Reverse brain drain

[Vulcanl]

'Reverse Brain Drain' is an integral part of the shift (from West back to the East) we are seeing in the World today.  It will have many consequences for both the developed and developing regions of the World.  To the extent that Asians with Western professional experience start returning home in droves, the whole concept of 'expat packages' and outsized pay to attract 'talent' in general will be turned on its head. 

The below is about Indians, and interestingly how they are finding the re-adjustment to returning home not as straightforward as they had imagined.  I wonder how this dynamic will play out for Singaporeans?  Singapore can sure use all that brainpower repatriating...

New York Times
November 28, 2009
Some Indians Find It Tough to Go Home Again

By HEATHER TIMMONS

NEW DELHI — When 7-year-old Shiva Ayyadurai left Mumbai with his family nearly 40 years ago, he promised himself he would return to India someday to help his country.

In June, Mr. Ayyadurai, now 45, moved from Boston to New Delhi hoping to make good on that promise. An entrepreneur and lecturer at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, with a fistful of American degrees, he was the first recruit of an ambitious government program to lure talented scientists of the so-called desi diaspora back to their homeland.

“It seemed perfect,” he said recently of the job opportunity.

It wasn’t.

As Mr. Ayyadurai sees it now, his Western business education met India’s notoriously inefficient, opaque government, and things went downhill from there. Within weeks, he and his boss were at loggerheads. Last month, his job offer was withdrawn. Mr. Ayyadurai has moved back to Boston.

In recent years, Mother India has welcomed back tens of thousands of former emigrants and their offspring. When he visited the United States this week, Prime Minister Manmohan Singh personally extended an invitation “to all Indian-Americans and nonresident Indians who wish to return home.” But, like Mr. Ayyadurai, many Indians who spent most of their lives in North America and Europe are finding they can’t go home again.

About 100,000 “returnees” will move from the United States to India in the next five years, estimates Vivek Wadhwa, a research associate at Harvard University who has studied the topic. These repats, as they are known, are drawn by India’s booming economic growth, the chance to wrestle with complex problems and the opportunity to learn more about their heritage. They are joining multinational companies, starting new businesses and even becoming part of India’s sleepy government bureaucracy.

But a study by Mr. Wadhwa and other academics found that 34 percent of repats found it difficult to return to India — compared to just 13 percent of Indian immigrants who found it difficult to settle in the United States. The repats complained about traffic, lack of infrastructure, bureaucracy and pollution.

For many returnees the cultural ties and chance to do good that drew them back are overshadowed by workplace cultures that feel unexpectedly foreign, and can be frustrating. Sometimes returnees discover that they share more in their attitudes and perspectives with other Americans or with the British than with other Indians. Some stay just a few months, some return to the West after a few years.

Returnees run into trouble when they “look Indian but think American,” said Anjali Bansal, managing partner in India for Spencer Stuart, the global executive search firm. People expect them to know the country because of how they look, but they may not be familiar with the way things run, she said. Similarly, when things don’t operate the way they do in the United States or Britain, the repats sometimes complain.

“India can seem to have a fairly ambiguous and chaotic way of working, but it works,” Ms. Bansal said. “I’ve heard people say things like ‘It is so inefficient or it is so unprofessional.’ ” She said it was more constructive to just accept customs as being different.

Sometimes, the better fit for a job in India is an expatriate who has experience working in emerging markets, rather than someone born in India who has only worked in the United States, she said.

While several Indian-origin authors have penned soul-searching tomes about their return to India, and dozens of business books exist for Western expatriates trying to do business here, the guidelines for the returning Indian manager or entrepreneur are still being drawn.

“Some very simple practices that you often take for granted, such as being ethical in day to day situations, or believing in the rule of law in everyday behavior, are surprisingly absent in many situations,” said Raju Narisetti, who was born in Hyderabad and returned to India in 2006 to found a business newspaper called Mint, which is now the country’s second-biggest business paper by readership.

He said he left earlier than he expected because of a “troubling nexus” of business, politics and publishing that he called “draining on body and soul.” He returned to the United States this year to join The Washington Post.

