Here is actual proof of our selectivity in action:

Yup! Smart, beautiful and educated just isn’t enough to land a job at RightSite.  You have to show some style too.

Until next time, enjoy life in China and keep looking for the fun in every situation.

No related posts.

One of the key factors in the whether a startup is successful is how effectively the team collaborates in accomplishing their goals.  At RightSite we are a small team producing a very big website so we are always looking for tools that help us to share information and work together more efficiently, and setting up a company wiki or intranet is one of the key steps in attaining collaboration nirvana.

We use our intranet to share materials, especially documentation, on how RightSite works. Like any organisation in China, or team is constantly changing and we try to document all processes in the company and make sure this documentation is easily accessible and constantly updated.  Over the recent May holiday I downloaded Open Atrium and found it to be an easy to set up, free solution for building your own intranet in an afternoon.

Before you run away screaming, “I’m not a tech person,” let me add that I have no tech skills myself, and if you can set up a Wordpress blog and have a hosting package somewhere, or even a server in your office, then you can set up Open Atrium without help.  If you can’t muster that much tech savvy, then get your office tech guy to set it up.

Open Atrium is a pre-packaged installation of the Drupal CMS that comes set up with a blog, a project management system, a calendar, an email notification system and a user management system. When I was working at Global Sources about 10 years ago we had a three person team developing an intranet system for our company.  The project lasted several months and I’m not sure the product was anywhere near as powerful as what you are now able to download for free and set up in an afternoon.

Prior to setting up Open Atrium, RightSite had been using Google Sites, but that later was blocked in China. We also looked at using Zoho’s Wiki app, but found that the free version had a ridiculously low storage capacity (we store a lot of reference documents) and the paid versions quickly started costing about US$20/month.  Considering that the server that hosts RightSite costs less than US$100/month the Zoho solution seemed too expensive.

Now we were able to get the entire system running in an afternoon, on the same server that hosts RightSite, and we will be set to start working more effectively. Specifically, I am hoping to reduce the training time for new hires, ensure that we stick to best practices more effectively and allow all team members to contribute ideas about how to run our company better.

There is no technology that can give you an effective company culture, but smart managers need to be on the lookout for easy to use tools that will help keep their companies on the right track (without costing them more than a new salesperson).

If any of you have input on Open Atrium, or on setting up Wiki systems, then I invite your ideas.

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Not This Kind of Reference!

Much is happening at RightSite these days. We are cashflow positive thanks to some strong sales this year, RightSite now ranks among the 5,000 most popular sites in China according to Alexa.com, and we have been putting countless hours into recruiting new team members so that we can grow even more.  (Which might be why I haven’t updated this blog in so long).

In doing all this recruiting, on top of the hiring that I have done in previous years and at prior jobs, I have learned a great deal about the hiring process in China, and would like to share some of this wisdom with both employers and job-seekers.

Despite whatever economic downturn may have occurred in China and all the newspaper stories about unemployed university graduates, 2010 seems to have brought the most competitive hiring market for employers in recent memory. Job advertisements bring in fewer applications and employers who attempt to follow methodical recruitment processes will find the most desirable candidates snatched up before their process is complete.

At RightSite we follow a fairly involved hiring process for a small firm.  We require all candidates to fill out an application, insist on resumes in English, do pre-interview screening by phone, have skills tests before interviews, face-to-face interviews and reference checks after the interview before we make any offers to candidates.

And it is this next to last step — the reference check which seems to be a rare creature in Shanghai.  After being an employer in Shanghai for eight years and employing somewhere north of 300 people, I have only been contacted for a reference twice. Even with the advent of online tools like LinkedIn.com which make it considerably easier to track down and contact former employers, virtually no one gets in touch.

Which leads me to my advice to job-seekers.  Feel free to inflate your resume. Pad your educational criteria. Fib about your employment history.  Even mislead people about your skills and experience. Because no one is really checking.

While every foreigner in the pub has heard stories of dishonest staff and companies being bilked of large sums of cash by sneaky team members, the main reason for this has nothing to do with any tendency towards dishonesty in China. Instead it has everything to do with employer carelessness and sloppy procedures.  If you leave cash lying on the sidewalk, people will pick it up. And if you give people the opportunity to make more money by falsifying their employment history, then they will take advantage of it.  So taking a chance on inflating your qualifications on an employment application is a safe strategy in China.

But not if you apply at RightSite.  Although we are a small company without full-time HR staff, we believe that ensuring a qualified team is the best way to build our company.  So we check references for managers, interns and even the ayi.  Last week we asked for references from four employment candidates. Two of them we never heard  from again. I am sure that those two people will have no problem finding jobs elsewhere.  And I’m also certain that RightSite will be better off with having these reference-less individuals working for someone else. Hopefully our competitors.

