U.S. manufacturers fight for overseas talent

By Helen Chernikoff

NEW YORK (Reuters) - The war for talent, once mainly a concern for U.S. companies' hiring at home, has gone global, especially as they scramble to hire in China and India.

U.S. manufacturers are sweetening jobs in those fast-growing emerging markets by hiking salaries and sponsoring cricket clubs as they pursue the efficiencies, business opportunities and security advantages local managers can offer, executives told the Reuters Manufacturing Summit in New York this week.

Perks have become part of the package in part because the supply of university graduates appears larger than it is in both countries, according to consulting firm McKinsey & Co., which turned "war for talent" into a catchphrase in the late 1990s when it forecast a shortage of top U.S. executives.

Only about 10 percent of China's graduates and between 10 percent and 25 percent of India's have the language skills and other qualifications required to work in foreign companies, according to a more recent McKinsey report.

The shortages result in poaching and high turnover, as at Ingersoll-Rand Co. Ltd. (IR.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), where 10 percent to 15 percent of Indian and Chinese employees leave annually, Chief Executive Herb Henkel said.

"There is a lot of competition for talent," said Jim Griffith, chief executive of Timken Co. (TKR.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz), a maker of bearings and alloy steel. "You've got to play your best game."

FIND THEM

GE prizes local management for its efficiency, said John Rice, president and CEO of GE Infrastructure.

The company now does less "parachuting in expats" so that people can make decisions in India for India without routing them back to headquarters, he said.

Locals might also have an edge in perceiving and then seizing business opportunities on the ground, he said.

"You don't just show up and say, 'I hear you're interested in gas turbines and let me show you my brochure,'" Rice said. "One of the things I spend a lot of my time on is making sure we have the right global footprint ... so we're ready when they're ready."

Targeting -- or even building -- the right universities can help companies pick the right people out of those huge pools of graduates.

Ingersoll-Rand found some of its employees by first finding "the best refrigeration school in Shanghai," Henkel said.

Swiss engineering group ABB Ltd. (ABB.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) shifted its recruitment efforts toward the "less elite" polytechnics, which has eased the crunch, said Dinesh Paliwal, North American CEO.

Ingersoll-Rand and Honeywell International Inc. (HON.N: Quote, Profile, Research, Stock Buzz) have built schools -- there's an "IR University" in Bangalore -- to train employees and build name recognition among potential job candidates.  Continued...