These days, it seems every company wants someone with international experience.

But as we found with our recent salary survey, it doesn’t necessarily pay in China to have international experience – at least not by Western standards.

After eyeing a slew of youngish, foreign North Americans in our survey making less than US$20,000 a year, we suggested that “Unless you’re an entrepreneur or are the managing director of a multinational here (a job that you were offered while working for the same company back in New York), it’s time to reconsider moving home and finally getting that real job.”

And so, repatriated in the West, what would be the value of your China experience?

Certainly, it’s hard to put a number on that. If it separates you from a stack of other qualified resumes to land you a job paying US$95,000 annually, that year, you might say it was worth US$74,999 – minus the buck it cost you to print it out pretty at Kinkos and the salary you were offered there by dad in case your dream job didn’t work out.

But according to Knowledge@Wharton, international experience could catapult you from middle management into senior management, firmly settling you into the paid hack lifestyle you’ve accepted now that you’ve left China.

“The classic corporate pyramid structure filters out a few chosen people from middle management who then become senior executives,” Knowledge@Wharton reports.

Cristina Simon, professor of human resources at the Instituto de Empresa business school in Spain, tells Knowledge@Wharton that international experience could help you be one of the chosen few.

Knowledge@Wharton notes:

“Professional careers are very equally matched because employees are all highly qualified,” says Simon. In her opinion, other criteria now serve as the key to passing through the filter that opens the door to senior management positions. These factors include whether a person is available to sacrifice part of his or her personal life and free time; whether he or she knows several languages; and whether he or she has international experience. Fuentes adds other skills to this list, such as business vision and the ability to see the company from a global perspective. Not every middle level manager is prepared to do that.

Translation: Not every soccer mom is willing to squat in China. Lucky you.

Another Knowledge@Wharton article cites Jacques Nasser, another big believer in international experience:

Nasser was born in Lebanon, and his family moved to Australia when he was three. “I didn’t look Australian, and when I went to school, I was different than the kids in my class. I spoke Arabic, not English. My lunch was tabouli and flat bread, and kids would laugh at me. But I stayed with my food. The lesson I learned was, it’s okay to be different. Be yourself. Be your own brand. Stand up for what you believe in.”

It’s hard taking lessons from a 3-year-old, even if he later became the CEO of Ford Motor Co. But if you have an advanced degree, and a 4000 RMB per month apartment is a stretch, take comfort that with a little creative leveraging of your experience, you could one day be senior management a few rungs below Mr. Nasser. Probably for a smaller company.

Meanwhile, forget about ever being a senior manager in China.

According to a Korn/Ferry international survey of 300 CEOs (h/t Knowledge@Wharton), having a leader with international experience is the most important challenge for companies in China. Get this: It’s more important than the quality of a particular candidate, innovativeness or creativity. And here’s the big red flag: The survey found that most suitable managers for China operations were overseas-returned Chinese because they have the best understanding of the West and Chinese.

By the way, this survey was done two years ago, so don’t think you’re in some transitional period where you still might be that one lucky laowai.

Peach12 put it best in Thebeijinger.com on “How to find a job in Beijing”:

China is not a place to “Look for work.” China is like an empty and fertile field. You come here to plant you own crop and cultivate it. Doing anything less is wasting the opportunity that is China and you will only be disappointed in salary otherwise - that is assuming that you can offer something that the locals can’t provide themselves. [The jobs] that are 180-280K in the west…are paid around 60-100K RMB a month here and are filled equally well by foreigners and locals without any care as to the race or nationality of the person.

If you’re not willing to be an entrepreneur, put that foreign passport to good use and go abroad – back to your country of origin – and get ready for senior management…or big disappointment when Tina, who studied abroad in Spain for a semester, gets the job instead of you.

    Channel: Local Wisdom     |