There are no shortcuts to spending lots of time working in the country, returnees say. “There are so many things that are tricky about doing business in India that it takes years to figure it out,” said Sanjay Kamlani, the co-chief executive of Pangea3, a legal outsourcing firm with offices in New York and Mumbai. Mr. Kamlani was born in Miami, where his parents emigrated from Mumbai, but he has started two businesses with Indian operations.

When Mr. Kamlani started hiring in India, he met with a completely unexpected phenomena: some new recruits would not show up for work on their first day. Then, their mothers would call and say they were sick for days in a row. They never intended to come at all, he realized, but “there’s a cultural desire to avoid confrontation,” he said.

The case of Mr. Ayyadurai, the M.I.T. lecturer, illustrates just how frustrating the experience can be for someone schooled in more direct, American-style management. After a long meeting with a top bureaucrat, who gave him a handwritten job offer, Mr. Ayyadurai signed on to the Council of Scientific and Industrial Research, or C.S.I.R., a government-financed agency that reports to the ministry of science.

The agency is responsible for creating a new company, called C.S.I.R.-Tech, to spin off profitable businesses from India’s dozens of public laboratories. Currently, the agency, which oversees 4,500 scientists, generates just $80 million in cash flow a year, even though its annual budget is the equivalent of half a billion dollars.

Mr. Ayyadurai said he spent weeks trying to get answers and responses to e-mail messages, particularly from the person who hired him, the C.S.I.R. director general, Samir K. Brahmachari. After several months of trying to set up a business plan for the new company with no input from his boss, he said, he distributed a draft plan to C.S.I.R.’s scientists asking for feedback, and criticizing the agency’s management.

Four days later, Mr. Ayyadurai was forbidden from communicating with other scientists. Later, he received an official letter saying his job offer was withdrawn.

The complaints in Mr. Ayyadurai’s paper could be an outline for what many inside and outside India say could be improved in some workplaces here: disorganization, intimidation, a culture where top directors’ decisions are rarely challenged and a lack of respect for promptness that means meetings start hours late and sometimes go on for hours with no clear agenda.

But going public with such accusations is highly unusual. Mr. Ayyadurai circulated his paper not just to the agency’s scientists but to journalists, and wrote about his situation to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. India is “sitting on a huge opportunity” to create new businesses and tap into thousands of science and technology experts, Mr. Ayyadurai said, but a “feudal culture” is holding the country back.

Mr. Brahmachari said in an interview that Mr. Ayyadurai had misunderstood nearly everything — from his handwritten job offer, which he said was only meant to suggest what Mr. Ayyadurai could receive were he to be hired, to the way Mr. Ayyadurai asked scientists for their feedback on what the C.S.I.R. spinoff should look like.

To prove his point, Mr. Brahmachari, who was two hours late for an interview scheduled by his office, read from a government guide about decision-making in the organization. Mr. Ayyadurai didn’t follow protocol, he said. “As long as your language is positive for the organization I have no problem,” he added.

As the interview was closing, Mr. Brahmachari questioned why anyone would be interested in the situation, and then said he would complain to a reporter’s bosses in New York if she continued to pursue the story.

[must be hard]

For returning Australians when running into workshy alcoholics chucking sickies all the time, ludicrous tax and rampant racism as well once they have lived pretty much anywhere else (Glasgow notwithstanding).

[Vulcanl]

Here is another hint that (as I expect) we will start to see more stories like this about Asians returning or staying in the region:

Christian Science Monitor
Silicon Valley's innovation engine at risk, report says
By Michael B. Farrell Staff writer
posted February 12, 2010 at 7:07 pm EST

San Francisco —

Silicon Valley has long been one California’s great economic engines. It produced Intel, Apple, and Google. And many are pinning the state’s economic recovery on the valley’s innovators.

But a new report from two Silicon Valley nonprofit groups – Joint Venture: Silicon Valley Network and Silicon Valley Community Foundation – casts doubt on its future prosperity, saying that the economic downturn, changes in the global marketplace, and California’s perennial budget gridlock have caused much of the region’s economic mojo to vanish.

