强劲的经济增长、宏伟的企业目标，以及数量有限的职业经理人和专业人才，这一系列因素使亚洲企业卷入了一场争夺高级人才的大战，从正在扩张生意的澳门赌场，到迫切希望吸引矿业工程师的澳大利亚西部新兴资源城市，莫不如此。

　　在企业的争夺下，高级人才的薪酬已经达到闻所未闻的水平。甚至连美国硅谷的印度软件工程师也被高额薪酬和高级职位吸引回国，而在伦敦和纽约工作的华裔和日本裔银行家也不例外。

　　美林(Merrill Lynch)环太平洋地区首席运营官达米安?丘尼拉利(Damian Chunilal)表示：“亚洲经济的成功，增加了一些领域可用人才的数量。现在亚裔移民乐于回国就职，而在五年前，这些职位对他们没有吸引力。亚洲人才市场更加供不应求，但我们的总体招聘规模在扩大。”

　　谁能赢得这场人才大战，将在很大程度上决定谁将在亚太地区获得成功。

　　人们一致认为，与以往任何时候相比，在亚洲地区招聘并留住熟练员工的难度和成本都更高了。猎头顾问警告称，由于无法找到关键职位的合格人选（基本上都是高层职位），许多公司在亚洲地区的扩张计划都遭遇了挫折。

　　雇用合格员工的争夺在金融服务行业最为激烈。该领域的命运与经济增长水平密切相连。在印度和中国，对零售银行业务的需求猛增，而各投资银行也在招兵买马，为该地区涌现出的有意进行收购的公司提供服务。

　　此外，过去一年中，私人股本公司和对冲基金蓬勃发展，并挖走了数十位亚洲顶尖的投资银行家，而该该地区新出现的百万富翁们，则需要世界一流水平的财富管理服务。

　　金融服务业的繁荣，也对会计、法律和公共关系等相关支持行业起到了推动作用。

　　招聘方面的一个关键难题是，由于亚洲各国的文化、政治和语言习惯差异较大，因此该地区人才缺乏在不同市场间的流动能力。人力资源公司Robert Walters日本分公司董事总经理凯文?吉布森(Kevin Gibson)表示：“你可以将一个墨西哥人派到阿根廷工作，或者将一个美国人派到英国工作。但你无法将一名高级经理从中国派到日本，除非他会说日语，而且喜欢日本文化。”

　　某全球性投资银行一位驻香港高管称，情况已近乎“疯狂”。他表示：“全世界的银行都缺乏优秀人才，但亚洲是迄今最火的地方，很多28岁的年轻人走进我的办公室对我说，他们要辞职，因为他们找到了一份年薪100万美元的工作。”这位高管将工资上涨归结于诸多因素，其中包括市场新进者大幅提高工资来吸引人才、对冲基金和私人股本公司的发展与扩张，以及现有市场参与者的扩张计划。他表示：“这些都意味着，有过多的潜在雇主，在追逐着为数太少的人才。”

　　除了挖投资银行的墙角以外，在亚洲扩张的私人股本公司已经开始采用欧美的做法，吸引资深行业高管。最近数周，美国凯雷集团(Carlyle Group)已经挖走了可口可乐(Coca-Cola)和德尔福(Delphi)的亚洲地区主管，分别负责该公司未来在消费品和工业领域的投资。

　　业界认为，这种疯狂的挖角行为促使新加坡政府制订了一项非正式的禁止挖人协议，有效地保护了星展银行(DBS)和华侨银行(OCBC)这两家本地银行，免遭外国竞争对手的算计。

　　在中国，分析师用“严重”一词来描述人才短缺状况。海德思哲(Heidrick & Struggles)中国业务负责人石力（Steve Mullinjer）表示：“这里有个矛盾现象：人才充足与短缺并存。”他认为，中国需要7.5万名优秀人才，来填补跨国公司及不断扩张的国内企业高层职位，但目前只有5000名左右具备合适经验的候选人可供挑选。

