When James Clark of Los Angeles began looking for a job two months ago, he
didn't confine his hunt to the U.S. His sights were much broader. The president
and chief operating officer of a small computer company says he's willing to
move his wife and two children to Manila, Hong Kong or Tokyo for the right job.
"It's not my first choice, but it's definitely an option I'm
pursuing," says the 38-year-old, who has never lived outside the U.S. To
achieve his goal of finding a new job by the time his current one disappears in
a restructuring, he has sent out 5,000 resumes -- to companies everywhere from
down the street to across the Pacific.
Mr. Clark has plenty of company. As the U.S. job
market tightens, an increasing number of
executives have begun to troll for employment opportunities in Asia. Boyden
Global Executive Search in Hong Kong reports about 40% of the 150 resumes it
receives each week now come from the U.S. -- more than double the number of four
years ago. But that doesn't mean employers are biting. Boyden says that 99.5% of
job hunters it places successfully are already based in Asia. And the
job-hunting waters aren't much more inviting than in the U.S. Korn/Ferry
International reports a 14% drop in executive positions in the region this year.
"These guys with no experience in the region, it's difficult to see what
they're bringing to the party," says Vincent Swift, managing director of
Heidricks Struggles Asia Pacific. Although he also reports receiving more
resumes from the U.S, he says, "In my mind, they don't add value."
Mr. Clark begs to differ. He may never have lived abroad and speaks no Asian
languages, but he has done plenty of business in the region. Plus, he feels the
growing markets in Asia are an opportunity for someone whose entire 16-year
career has been in the office-computer networking industry. "I've seen the
maturation of deploying Internet technology in the U.S.," he says. "I
think what I've learned would be valuable in places of the world where that's
still happening."
His commitment as head of AC&C Networking, a 35-employee company, ends
next year when management of the subsidiary is set to be absorbed by its parent
company, North American Video Corp. Mr. Clark was set to leave in 1996, when the
company offered the then senior vice-president a chance to head up the
subsidiary and oversee the acquisition of several smaller firms. "I gave
them a verbal commitment I would stay" until the restructuring is complete,
he says.
He began his job search a year early to improve his odds in a tight job market. It's in stark contrast to the go-go
days of the past four years, when Mr. Clark says he fielded as many as five
inquiries a week from headhunters. "Then, from August last year, it was
like it all just went off a cliff," he says.
Recruiters say the economic downturn in the U.S. is a big factor in the
upsurge of interest in jobs in Asia. But it's not the full story: When the U.S.
economy went into a recession in the early 1990s, headhunters in Asia didn't see
a similar rush of resumes. Two other factors are now at play: the expansion of
Asian markets in the past decade, which has created more opportunities and
bigger paychecks for executives; and the explosion of the Internet, which allows
job candidates -- or their resume peddlers -- to send out CVs in exponential
numbers.
Many of the resumes are from people like Richard Johnson, a 54-year-old
executive in the shipping and transportation industry. He has been job searching
for seven months -- but not in Asia. He was surprised to learn that his resume
was landing in places like Hong Kong. The online resume distributor he'd used
was sending his resume to the region. "I have a seven-year-old and a
13-year-old daughter. They don't want to move out of our town, let alone out of
the country," says Mr. Johnson, who lives in the San Francisco Bay area.
But he says he doesn't mind that his CV is being so widely dispersed -- who
knows where the ideal job might be? "The emphasis is to get your resume in
front of as many people as possible," he says. "With the economic
cutbacks, people are just looking beyond the borders for opportunities where
they can get them."
David Kimbro of Korn/Ferry in Hong Kong says about half the resumes they
receive come from U.S. applicants, largely because of the introduction last year
of eKorn/Ferry, a way for candidates to review available jobs online from around
the world.
Monster.com, the world's largest online job placement service with 11 million
resumes in its global database, says half of the people who look at jobs in Hong
Kong, Singapore and New Zealand come from outside those markets. Although
Monster.com wouldn't release specific statistics on its users, Libby Christie,
managing director of Monster.com Asia Pacific, says international job hunters
are big business for the company. "Global Gateway (which features
information on overseas jobs) is the second most visited part of our site."
While job seekers have nothing to lose by applying for a huge number of
positions, headhunters interviewed say they view the upsurge in resumes from the
U.S. as a nuisance, increasing the ever-growing haystack in which to find the
right person for a decreasing number of jobs. "We're working twice as hard
and making half as much," says Mr. Swift of Heidricks Struggles. "It's
terrible right now."
In one day last week, Boyden's Hong Kong office received 15 resumes from U.S.
applicants. Of those, 11 were immediately put in the trash and four were entered
in their database for potential jobs. Of those four, only two had previous work
experience in Asia.
Nonetheless, Mr. Clark's search has already yielded one phone interview with
a Japanese textile company. "Sure that's only one, but finding the right
job is always luck and timing," he says. His import-export work and
technology experience interested Japanese interviewers, but Mr. Clark says
producing vacuum bags and tool bags wasn't what he had in mind. But he'll
continue to fish for jobs in international waters.
"That was one opportunity I wouldn't have had otherwise."