“Silicon Valley’s innovation engine has driven the region’s prosperity for 60 years, but at the moment we’re stalled,” said Russell Hancock, CEO of Joint Venture, in a statement. “What’s hard to say is whether we’re stuck in neutral, which has happened before, or whether it’s time now for a complete overhaul.”

Like the rest of California, the region has taken a serious hit during the recession. According to the “2010 Silicon Valley Index,” Silicon Valley lost more than 90,000 jobs since 2008, commercial vacancy rates jumped 33 percent, and more than 14,000 homes were foreclosed on.

Moreover, the region’s companies aren’t able to attract the same numbers of talented foreign workers, which it called Silicon Valley’s “lifeblood,” according to the report. And the number of foreign students receiving degrees stateside in science and engineering has been steadily declining since 2003.

Some say the report is a call to action for a greater emphasis on science and math education. Increasingly, engineers from China and India are taking jobs in their own counties instead of working in the states. Also, tougher immigration restrictions make it harder for companies to recruit and retain foreign workers.

“We have a much tighter link between economic development and education,” Kim Walesh, of the San Jose, Calif., Office of Economic Development, told the San Jose Mercury News.

Silicon Valley’s prosperity is also measured by the number of patents registered in region. Patent registration dipped by almost 1 percent in 2008. Venture capital funding also took a hit. Overall venture funding was down in 2009, dropping by about 3 billion from 2008.

But it’s not all bad news. Jobs within the green technology sector grew 8 percent between 2007 and 2008. That sector also saw a 7 percent growth in the number of patent registrations between 2006 and 2008.

Silicon Valley has also become more affordable, with average rents in the towns south of San Francisco dropping for the first time since 2005.

And while Silicon Valley has been bruised by the recession and challenged by rising economies in China and India, its high-tech economy has helped deflect the recessionary woes that have had a bigger toll in California's agricultural communities.

The region, however, does appear to be a crossroads, as the report points out. But many expect it will recover along with the overall economy.

Silicon Valley has “a set of industries that is the future – green technology, medical records technology, innovations to make buildings and homes more efficient,” said Stephen Levy, of the Center for the Continuing Study of the California Economy, in an Associated Press report.

[dummie]

there is some risk capital in asia, and in singapore. but i dont think singaporeans, or indians for that matter, are ready to take on the kind of risk silicon valley is famous for. china is more likely to capitalize on a reverse brain drain, but most folks i meet who are coming home arent in it for the long haul. they will do their 2-3 years cash out and go back to california or wherever life was better, less polluted and a bit more free than in shanghai or beijing.

[Vulcanl]

PP,

Those are interesting points.  It's all about opportunity, as far as I can determine.  

I have two comments:

1.  Your statements assume that Asia will not reach the standard of living found in the West.  This is probably true, but not for the reasons you would think.  Western standards of living were  unsustainable.  They are now in decline, and as Asian standards improve it is my belief that we will see more or less equalized standards of living

2.  If returning Asians find that their chances for personal financial improvement are better here, AND they have a chance to 'come home,' the likelihood is better that they would stay

[Vulcanl]

Here is something I have not considered.  The Western developed countries, in a fit of panic enduring economic depressions, close the door on immigrants (legal or otherwise).

In my country the debate is fierce as a result of the State of Arizona's unitaleral move to 'do' something about borders that are not properly policed/immigration laws that are not enforced.

The politicians are jockeying for position, 'taking the temperature' of the electorate in a very important election cycle.

If laws start to be enforced, and new citizens increasingly find themselves to be made uncomfortable in their new home, AND the economic depressions in the Western countries continue - this pretty much guarantees reverse brain drain:

NEW YORK TIMES
April 30, 2010
Democrats Reframe the Debate on Immigration
By JULIA PRESTON
In a proposal put forward this week solely by Senate Democrats, tough enforcement to stop future illegal immigration is the obligatory starting point for an immigration overhaul.