　　薪资增长如此迅猛，以至于一个本土出生的跨国公司总经理能够比美国国内同职位的人多挣20%，而他“只具备70%的同等技能”，石力说，“实际上，中国的高管头衔过高，工资过高。因业绩欠佳而离职的人，往往还能找到薪水翻倍的新工作。”

　　印度也强烈感受到了人才短缺的问题，金融服务业和信息技术领域尤其如此。

　　企业发展如此迅猛，以至于行业游说团体预测，印度IT行业在2010年前将面临5万名专业人才短缺的局面，这威胁到该国在全球离岸IT服务业外包中的主导地位。

　　蓝筹IT企业正在全行业抢夺人才资源，并从其它行业挖来土木工程师和毕业生，将他们变成软件工程师。这导致建筑业等行业面临人才严重短缺的情况。

　　印度Wipro创始人、董事会主席阿齐姆?普莱姆基（Azim Premji）表示：“跨国公司像疯了一样，给出了不必要的高薪，找人填补空缺。”Wipro是全球一流IT企业之一。

　　薪资上涨的效果是可以预测到的。咨询公司翰威特(Hewitt Associates)表示，印度目前的年度平均薪资增幅超过14%，而中国约为8%，韩国和菲律宾则要稍低一些。

　　全球性猎头公司Boyden印度业务董事总经理迪内希?默克达尼(Dinesh Mirchandani)表示，在印度，一家年销售额仅有1亿美元的中型跨国公司，其首席执行官的年薪在过去5年间已经翻倍至25万美元。他说：“在高管阶层，印度和其它地区企业间的薪水差距已急剧缩小。更有甚者，我有一个印度客户在跨国公司任本地首席运营官，而他的薪水比其在迪拜总部的老板还要高。”默克达尼举出英国石油(BP)、花旗银行(Citibank)和百事可乐(PepsiCo)为例，称这些企业因为通过受欢迎的人力资源政策，成功招募并留住了员工，从而使当地业务蓬勃发展。

　　日本招聘市场一向按照自己的节奏运行。但是，该国的经济复苏已经在金融服务、零售和制药等行业产生了瓶颈效应，而精密工程等行业则因受到中国对其产品庞大的需求而蓬勃发展。人才争夺战也有其优点。一位在亚洲工作的美国投资银行高管表示，目前的形势降低了他解聘业绩欠佳员工的难度。

　　他表示：“过去，人们或许可能被裁掉。现在我们让他们去市场上悄悄地寻找职位。他们通常会很快就去做，而且能从一家对冲基金或私人股本公司找到一个薪水更高的工作。这样一来，大家的名声都保住了。”

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　　A BIDDING WAR MAKES FOR 'CRAZY' SALARIES ACROSS ASIA 
 
　　By Sundeep Tucker

　　A combination of strong economic growth, corporate ambition and a limited pool of managers and specialists has plunged Asian companies into a battle for top talent, from casinos in Macau gearing up for business to boom towns in resource-rich western Australia desperate to attract mining engineers.

　　Salaries for top performers are being bid up to unheard of levels. Even Indian software engineers in Silicon Valley are returning home attracted by high ex-pat salary packages and senior positions, as are Chinese and Japanese-born bankers working in London and New York.

　　Damien Chunilal, Merrill's Lynch's Pacific Rim chief operating officer, says: "The success of Asia's economies has in some areas increased the pool of available talent. Emigrants are prepared to return home to fill positions that five years ago would not have attracted them. It's a tighter market, but our overall hiring universe is bigger."

　　Which companies win this war for talent will go a long way to deciding which will succeed in the Asia Pacific region.

　　The consensus is that recruiting and retaining skilled workers in Asia is harder and more expensive than ever. Headhunters warn that the inability to fill key positions with qualified people, mostly at senior level, is denting the regional expansion plans of many companies.

　　The struggle to hire qualified staff is most acute in financial services, a sector whose fortunes are closely correlated with the level of growth. Demand for consumer banking in India and China is soaring and investment banks are adding personnel to service the region's emerging acquisitive corporations.

　　In addition, private equity firms and hedge funds have mushroomed over the past year, pinching scores of the region's top investment bankers along the way, while the region's newly-minted millionaires are demanding world-class wealth management services.