Until next time, enjoy the Expo fever and see you again soon on Mingtiandi.

Related posts:

1. The Resume Shuffle
2. It’s Beta, Baby!

Our first new hire was our new Content Manager, Tina Qiu.  Tina is originally from Chongqing and worked as a reporter and editor in both Chengdu and Shanghai before heading to the University of Missouri in the US to pick up her Master’s degree in Journalism.  At RightSite, Tina is charged with managing our Community section content,, overseeing our listing content creation and helping out with our PR copy.  It’s a busy job, but start-up companies are for energetic people.

Besides Tina, we have also brought on board two marketing interns, Floria Fu and Gong Yi.  Our marketing interns help us with contacting RightSite’s customers to help build our directories of industrial zones and available properties. They also help with the translation of RightSite’s Community content and preparation of our email newsletter.

Floria is a fourth-year student at Tongji University, and Gong Yi is a fourth-year student at Shanghai University. Both of them share an interest in eCommerce and strong language skills.

During the month of April we plan to add two more interns and a marketing executive.  And of course, we add these new members to our existing team of Carol Gao, Winni Chao and that Michael Cole guy.  So the Tongren Lu office will be bursting at the seams as we crank out content and work at making RightSite the best known new B2B site in China.

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1. Teaming Up

The RightSite Wiki in all its Glory

We are wrapping up a busy month at RightSite and the focus this month has been on team-building. We’ve added three new team members and interviewed more than 60 people.  But as always, we have tried to do all of this team building in an organised way that let’s us grow as quickly as possible without losing track of our goals and our core mission.

One of our major tools in keeping our company on track has been our RightSite Wiki.  While we put the super-trendy “Wiki” name on it, this is really just a site where we share information.  We store training materials and references on the Wiki, and documentation on how tasks should be performed at RightSite is all stored on the Wiki.  When a new intern shows up for work on their first day, their training program is stored for them to download on the Wiki.  If anyone wants to know the best way to write a description of an industrial zone for a new listing, complete guidelines are stored on the Wiki.

Our wiki is a pretty simple site created for free on Google Sites.  I am not sure that this is the best product for creating a wiki, but since it’s free and easy to use it meets my two most basic requirements.  On the downside, the formatting tools for pages are clunky – no tools for creating h1, h2 or h3 styles or other simple CSS type elements that I can get in OpenOffice?  Boo!  Hiss! Still, I continue to use Google Sites in the faith that they will improve the product soon.  Right after they take over the world.  In the meantime, you can feel free to look at competing products like Zoho.

Today’s entries into the Wiki (yes, even on Sunday) included

• Project lists for the week (our weekly set of tasks for everyone in the company)
• This week’s data entry goals
• Revised standards for creating complete industrial zone, property and company listings
• Guidelines for writing effective descriptions for industrial zone, property and company listings
• Guidelines for Mike to get a life and stop working on weekends (Ok, this last point is pure fantasy)

I don’t kid myself that documenting everything on the Wiki will solve all of our problems, and it does require an extra investment of time. However, taking this little bit of extra time to write down how things should be done will help us stay on course as we grow and make sure that the great intentions of our startup days get translated into a pervasive company culture as RightSite grows and prospers.

See you again soon on Mingtiandi!

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1. Setting Up an Intranet with Open Atrium
2. Love Them and Leave Them
3. Made to Measure

Better in beta, but not as good as it will get

Hi Gang! I’ve been absent from Mingtiandi again, but this time it’s been for a good reason – because we’ve been working all hours to launch RightSite.Asia into public beta. We were in private beta for a few months, madly chasing out the bugs and adding content to the site to make it ready for public viewing.  Consider this a big shout-out to all the people who helped us test the site and contributed their ideas.

During the last two months we have been able to accomplish some major tasks that make this public beta version of RightSite a huge improvement over the private beta. F’rinstance…

• Added more than 200 factories warehouses and other facilities to our directory
• Dug up another 40 industrial zones to complement the 1,500 already in the directory
• Created some groovy in-house advertising with the help of Paper Stone Scissors
• Added a directory of Shanghai’s industrial property agents
• Made sure the (*&^%$#@! site works right

Besides working on the site, we have been very busy the last month with building our team.  We are currently hiring interns for a few different areas, a content manager, and a marketing person. Overall, the response to our job advertisements has been very encouraging.  While the economic crisis makes it hard to earn money, it certainly makes it much easier to hire staff. I have been recruiting people off and on for the last six years in Shanghai , so I thought I would share a few notes about this year’s process and how it compares to prior years.