The proposal would create enforcement against illegal immigration far tougher than anything in place now — indeed, more sweeping than the overhaul proposed by the administration of President George W. Bush.

The proposal begins with “zero tolerance” for immigrants trying to enter the country illegally, by tightening border enforcement and by barring them from taking jobs in the United States.

“It shows how far the Democrats have moved in terms of tougher and tougher enforcement,” said Edward Alden, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations who studies immigration. “Across the board you see language that would be very comfortable in a proposal written by Republicans.”

The move to a more security-minded consensus comes as the party and its leader in the Senate, Harry Reid of Nevada, face a challenging midterm election season.

The proposal’s prospects to come up in the Senate this year appear dim, after a tough anti-illegal immigration law in Arizona further polarized the national debate and President Obama said this week that the time may not be right.

Yet the outline, with many game-changing measures that would broadly redesign the system bringing immigrants to this country, is likely to be the centerpiece of the immigration discussion this year, lawmakers and advocates said, whether or not it comes to the floor of the Senate.

The “conceptual proposal,” as the senators called it, is an outline, not a draft of legislation. No Republican signed on to it, not even Senator Lindsey Graham of South Carolina, who worked for months with Senator Charles E. Schumer, Democrat of New York, crafting sections of a potential bill.

Mr. Graham, in a statement with Senator Jon Kyl, Republican of Arizona, dismissed the blueprint, saying it “promises everything to everyone.”

Senator John Cornyn of Texas, another border state Republican, said the timing of the outline “suggests that politics rather than policy is driving the train,” since it comes just before nationwide rallies on Saturday by advocate groups demanding progress from Mr. Obama on the immigration overhaul.

The blueprint, written primarily by Mr. Schumer, includes a proposal for a Social Security card containing a biometric chip that all workers, including American citizens, would have to present to an employer when being hired.

The cast that unveiled the proposal Thursday suggests it has support across a broad spectrum of Democratic senators. It was presented by Mr. Schumer, Mr. Reid, Senator Robert Menendez of New Jersey, Dianne Feinstein of California, and Richard J. Durbin of Illinois.

Employers would be responsible for monitoring the immigration status of potential hires much more closely than they do now. Every employer would be required to use a new verification system, including a scanner at every business to confirm the validity of the Social Security cards of job applicants.

Conservatives, while supporting stronger enforcement, have long opposed national identity cards, or to make the Social Security card a de facto one.

Mr. Cornyn said the “emphasis on border enforcement was certainly encouraging,” but, he said, Congress should not wait for the whole package to pass before financing new border security measures.

As part of the enforcement system, the outline calls for a national system to register births and deaths, to eliminate the fraudulent use by immigrants of documents of people who have died.

It would establish a system to monitor the departure of all immigrants as well as their entry into the country. There is no such system now. If immigrants failed to leave when their visas expired, the immigration authorities would be required to deport them quickly.

Immigration officials have said that creating an exit system would be a vast task that could take many years to complete.

The proposal opens the door wider than ever before to high-skilled immigrants. It would offer permanent-resident status, with a document known as a green card, to every foreigner with an advanced degree in science or technology from an American university. It would make it much easier for foreign students in the sciences to stay in the United States after they graduate, and eliminate numerical restrictions that have kept highly educated immigrants from India and China waiting for many years before becoming residents.

The outline would make it possible for the spouses and other close relatives of legal green-card holders to come immediately to the United States, reuniting many thousands of families and eliminating a wait that now stretches to eight years. It would create a federal commission to monitor labor markets and determine when the supply of foreign workers should be raised or lowered.

Mr. Schumer “made an effort to fix every piece of the system that doesn’t work right,” said Paul Donnelly, an advocate for legal immigrants.

Also for the first time, the Democrats’ proposal would recognize same-sex relationships in allowing immigration to the United States.

In exchange for more enforcement, the proposal offers a relatively simple path to legal status for an estimated 11 million illegal immigrants. They would register, admit their legal violation and pay penalties and back taxes up front. Then they would remain on provisional status for eight years.

On Friday, different sides were weighing in.

