Returned Overseas Students in the Eyes of Management

Do bosses have a higher opinion of returned overseas students? Interviews with executives from Citibank and the Formosa Plastics Group, Taiwan's leading business conglomerate, indicate that there are no easy answers to this question.

Paul Lo, a vice president at Citibank, points out that his bank, as an international financial institution, has a greater need for returned students. According to bank statistics, the proportion of returned students to locally educated students is about seven to three.

The search for such people is a major event of the year. Each year in January and February bankers from Citibank's branches all around the world flock back to the United States to visit 30 of the top graduate business schools to interview and choose candidates.

Citibank pays its employees higher salaries than other local financial institutions and also pays returned students more than it pays its other employees. Lo explains this by saying that returned students have made a greater investment in their education, with MBA graduates spending between US$25,000 and US$50,000 on their studies. "We feel they are worth the extra money," says Lo smiling.

Lo sees salary as a question of supply and demand. If you want to hire a Harvard MBA, he argues, you must be willing to pay more because the candidate may already have several job offers in hand. "The purpose of spending money," says Lo, "is to get the best person for the job."

The situation at Formosa Plastics Group is completely different, however. About seven or eight years ago the company brought in a whole batch of returned students. "Some of them were even hired by Y.C. Wang, chairman of the company, who had personally gone abroad to hire them," says a former employee.

Despite the fact that this group of employees was personally hired by the chairman, were a little better than local graduates and could start out as high level specialists, their salaries were adjusted by the year and they were not treated any differently than other employees.

As one returned student who formerly worked for the Formosa Plastics Group points out, in the beginning everyone paid a lot of attention to the returned students, and some managers met with them to hear their views of the company.

Afterwards, however, this attention gradually died down and returning students were criticized for their emphasis on theory over practice. There was no longer a warm response to the attempt by returned students to apply what they learned in school to the job. Many returning students got discouraged and left the company.

Managers at Formosa Plastics tell a different story, however. "The feeling of individualism in the returning students was too strong," one manager at the company frankly pointed out, "and they did not conform to the needs of our company." One example cited is the company regulation that all new staff members, regardless of their position, must spend the first six months training in the factory. Many returning students found it difficult to accept this requirement.

Company officials feel that another important reason that returned students left the company is because they "failed to perform well." According to one high level manager at Nan Ya Plastics, the professional knowledge and ability the returned students possessed were very good, but "studying is one thing and actual work is another." The failure to perform well hurt their prospects for promotion and the returning students themselves lost interest and were not willing to stay on.

What are the views of managers concerning returned students? What kind of experiences have companies had? And what about the situation in organizations other than enterprises, such as schools and government agencies? In order to answer these questions, Sinorama designed a questionnaire and sent interviewers from the China Public Opinion Institute to interview representatives from 121 randomly selected organizations, made up of colleges and universities in Taipei, government organizations and companies listed among the top 500 firms in Taiwan. Those inter viewed included 23 public organizations and 98 private companies.

Of those organizations interviewed, more than half (63) had never hired a returning student. Those companies that had previously hired returning students had few working for them at present; 100 was the highest number reported, while the majority had less than 10. It's easy to see that the returning students in these organizations are a "rare species" and because of their small numbers still attract attention.

The methods used to hire returning students have long been a subject of interest. In our questionnaire we learned that the proportions of jobs obtained through examinations (13 percent), recommendations by the National Youth Commission (12 percent), and introductions by friends and classmates (11 percent) were about the same. Less than one percent of the jobs were found by the employees themselves.

In comparison with other job seekers, are returning students being given special consideration? Thirty percent of the organizations interviewed said they did not feel that in considering a group of applicants with the same educational attainments that they would give preference to returned students. According to those interviewed, hiring decisions would be made on the basis of the nature of the job, the applicant's work experience, whether or not the applicant could pass the company's examination, the salary sought by the returned student and other factors. A small number of answers also focused on the superiority complex of returning students, their tendency to switch jobs, and their materialistic attitudes.

The majority of organizations that said they would consider giving preference to hiring returned students (six percent) have a high level of confidence in these students, citing the technical skills, knowledge, abilities, and language skills these students possess.

When we asked companies how they met the organizations' needs for skilled personnel, 79 percent of the respondents said that they sent employees abroad for advanced studies. Short term, non-degree programs accounted for 57 percent of such programs.

When asked, "If there was a need to either hire a returned student or send an employee abroad for training, which possibility would you choose?", 60 percent of the respondents said they would prefer to send an employee of the company abroad. The responses to the last two questions prove that the majority of companies still have more confidence in their own employees.

Why do returned students leave their organizations? The majority of respondents failed to answer this question, but among those that answered, the leading reasons given were "salary," or "new position" (10 organizations), and "to pursue advanced studies" (five organizations). Other reasons included marriage, job unrelated to training, underemployment, and retirement.

When asked how returned students performed on the job, most of the respondents rated them average in all areas, except job stability. But this may be because Chinese stress moderation and do not like to rashly praise or criticize.

Although managers generally agree that returned students have special skills and knowledge to offer and that these are needed to help the nation climb up the high-tech ladder, 83 percent of our respondents indicated that they felt their organizations had no need for returned students. In order to make better use of these valuable skills in the future, both sides will have to take a new approach to solving the difficulties of the past.

[Picture]

Has your organization ever employed a returned overseas student?

[Picture Caption]

In the eyes of management, how much are overseas students worth?

A lot of people are following Y.C. Wang, but-none of them studied overseas.

Citibank treats its returned overseas students well.

Guess who the returned overseas students are. This is the department of computer-aided design at Yue Loong Motor Co.

Has your organization ever employed a returned overseas student?

A lot of people are following Y.C. Wang, but-none of them studied overseas.

Citibank treats its returned overseas students well.

Guess who the returned overseas students are. This is the department of computer-aided design at Yue Loong Motor Co.