• Application volume — we are getting a much large volume of applicants than previous years. (duh)
• Big companies — a disproportionate number of the applicants are coming from big multinational companies.  Is it because these companies have tbe most experience in managing a downturn (and the local companies will catch up later) or is it just that the mutinationals steered themselves into a mess and now are bailing as fast as they can?
• Marketing — out of the positions that we are hiring for, Marketing Executive is by far the most applied for.  Are companies cutting their marketing staff more than other departments
• Hallucinogen use — we have received applications from a number of folks who have run through three or four jobs in the last two years but still want prime salaries. I thought downturns were when reality was supposed to set in?

But the biggest difference in hiring new team members this year is that we can do so at a sane pace.  One of the key indicators that it was time to sell my previous company when I did so back in 2007 was the challenges of recruiting. During 2006 and 2007 in Shanghai, companies recruiting staff were forced to accelerate and simplify their recruitment processes to ensure that they had a chance at the best candidates.  Quite simply, if companies did not take the first chance they had to hire someone, or agree to overpay, then they would have trouble hiring candidates.

That’s no way to run a business.

So in 2009, it seems that a bit of normalcy has returned to the market.  The numbers of truly desperate applicants are still fairly low — it’s more that the pace of hiring has returned to what it would be during the good times in the US or Europe.

With the recruitment opportunities available, and our sexy new beta site, RightSite should be able to rapidly establish itself as a productive forum for the industrial property community. Hope you will stop by the site and let us know what you think.

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1. RightSite Launches in Private Beta
2. The Resume Shuffle
3. Advice On Getting Hired in China

We will be using a more sophisticated approach

Its a new year (at least it’s a new Chinese year) here at RightSite.Asia, and we are getting ready to tackle one of our major priorities for the next few months — recruitment.

While economic downturns suck for those of us running businesses, one way in which they definitely do not suck is in recruitment.  Finding staff in 2009 should prove to be much easier than it was in 2008 or 2007, but this change in environment, also means that we will have to change our approach to recruitment.  Unlike a year or two ago, start-ups like RightSite no longer have to romance candidates to get them to join.  As one of the relatively few companies hiring at a time when many companies are laying off staff, we have the luxury of choosing from a number of qualified applicants.

However, this increase in applicants also means that a small company like RightSite needs to develop a more sophisticated recruitment process if we are to find the best candidates and make best use of the opportunities currently available.  With this in mind, we have developed a new process for recruiting, interviewing and hiring candidates.  While I am sure that this process can be improved upon, it represents a big step forward for us.  We invite your comments on contributions on the process, as well as your questions.

RightSite Recruitment Process
Pre-Interview Stage

• Post job — we post our jobs on Zhaopin.com
• Receive resumes
• Review and sort resumes to find best candidates — we use the free online service catsone.com to assist us with this
• Contact short-listed candidates for initial interview/start application process

Intial Interview Stage

• Application form – applicants need to fill out a detailed form about their personal histories
• Cognitive Aptitude Tests — we use intelligence tests provided by JWGrace Consulting to test the aptitude of applicants
• Computer Skills Tests — since we are an Internet company, we want to identify people who live online
• Interview — this is an intial interview by our HR Representative
• Review
• Recall

Second Interview Stage

• Interview by manager
• Request References
• Review

Post Interview Stage

• Reference Check
• Offer Letter
• Contract
• Tests

We hope that by following this structured process we can identify the candidates that best fit our company’s needs.  Our goal is to complete the entire process in 30 days from the time the job ad is initially posted for entry level positions.  For management level positions, the process should not take more than 60 days.

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This is maybe the only metric that we don’t use in RightSite’s performance appraisal

It’s January, so not only are we suffering from chilly toes here at RightSite, but we are struggling through our semi-annual performance appraisals for staff.

Actually, I shouldn’t complain.  Although administering the performance appraisal process is a pain for managers, and many employees dread receiving their appraisal, this process is one of the most valuable tools we have for improving our company. If your company isn’t doing regular performance appraisals or isn’t doing them well, then find a new place to work, because your organisation is DOOMED!

Speaking of doing them well, however, doing an appraisal properly is an art. We don’t claim to have it all figured out at RightSite, but we do aim to get better at each time and I’ve already managed to improve on the process dramatically in the last couple of years (if you include the practices and process that I used at my last company).

At RightSite, the performance appraisal consists of two parts – the review of activity over the last six months and the setting of goals for the next six months.  Of these two, the goals are by far the most important.  This objectives will help determine what we accomplish and will set the basis for the review portion of the next performance appraisal.