The Roman Catholic bishops embraced the framework but strongly opposed the benefits for same-sex couples. The Illinois Coalition for Immigrant and Refugee Rights said the proposal was “heavily framed around enforcement.”

Frank Sharry, president of America’s Voice, an advocacy group that supports the overhaul, said the bill “hits the sweet spot right in the political middle.”

[marriedguy]

From what I hear, the Indians that do go back home and set up their own business fare a lot better than those that become employees.

[pinzon]

The real brain drain, that nobody talks about, is that in Asian and L. American countries, smarts are still fielding several children because the cheap labor which is readily available reduces the burden. In N. America and Europe you have an entire "young, professional" class that is essential sterile. At best they'll have one or two in their 30's.

[Vulcanl]

Here is some more concrete evidence that this reverse brain drain in a real phenomenon.  All assumptions we have held to now need to be revisited, folks (the main one being the 'true' value of 'Foreign Talents')

Analysis: Asia's budding bankers no longer feel need to go West
Wed, Jul 21 2010
By Michael Flaherty and Denny Thomas

HONG KONG (Reuters) - Unlike many young, finance-focused Asian graduates before him, Boon Seong Lim is happy to stay close to home to launch his career. 
Lim, aiming for a mergers and acquisitions department, represents a new wave of Asian recruits who don't feel the pull of having to start on Wall Street or in London's City, partly mirroring a broader shift in the global banking sector where talent and transactions are migrating from West to East.
"People used to think it was better to start your career in London or New York," said the 21-year-old Malaysian, speaking between sessions at a packed Asian investment banking conference hosted in Singapore this month by the London School of Economics.
Now, launching a finance career in Singapore, Hong Kong or elsewhere in Asia can get you just as far in the business.
For the banks, the move to hire, develop and promote homegrown talent in Asia is a key part of their expansion in a market that is becoming a major contributor to their bottomline.
"There is a recognition of the fact that the world is shifting in terms of economic growth and importance, and the regions here are going to be very relevant in terms of the level of activity," said Farhan Faruqui, head of global banking Asia Pacific at Citigroup (C.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
While those born in the United States and Europe still occupy top spots at investment banks in Asia, a new crop of Asian professionals has occupied corporate suites in recent years, with a trickle down to trading floors and sector teams.
"I'm a dying breed," said Ronnie Behar, Credit Suisse's (CSGN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) head of Southeast Asia M&A, speaking at the LSE conference. Behar, a Westerner based in Singapore, was referring to the number of Asia-bred bankers joining Credit Suisse, which has ramped up hiring in the region.
"I don't think there's the need now, if you're starting your career, to go work in the U.S. or Europe," Behar said, adding Asia's M&A sector has gone from a small, financing-focused product just five years ago to a significant part of a bank's business in the region.
MEGA DEALS
The clout and experience of earning stripes in New York or London still holds serious weight in banking as these financial centers are home to most of the world's top banks and handle much of the largest transactions.
But Asia has seen two of the world's largest deals this year: Prudential Plc's (PRU.L: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) failed $35.5 billion takeover of AIA (AIG.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) and the $19.3 billion IPO of the Agricultural Bank of China (1288.HK: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) (601288.SS: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz).
Asia M&A activity now comprises one-third of global volume -- up from just 7 percent in 2006, according to Thomson Reuters.
Investment banks contacted for this article would not give actual hiring statistics, and few consultants break it down by region. But there is plenty of anecdotal evidence of Asian talent staying in the region, and banks' recruiters back this up.
HAIGUI
The promotion of Asians through the ranks sends an encouraging message to business school graduates in the region.
The top ranks at investment banks in Asia were once heavy with so-called "gweilos," a Cantonese word for foreigners.
In recent years, UBS (UBSN.VX: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Citigroup, Bank of America (BAC.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), Credit Suisse and Goldman Sachs (GS.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) are among those to have promoted Asians to top, Hong Kong-based roles, coinciding with the return home of overseas educated Asian bankers.
These returnees, known as "haigui" -- a Mandarin term that translates as "sea turtles" -- are increasingly filling posts.
"The number of kids coming back, educated abroad, wanting to be back in Asia is huge," said Alexis Adamczyk, head of equity capital markets Asia at HSBC.
"The trend definitely is that more and more locals, or returnees, with language skills, with connectivity, are coming back to Asia."
Entry-level salaries are fast catching up with the developed world, adding a further incentive to staying in Asia.
In Singapore, Ivy League recruits are signing contracts of up to S$10,000 per month ($87,000 per year), according to a local consultant who did not want to be named because compensation is usually kept private at the banks.
The desire to start a financial career in Asia extends beyond investment banking and into other related fields as well.
Jiachen Song, a recent graduate from the Banking and International Finance program at the Shanghai University of Finance and Economics, said she would like to work outside China at some point, but she's content to stay for now.
"This is an emerging market that is taking off," said Song, who attended the LSE conference in Singapore.
"I'm confident there are great opportunities in Shanghai."