　　The boom in financial services is also having knock-on effects in connected support industries such as accounting, law and public relations.

　　A key problem for recruitment is the lack of fungibility of personnel across the different markets of the region, with its varied cultural, political and linguistic traditions. Headhunter Kevin Gibson, managing director of Robert Walters Japan, says: "You can relocate a Mexican to Argentina or an American to the UK. But you can't move a senior manager from China to Japan unless they speak the language and enjoy the culture."

　　One senior Hong Kong-based executive for a global investment bank describes the situation as "crazy". He said: "Banks are short of good staff all over the world but Asia is the hottest place by far. I have 28-year-olds coming into my office telling me that they are resigning because they have been offered a$1m job." The executive blamed the wage inflation on a combination of factors, including new entrants who pay huge premiums to attract staff, the growth and expansion of hedge funds and private equity firms and the expansion plans of existing players. "It all means that there are too many potential employers chasing too few people," he says.

　　As well as drawing from the well of investment banks, private equity firms expanding in Asia have started to adopt US and European practice by luring senior industry executives. In recent weeks Carlyle Group of the US has poached the regional heads of Coca-Cola and Delphi to oversee the firm's future investments across the consumer and industrial sectors respectively.

　　The frenzy is thought to have prompted the Singapore government to broker an informal non-poaching agreement that effectively protects two local banks, DBS and OCBC, from aggressive foreign rivals.

　　In China, analysts describe the talent shortage as "acute". Steve Mullinjer, head of Heidrick & Struggles China practice, says: "There is a paradox of shortage among the plenty." He believes that China requires 75,000 quality people to fill senior vacancies at multinationals and expanding domestic companies - but can only supply around 5,000 candidates with suitable experience.

　　Wage inflation is running so hot that a locally-born general manager for a multinational can earn 20 per cent more than a counterpart in the US "with only 75 per cent of the skills set", he says. "The reality is that executives in China are getting over-titled and overpaid. Under-performers who leave often resurface in jobs earning double the salary."

　　The talent shortage is also keenly felt in India, especially in the financial services and information technology sectors.

　　Business is growing so fast that the industry's lobby group has estimated that the Indian IT sector faces a shortfall of 500,000 professionals by 2010 that threatens the country's dominance of global offshore IT services.

　　Blue chip IT companies are plundering the entire talent pool across industries, stealing civil engineers and graduates from other disciplines and turning them into software engineers. This has left acute shortages in industries such as construction.

　　Azim Premji, founder chairman of India's Wipro, one of the world's leading IT companies, says: "The multinationals are going berserk and are unnecessarily paying premiums to fill the positions."

　　The effect on pay rates has been predictable. According to Hewitt Associates, the consultancy, average salary increases in India are running at more than 14 per cent a year, compared with around 8 per cent in China and slightly less in South Korea and the Philippines.

　　Dinesh Mirchandani, managing director of the India practice of Boyden, a global search firm, said that the annual salary for the typical chief executive of a mid-cap multinational in India, with just $100m sales, has doubled in the past five years to $250,000. He says: "At senior levels, the pay gap between those based in India and those elsewhere has narrowed dramatically. I even have an Indian national chief operating officer in a multinational here who is earning more than his Dubai-based boss." Mr Mirchandani cites BP, Citibank and PepsiCo as multinationals that have prospered because they recruited and retained staff successfully by introducing favourable human resource policies.

　　The recruitment market in Japan has tended to march to its own beat. However, the country's economic recovery has created bottlenecks in sectors such as financial services, retail and pharmaceutical, while sectors such as precision engineering have been boosted by insatiable demand from China for their products. The talent war even has its plus points. One US investment banking executive working in Asia says that the situation has made it easier to get rid of underpeforming staff.

　　He says: "In the past the worker might have been sacked. Nowadays we tell that worker to go and quietly solicit offers in the marketplace. They usually do so quickly, and can get a higher salary from a hedge fund or private equity firm. That way, nobody's reputation gets sullied."

[时间：2008-01-18  作者：Sundeep Tucker译者/  来源：《金融时报》]