendation and allied services; talent training and assessment; and [direct] head-hunting rather than our just acting as intermediaries. We go as far as placing recruitment ads in the media, training, arranging [professional] examinations, delivering personnel files following the employment of someone we have recommended to a job, and many other services relating to salary entitlement, Medicare, insurance, retirement pensions and housing. We also help in mediating labor disputes in order to protect the legal rights of both foreign employers and Chinese employees, and advise on the latter's loyalty to their foreign employers in ensuring the smooth development of foreign enterprises in China.

FESCO has also set up its own website: www.fesco.com.cn/fescochina.com, through which we also provide services to our clients. It has proved of great help to our work. We have twice upgraded the site, and will do so again this year.

With our thorough knowledge of local conditions, policies, laws and regulations, and more than twenty years* experience in human resources services, we currently top the list of Chinese HR companies because of our scope and levels of service and quality.

BB: What influence will China's entry to the World Trade Organization [WTO] have on Beijing's human resources industry?

FESCO: Currently, the sector is in a state of incomplete [i.e. free, equal and open] competition, which does not fully conform to the laws of a market economy. China's entry to the WTO will force Beijing's human resources market into a state of complete competition, where it will operate in line with international practices. After China's entry, Beijing will become part of the world human-resources market, and the flow of trained personnel will be internationalized. Both employees and employers will be free to choose what they want. Many world-famous consulting companies have noticed the importance of China's human-resources market, and some have already entered it in the disguise of, say, headhunting companies. Competition after WTO entry will be white-hot.

BB: What are FESCO's disadvantages against international competitors?

FESCO: They have the advantages of being more familiar with international practices in human-resources operations, and in possessing deeper understanding of the needs of trans-national companies. Thus they can better meet their requirements. But we have more than twenty years* experience in recommending qualified Chinese employees to serve in foreign commercial agencies, through which we have gained much knowledge about our clients. But we have sufficient experience and procedural maturity in providing ordinary- and medium-level services to our clients.

Even so, what we have already achieved is far from enough. We admit that we are still not good enough in providing the most suitable services to our clients under Chinese laws and regulations. But with our foresight of future trends and requirements, we can still make progress in providing high-level services, for example, setting up overall human resources structures for our clients in China. Because we are familiar with the national situation, we can advise on such things as taxation and welfare policies.

BB: What is FESCO's true potential?

FESCO: Over the past twenty-one years we have held one major belief * that we make progress in line with the demands of our clients, and grow at the same pace as them. We are acknowledged as the pioneer of our industry, and we have the quality of farsightedness as to our own development. These things should be attributed to our clients. We have benefited greatly from them because many are among the Top 500 in the world. They brought the most advanced thinking and management systems to China and we, being their partner, were the first to benefit. They gave us a lot of pressure and forced us to go forward and improve ourselves with them. This comprehensive improvement [in our abilities] is a measure of our potential.

BB: Will FESCO's human resources services remain the major activity in future and as the company develops?

FESCO: Yes, providing human resources services for foreign commercial agencies in Beijing are still developing. We started our business from HR, and we believe that it will continue to form the major part of our activities. In recent years, FESCO has set up a developmental policy of "engaging in diversified undertakings while focusing on one main business". In the future, we will widen our services in human resources services by expanding our clientele. We have already taken on some well-known domestic enterprises as our clients, and in the future we will try our best to provide services for all kinds of enterprises.

BB: Have any non-Beijing hukou talents been hired by foreign companies through FESCO?(hukou are employees with registered permanent residence in Beijing).

FESCO: More than 500 such people were hired through FESCO last year alone, and the number is still increasing. Foreign companies are not confined to finding talents within Beijing. The research centers of some big companies, such as IBM, Microsoft, Nokia and Motorola, are looking for suitable talents throughout China and even in the world, which is a sign that Beijing's human resources market is becoming a part of this industry's world scene. Partly through our efforts, Beijing municipal government has regularly relaxed restrictions on non-Beijing talents coming to the city.