[T2K]

V,

This is good to see.  The world needs to "normalize".  As it is, Western nations plus Japan (this is not an East vs West thing) have such higher average standards of living than most Asian, African and Latin American countries that it just can't continue as is.
They are way behind in average standard of living and need to keep up these growth and development rates to catch up.

As we discussed in another thread, what I want to see is when the first Americans / Euros / Aussies / Kiwis / Japanese emigrate to China or Thailand or Indonesia...that's when we'll know things have really equalized.  As it is, it's a one way street that doesn't look set to change anytime soon.  But it will be good when it does.

[Vulcanl]

T2K,

In this we are in agreement:

"...Western nations plus Japan (this is not an East vs West thing) have such higher average standards of living than most Asian, African and Latin American countries that it just can't continue as is.."

Re: the below, I agree but probably NOT for the same reasons:

"...As it is, it's a one way street that doesn't look set to change anytime soon..."

Firstly, I don't see Asian countries opening their doors to Westerners (read: persons NOT of Asian descent) en masse...these countries are just too crowded and their systems/infrastructures more acceptable to returning Asians

Secondly, I don't see the desire for mass migration of Westerners (that are NOT on expat packages) to Asia for strictly cultural reasons.

This is an interesting observation, though....indeed a one-way street!

[Vulcanl]

...or perhaps not (?!?!?) 

New York Times
July 27, 2010
With Asian Industry Astir, More Job-Seekers Go East

By BETTINA WASSENER

HONG KONG — Shahrzad Moaven quit a public relations job in London and moved to this teeming metropolis four months ago to take up what she saw as a more exciting post: communications director at the exclusive jeweler Carnet.

Jan Mezlik, 29, moved here from the Czech Republic in late April for a job as a trainer in a physical therapy studio called Stretch. For him, the move brought a secure job and the chance to learn to become a yoga instructor.

Charlotte Sumner, a lawyer, arrived eight months ago, thanks to a transfer within her firm. She had spent six months in London and another six in Moscow and had jumped at the chance of a stint in Asia, which she felt would lead to more opportunities than a posting elsewhere.

Before the global financial crisis, none of the three had thought seriously about moving to Asia. But growth in China, India, South Korea and many other countries in the region is outpacing that of Europe and the United States. Many local companies are enjoying rapid expansion, while international employers are shifting positions to Asia and are hiring again. So increasingly, European and American job seekers are hoping that Asia is a place where opportunities match their ambitions.

“Things are just so much more dynamic here,” Ms. Moaven, 28, said. “Back in London, there were fewer resources for P.R. events or advertising. Here, everyone is expanding and spending on marketing activities. That makes my job here a lot more interesting.”

In Hong Kong, the recruiting firm Ambition estimates that the number of résumés arriving from the United States and Europe has risen 20 to 30 percent since 2008. These now make up about two-thirds of the more than 600 résumés its Hong Kong office gets every month, said Matthew Hill, Ambition’s managing director for the city. Similarly, at eFinancialCareers, an online job site, applications for positions based in Singapore and Hong Kong have jumped nearly 50 percent in the last year, its Asia-Pacific chief, George McFerran, said.

