4 Years Jobless

Shanghai

Imagine a man with - multilingual, IT, marketing, sales, procurement, quality assurance, quality certification, governmental coordination - skills is virtually unemployed over the last four years or so ? You have to tell me if I should now apply for the Guinness World Record. Actually I did just few minutes ago and I am somewhat confident to win such a title.

I left Beijing On July 12, 1999 after I have finalized my working contract with Deutsche Babcock. I landed in Hangzhou. There I spent three months in order to find out whether there's a chance for me. No. And then I turned back to Shanghai where I have already been four times (1978-1983 for bachelor study, 1984-1986 for practices in factories, 1986-1989 for graduate studies, 1994-1997 working at TÜV Rheinland and ALSTOM). This however, I haven't secured any job.

Well, then I have been hunting all the major human resource markets or human talent markets, both in Pudong at Dongfang Road, and at the main Shanghai Human Talent Market located at Zhongshan Xilu near the Shanghai World Trade Center, Hongqiao Economic Development Zone,close to the old airport. Of course, I will also not absent from major fairs aimed at human resources recruitment, during my stay in Shanghai (Sept 1999 to Dec. 2000).

Email "spamming" to recruiters is my daily life than and only a couple of months earlier. With email, you can reach anywhere in the world any incredible speed. I fancied, with my skills, especially my MNC background and languages, I may easily find a suitable job anywhere in the globe. I wrote, in English of course, in German if the receivers are german recruiters and occasionally also in French. On average, 3-4 emails have been sent out to possible recruiters over the last 4 years.

I surfed all known or unknown web portals for human resource recruitment, in China and elsewhere. I surfed hundreds of them.

I have also prepared several versions of my resumeés - not only in language terms but also in qualification terms to cater for different types of recruiters, positions. I have prepared several versions of cover letters too. For some important customers, I have customized everything - the cover letter, the CV itself. Once I was particularly interested in IT jobs therefore a very detailed skill list was also prepared by Mr. Van Kerckhove's help. This is a very comprehensive list of my skills in IT, ranging from operation system, scripting and programming languages, databases, multimedia, web design, graphic design to web server configurations. Few have acquired the same knowledge and skills in very short time period.

Results: only to despair myself. The 15-month job hunting yielded only 4 to 5 interviews with no job offers. The first once came from BSI Shanghai. BSI - British Standard Institute - is the initiating organization for ISO 9000 standard - a standard for quality assurance system criteria for all types of entities. Later it becomes a world standard and certification to comply with it becomes a fashion among industries and commerce. BSI only wanted a junior technician and was also unable to provide a basic salary that is even much lower then my previous one. And I was at that time - not considering my IT skills acquired during the last year or so - an experienced engineer, not only in quality aspect. I am too much overqualified for that job. China IT companies also tender to hire youngsters, although in terms of vigor and dynamism, I am a young man - they are reluctant to hire people older than, say, 26 years old. I was already 37 - 38 at that time. Nevertheless, I hot some interviews, for example with a subsidiary of the China.com, a NASDAQ listed investing hit at that time. It seemed they were quite arrogant - they served no tee, and let me into a small room where I was almost unable to breath. A few words only were exchanged to finish the conversation. At and another IT firm a little girl of half my age shown me all her superiority typical of the youngsters in that area to a man eager to enter into this sector. Less than a minute was spent for the interview, because both sides found they met the wrong persons.

I did manage to secure a "job" at a small (20 guys), private company in Shanghai. It was a company located at the corner between Nanjing Xilu and Xizhuan Lu, and later it moved to the Shanghai Jincheng Science & Technology Compound. This small company makes management software for the autoparts dealers, programmed in FoxPro. I met the owner during a fair and three months later, in February 2000, I expressed a wish to work for him. He accepted. I spent only two weeks there - a salary of 1500 a month just prove the ignorance of my value. I accepted the salary offer only to try to show the owner my capacity and I hope he will soon adjust it according to my capability in two weeks. I have designed an autoparts web portals for him within the two weeks. Earlier, they have working on that project already for months.

That was my only job in Shanghai.

While in Shanghai, I have also tried to search for jobs in other cities, such as Suzhou, Hangzhou, Qingdao, Beijing, Xiamen, Dalian and lastly Guangzhou. All failed.

Jobs I tried included, according to my preference: IT (CEO, COO, CTO, DBA, project manager, project engineer, programmer, webmaster, server configurator etc), purchaser, marketer, salesman, quality manager or engineer, power engineer. All positions I have occupied previously while still employed by MNCs.

