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The first hiring experience
Lei • 13.Juni, 2008 @ 05:33 • Abgelegt unter: Forschung und Entwicklung, Allgemein
I have, for the first time, the feeling that someone else´s fate lies in my hand, when I stood in our line participating in the new operators selection process. “He might not have soldered very well, but he asks many questions, which shows good initiative.” Many Chinese are afraid of asking questions, especially when they are not in an authoritative position. “How about the girl?” my boss kept asking. “She´s very nervous. But I think she has a very good sense of quality control, which is very important for us. She threw that piece she dropped on the floor in the scrap bin without us telling her to do so.” In the end, we decided on which operator to hire, not based simply on their experience and skills, but also on their sense of quality control and their ability to work and think individually.
When the candidates had been taken to the line by the personnel colleague, they marched wordless and automatically formed a line one following another. The awkwardness is not unusual among the Chinese - they usually do not strike up conversations with strangers easily, especially not when they are all nervous about what´s coming up. During the first interviews, they all claimed their experience with soldering, the skill we are hiring them for. But the reasons why they left the previous company often seem ambiguous and strange to westerners. “I just quit because I needed to go home to get married.” “I had to take care of my sick parents at home.” Just to name a few that´s most common. They were most likely not untrue, as the line workers usually come from the countryside, where the way of life is still very traditional – children are supposed to take care of the elderly at home and marriage is the biggest event in one´s life, so as birth and death. However, they seldom mentioned the other main drives behind the move, e.g. the career or compensation aspect, which are also deciding factors in China.
No matter, I learned a lot from the hiring process and felt lucky to have been allowed by my boss to take part in the decision making. This is surely one of the highlights of my trainee rotation in China.
