By Marco Hoekstra

It’s been a while since I last wrote an article on the web about my experiences in China. First a quick glimpse on why.. A year in Shanghai passes by very fast. You come here with a purpose, you come here with a way of thinking and working and you have to change all that… First it is about first impressions and you take the time to fit into your new working and living environment. Sharing your experiences is than part of your own learning experience. After half a year you feel more confident in doing the things in your way, customized to local circumstances. After a year you realize that you are sometimes still surprised by things that you see around you…

But luckily I also feel more confident in my personal objective on things. This time I would like to focus on experience; experience in the labor market. I speak to companies on a daily basis to see what they are doing, how they are progressing, what the market developments are, what their challenges are and so on… One of the things that all companies have in common is the challenge that they describe as “getting experienced staff in the organization and keep them”.

But.., when you are in such a fast developing marketplace with such a diversity of people it is not about getting experienced people, it is getting the people with the right attitude, skills, knowledge and abilities in. Sometimes this can be translated into experience, but in China there is a lot of useless experience in the market place. Realizing that it is easier to learn new habits than to change existing one’s it might be much better to get people without experience in than with… As an organization it becomes than key to facilitate these people so they can develop the right experiences in your organization and can still be productive in the here and now.

About 8 years ago I was working in an Internet start up company in Holland what was setup by an insurance company to sell insurance products online. With my 29 years I was than one of the oldest in the company witch had an average age of 25. The developments in the Internet industry where going so fast that there was no such thing as people with experience around, so we where only people with a fresh mindset, lots of creativity, an eagerness to make a change. If you look into the IT industry worldwide you can see that this is a segment where they have been able to adapt to fast changing environments. Other industries have found it hard to learn from how the IT has been effective with using the right people for the right job.

Even in Europe sometimes we say “change have gone too fast for him, he doesn’t understand it anymore”. China is changing much more rapidly…

Enjoy the change,

Marco, Talent & Pro