Landing a position in Asia, though, is not just a matter of being willing to make a new life halfway around the world. Many employers prefer candidates who have track records in the region and who bring language skills and local contacts to the job.

Mike Game, chief executive in Asia for Hudson, an international recruitment agency, said the number of Westerners actually making the move was still fairly small. Many employers, he said, are more demanding than they were during the economic peak of 2007 and are “setting the bar very high in terms of what they want.”

Nevertheless, many Westerners seem to be looking to make the move.

No wonder. The jobless rate in the United Stands is 9.5 percent, Britain’s is at nearly 8 percent and Spain’s is 19.9 percent. In Hong Kong, by contrast, the unemployment rate is 4.6 percent. In Singapore — another hub of banking, legal and other white-collar positions — only 2.2 percent of people are registered as being out of work. In Australia, the jobless rate fell to 5.1 percent in June, the lowest level in nearly a year and a half.

During the downturn, millions of people in Asia — from factory and construction workers to bankers and architects — lost their jobs as demand for the region’s exports plummeted and multinational companies cut back. But with most Asian countries free of bank failures and the crippling debt loads that governments and households in the West are trying to pay down, economies in the region have bounced back quickly. (Japan is an exception.)

“The speed of the recovery has caught people slightly by surprise,” Mr. McFerran of eFinancialCareers said. “The jobs market is starting to be candidate-driven again.”

Hudson said in late June the percentage of companies in Hong Kong that planned to hire workers soon was at the highest level since it began monitoring the data in 1998. Two-thirds of companies queried in Hong Kong and in mainland China in May said they planned to add workers in the third quarter of this year. In Singapore, the figure was 57 percent, the highest proportion since 2001, Hudson said.

Many companies in Hong Kong said it was hard to find qualified candidates and complained that salaries were rising, Ambition said in another report.

The renewed hiring has been especially strong in the financial industry and in legal services. But there is movement pretty much across the board.

And hardly a day goes by without news of expansion in the hospitality and luxury goods sectors, where companies are seeking to tap booming demand in China for luxury goods and hotel rooms.

“You have to staff up now, ahead of the curve, to be ready for the sort of company you will be in five years’ time,” said Pradeep Pant, head of Kraft Foods in Asia-Pacific.

Lauren Kwan left San Francisco to take a position at the global public relations firm Burson-Marsteller in Hong Kong last year. “I was seeing the hiring freezes and layoffs happening all around me, so I cast my net wider and wider to see what was out there,” she said.

“We’re seeing the beginning of a trend here,” Jeffrey A. Joerres, chief executive of the employment service Manpower, said by telephone from Milwaukee. “With prospects so weak at home, people are considering different options and looking for where the action is.”

For their part, employers want people familiar with the local culture, as well as the business and regulatory environment. For many jobs — like sales and marketing, or investment banking and wealth management — they are looking for candidates who bring contacts and clients.

Local language skills are a plus — and often a must — for anything China-related.

As a result, local candidates and Asians raised overseas tend to stand a better chance. Ms. Kwan at Burson-Marsteller grew up in the United States but is fluent in Mandarin and Cantonese.

“Employers don’t want to have to do a lot of baby-sitting and training,” said Matthew Hoyle, who runs his own company, which specializes in hiring senior staff members for banks and hedge funds. “There are plenty of local people with good qualifications who speak Mandarin and Cantonese — you’d have to bring something pretty special to the table to top that.”

[Vulcanl]

Recruitment Shifts From West to East: Headhunters

Published: Tuesday, 16 Aug 2011 | 5:33 AM ET Text Size

By: Catherine Boyle

Staff Writer, CNBC.com

Global companies are increasingly shifting recruitment for highly-skilled jobs from older markets in Europe and the US to emerging economies in Asia, headhunters told CNBC, as a new wave of job cuts threatens the City and Wall Street.

Around 60,000 job cuts in eight major banks, including Lloyds Banking Group, have been announced this summer as economic growth slows and worries about a double-dip recession increase.