Ten of thousands of emails were sent to all kinds of companies intending to employ people - GE, Siemens, ABB, Microsoft, Forster Wheeler, SAP, SUN ....

I have also sent quite a number of postal mails to several companies that didn't provide any email addresses, fax numbers or other electronic communications.

With my multilingual background I thought not a bad idea to try the UN and other international organizations both based in China or abroad.

Most of them kept silent, few sent information like this one: we've reviewed your background information but ..., then you know you don't need to keep reading.

Hangzhou

To my surprise, situation in Hangzhou looked a bit better. The first 3 or 4 months seemed quite rosy. After talking with a number of companies I decided to go with a job at a Taiwanese IT firm which provided online ISO 9000 certification assistance - an area of great interest to me. But the Taiwanese island culture can't keep me long as I am a very independent person and my conflicts with the native Taiwanese drove me soon away from the company.

And later it took me and an oversea American company nearly half a year to finalize the key issue for a contract - the salary level - for a position as its mainland chief of this IT service company. Main business areas of the company were to source from China components and parts for the motors and bearings, however, they wanted to expand into the local ASP area too - that is to design web based information systems for government, commerce and others. This business was stepped down later because of the market shrinkage.

Unfortunately, when salary issue was agreed after 6 months of negotiations - I don't know what time meant to that guy - the American chinese simply disappeared from my eyesight. That was nearly a shock to me. I can hardly believe people breeching their words and commitments in such an easy-minded manner. I have been always thinking Americans may be more reliable than my compatriots. I have had already bad histories with unreliable Germans, and of course also chinese. Now, how can we do business with all the people when they can breach anything as they want ?

We're about in Nov. 2001.

In December 2001 came another chance. Before that I was engaged in a number of interviews with local IT firms - at that time my career orientation was IT. A local textile-turned communication & IT firm hired me at RMB 4500/month, a salary about 1/3-1/4 of that offered by the Taiwanese some 8 months ago. I accepted because after 11 months in Hangzhou I realized there war no better chance and better salary for me in the industry and IT was down sloping. And I have to pay taxes, housing, transportation, meals myself, then, as you can imagine, how much left ? Nevertheless, it will be good first not to be separated from the society too long, 2nd, as a manager of a newly setup department, I ought to have the full power to implement my plan and philosophy. I wanted to promote the web application design services, I wanted to promote the solar industry services - mainly by international trading brokerage, and possibly other IT and electric power integration technologies - for example at that time I was studying the PLC (Power Line Communications) market. However, it seemed the general manager was unwilling to consider me as his valuable staff and were reluctant to provide me with little more help than just the "bare" salary of RMB 4k/m. That for me is very low - perhaps is quite some for many locals. Again we can only get along with a month, and I have to quit the company a month before the chinese new year - a bad news of course for me and for my mother waiting for me at home.

It was end January 2002. Since then I had never a chance in other company. I have tried even harder than before along with my darker prospective of my business. I've tried the Schleswig-Holstein Hangzhou Office, sent an email with carefully written cover letter and quite rich words of complements to a certain lady who was located in Shanghai's German Business Center but was at the same responsible for the Hangzhou Office. But she ignored me, even I wrote her the 2nd time.

I sent emails to all German, American companies in the city. No answers.

I rushed to special market events for recruitment - but I found no chance there. People needed only jung guys or ladies. I was close to 40, an age considered by others as old but by myself I still think me as young and dynamic. At the age of 40, I am still as vivid, dynamic as 20 years ago. But the employers recognize only your age.

Of course, during the same time period, I was also running my business. However, the prospect seemed not so lucid so I've to work out another way too.

In April 2002 came another interview with an American guy who claimed to hire a Shanghai office head for his China procurement business. I am perfectly fit for that position and overqualified too - I am overqualified for almost all positions they were posting on the net. I ventured to go and talked a little. He declared me as not fit for the job because I am not able to work with others - because I was not working with others at the time the interview was ongoing. A perfect conclusion and an absurd one as well !

Since April 2002 till now, more than 13 months have been elapsed. Except some negotiations for salaries and some compliments from some employers, no serious offers were made while I am keeping sending CVs, cover letters in all kinds of warmth and languages. No, they don't want me.

No my question: why ?

I am too old ?

I am too highly qualified ?

I have changed my jobs too often since my graduation ?

What's wrong with the world or with me ?

Is this the end of career life or my life at all ?

Where is my destiny ?