LinkedIn China Wang Qian: Talent is an important indicator to measure the internationalization of Chinese enterprises

Reporter | Yu Hao

Under the new situation of the epidemic, going to sea is becoming a new choice for many enterprises. From the data point of view, China's foreign trade in 2020 did break a number of historical records.

On January 14, the General Administration of Customs released data showing that in 2020, the total import and export value of China's trade in goods was 32.16 trillion yuan, an increase of 1.9% over 2019, and the total export value was 17.93 trillion yuan, an increase of 4%. Among them, the total import and export value of private enterprises was 14.98 trillion yuan, an increase of 11.1%, accounting for 46.6% of China's total foreign trade.

While enjoying policy dividends such as the Belt and Road Initiative and the RCEP (Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership Agreement), overseas enterprises are also facing problems such as intensified economic and trade frictions, obvious global industrial chains, supply chains, localization, and regionalization, and talent recruitment.

At the 2021 China Foreign Trade Cooperation and Development Forum of the Service Trade Fair, Wang Qian, general manager of the LinkedInChinese Solutions Division, pointed out that there are usually three indicators to measure the internationalization level of multinational enterprises, namely, the proportion of foreign assets, the proportion of foreign sales, and the proportion of foreign employees, but today, it is also necessary to use talents as an important indicator to measure the internationalization of Chinese enterprises.

In the view of Cai Xiaodan, general manager of the LinkedIn China Marketing Solutions Division, the challenges faced by enterprises at different stages of digital transformation are different, which also brings about diversified talent needs.

Enterprises in the initial stage of digital transformation are facing the challenge of building and improving digital infrastructure, and lack the planning and layout of global marketing strategies; enterprises that have accumulated certain experience and are in the middle stage are faced with how to understand local cultural values, pay too much attention to short-term sales performance and ignore long-term brand building, legal compliance and other issues.

"There are also some enterprises that have walked for many years in the journey to the sea, and the pre-marketing strategy is very mature, and the marketing effect is very good, but they often only pay attention to the pre-investment marketing market, ignoring how to better collaborate and collaborate in the later sales." Cai Xiaodan said bluntly that front-end marketing brings a huge number of sales leads, but sales do not pay attention to follow-up, so that these opportunities are wasted.

In the survey of overseas enterprises in LinkedIn, more than one-third of the enterprises' overseas labor demand shows more demand for local employees, and how to localize services and employees has become the focus of enterprises. 66% of enterprises will develop targeted international talent recruitment strategies for different overseas markets, and even many technology companies choose to build dual headquarters in China and overseas markets.

Wang Qian mentioned in her speech that technical talents, management talents and legal talents have attracted the attention of overseas enterprises. 87% of companies express a desire for technical talent. In mature markets such as Europe, North America, and Oceania, 60% of the demand for talent comes from management positions; legal talent is also welcomed by companies due to compliance needs.

The above survey shows that the industry of overseas enterprises is constantly diversifying. Two years ago, overseas companies were mainly in the online education industry, while two years later, they included other industries related to mobile Internet. From a regional point of view, two years ago, the North American market was still the main battlefield of overseas talent demand, 75% of the recruitment demand came from the North American market, and now the talent demand in the European and Asian markets has been basically the same as North America.

Problems such as limited recruitment channels, difficulty in identifying the ability of overseas talents, how to integrate into the local culture and intensified competition among local employer brands have become challenges for Chinese enterprises in overseas recruitment. In the recruitment cases given by the LinkedIn, online, big data, and building employer brands have become the keys to breaking the game.

Combined with the above problems and cases, Cai Xiaodan believes that overseas enterprises should first focus on digital infrastructure, which is the cornerstone of digital transformation and the layout of global digital marketing; secondly, enterprises should also consider long-term platform construction while paying attention to short-term sales goals, so that the brand can penetrate the hearts of the people; at the same time, enterprises should have in-depth insight into the local market culture values, user preferences and core competition; finally, internal marketing and sales should form a linkage, enterprises not only spend money to obtain business opportunities, but also need to have corresponding team cooperation. Truly turn business opportunities into business growth.