In many cases, companies are continuing to recruit elsewhere in the world while reducing headcount in more expensive, slower-growing markets like Europe. Executive pay packets are growing faster in Asia as competition for talent heats up.

"There's a macro crisis and large companies are reducing headcount," Albert Ellis, CEO of recruitment company Harvey Nash, told CNBC Tuesday. "What they are not explaining is the pace of technological change and moving from the West to the East, where they are hiring."

Financial services jobs have been particularly badly hit.

"It's one of the sectors that will come back strongly first, but will also be cut first,"

Tom Hadley, director of policy and professional services at the Recruitment & Employment Confederation, told CNBC.com.

He added that REC members said that jobs in London's City had stagnated, although there was still appetite for the right senior people and rainmakers.

"The market is running out of steam again," Hadley warned.

Beneath Jobs Report Surface Lie Some Ugly Truths

BP, a client of Harvey Nash, said recently that they couldn't find enough UK-based engineers to expand in the North Sea. Trevor Garlick, head of the company's North Sea operations, lamented that there were not enough engineers with the "right skills" in the UK, where BP is based.

Ellis spoke of a "change of emphasis" from West to East. This is not entirely straightforward, with some corporations who already have substantial operations in Asia scaling back everywhere, Ellis said.

"Technology is changing faster than we can educate younger people," he said.

Youth unemployment and poor education are two of many factors which have been blamed for the recent riots in the UK.

"Politicians are clearly grappling with it," said Ellis.

He added that sometimes companies can employ more people in developed markets if they save money by employing in cheaper emerging markets.

"The jobs story is a complicated one, and it's a competitive situation," he added.

"You now have a global demand and a global market.

Analysts at Panmure Gordon upgraded Harvey Nash from "hold" to "buy" Tuesday after an upbeat trading statement and a recent sell-off of the stock.

While there have been worries that raising tax rates might drive top earners away from more developed economies, Ellis said that there was no evidence of this.

"It’s still something candidates are asking about, but the reality is that we are not seeing wholesale moves to other countries," he said.

© 2011 CNBC.com

[Diarhea]

Please stop this cut and paste of articles. You are clogging the toilets.

[amazing analyst]

dude you need to stop this nonsense. Anecdotal stories may make you feel good but its not exactly the truth. Picking on china for a second:

data proves that an foreign worker makes on average 10 times more in the usa than in china despite the fact that foreign workers in china make 48 times more than the average chinese worker.

Of those with tertiary degrees you are 7 times more likely to leave china than united states, our roughly 4% of the entire population vs. 0.5% of the population. and yes, that includes emigration to canada...

look at it, there is just no basis to argue a reverse brain drain. those with education leaves asia, those with education in the US arent leaving. even more telling is that in china only 0.3% of population is foreign born, in the US 12.8 percent or 43 times more. and that is despite all the taiwanese that has moved to mainland.

reverse braindrain? nope, none whatsoever -if USA opened up their visas even more people would leave asia. despite the economy, you will make yourself a much better life there if you just look at the hard numbers of economic opportunity. in fact at a global level 20% of all immigrants on the planet picks the United States as the land of opportunity, only 2% thinks the same way about china.

facts do not support your ideas. As usual.

Emigration rate of tertiary educated > % of total tertiary educated population    3.79 %    0.45 %
Ranked 155th in 2000. 7 times more than United States    Ranked 181st in 2000.

Foreign worker salaries     4,444,438,000    48,308,200,000
Ranked 16th in 2009.    Ranked 2nd in 2009. 10 times more than China

Foreign worker salaries > % of GDP    1.0 %    0.02 %
Ranked 93rd in 2009. 48 times more than United States    Ranked 148th in 2009.

immigrant population > Immigrants as percentage of state population    0.2944    12.81
Ranked 185th.    Ranked 40th. 43 times more than China

immigrant population > Number of immigrants    3,852,000    38,355,000
Ranked 12th.    Ranked 1st. 9 times more than China

immigrant population > Percentage of total number of immigrants in the world 2.064 20.56

www .nationmaster /compare/China/United-States/Immigration