In setting the goals, we first set goals for the whole company, and then work at setting individual goals.  Then from these goals we develop projects to help us accomplish them, and from these projects people can derive their daily tasks.  If we can use some fancy bullet points, it would look like this:

Goals and Implementation

• Company goals – List of goals. Individual goal statements

  • Individual Goal – goal statement

    • Project – project list

      • Task – task/to do list

To give you an idea of the actual goals that we are working with here is a draft version of RightSite’s goals for the next six months.  As we are still developing the company, there are very few sales goals in this set, but lots of marketing and content development goals. Once we have established a popular (and populated) site, you could expect to see a much greater emphasis on sales.

For the actual performance review, here’s a copy of the form that we use. This is certainly not perfect, but it meets most of our needs now and we will continue to improve it as the company develops.  For the performance appraisal, 50% of the employee’s appraisal is based on the scores given on the review form and 50% is derived from their score against the goals agreed upon for the most recent six months.  The goal completion part of the appraisal is scored like this:

• Each person has 20 goals
• Each goal has a weight between 1 and 5
• The total of the goal weights for all 20 goals is 50
• The weight of each goal will determine how much impact it has on the employee’s performance appraisal at the end of the review period
• Goals which are more important to the company, or more difficult to achieve are given higher weights
• Goals which are of lesser importance or easier to achieve are given lower weights
• At the end of the period, the team member will be given a score for how much of the goal they completed
• The score for how much of the goal was completed is multiplied by the weight to give a performance score
• The goal accomplishment part of the performance appraisal is derived from the sum of the team member’s performance score for all goals

Twenty goals is a large number, but keep in mind that these goals are very specific. A good goal is one that is clear and quantifiable.  You can test whether your goal is good by measuring the capacity for disagreement or variation in interpretation of results.  If there is no way that a reviewer and reviewee can disagree on whether or not a goal has been accomplished at the end of a review period, then that is a good goal.  Oh, and it helps if the goal is actually in the realm of possibility as well.

Now I would like to write more, but there is a lot of performance appraisal work to get done. As I mentioned earlier all of these documents are works in progress, so I welcome your comments, feedback and contributions.

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You can bet that Doris Day didn't play hooky very often

There are a lot of “I’s” in RightSite, but that doesn’t mean we are not all about team.  And since building our team and managing our staff effectively is out top priority at RightSite, we put a lot of time into human resources management.

Some of this HR management is fun and interesting — like our weekly training sessions on web technologies.  And then some of it is as mundane as recording leave days. But boring tasks need like recording staff leave need to get done, and are important for a number of reasons.

• Keeping careful track of staff leave will show your team that you value their presence
• Recording leave days properly not only saves the company money, but reinforces the rewards to your top performers
• Maintaining a detailed log of leave time can help managers to identify discouraged employees before a situation becomes critical

One of the rules of management that I have seldom seem documented clearly but which is apparent to anyone who has ever managed a team is that happy employees take fewer days off.  While there are many types of leave available to team members, what we are most interested in is the total number of days taken off per month, regardless of whether it is vacation leave, sick leave or “my dog got hit by a bus leave.”  If a manager sees a sudden surge in the number of leave days taken by an individual or a group of people on the team, then you can be reasonably certain that staff turnover is about to increase.

To help us keep track of our staff leave days at RightSite, we have developed some very simple tools that I would like to share with you here:

• Leave request form – this form is to be filled out by all staff for every hour of leave taken (no exceptions)
• Annual leave calculator — this spreadsheet shows the number of hours of annual leave (vacation) used by an employee to date and the number of hours still available
• Leave log — this form shows the total amount of leave (in all leave categories) that an employee has used in a month, and over their current contract period

All of these forms are available for download and for viewing online via Scribd.com.

By using these forms properly, managers can be sure that their team is following the company’s leave guidelines, and quickly identify team members who may be losing interest in their work. Whether you choose to use this as a basis for some punitive weeding out or more proactive management practices is up to you.

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1. The Centre Holds As Things Don’t Fall Apart
2. Setting Up an Intranet with Open Atrium
3. The Resume Shuffle

• Hired a marketing manager
• Found an office
• Reached 1000 industrial zones in the database
• Bought Beijing Olympic 2008 t-shirts for all my nieces and nephews

It’s hard to decide which of these accomplishments is the biggest milestone in our company’s development, but luckily, my siblings kids were able to tell me that picking up the t-shirts was the really important event of the week. Anyway, here’s a bit more detail about the other events of the week.

Marketing Manager — Vena Dai will join us on a temporary basis just as soon as I’m back from the US, and will play a central role in creating the Chinese version of the site. Vena has a background in PR, and formerly worked with Savills, so her knowledge of the property industry should be crucial to creating a site which serves the needs of property buyers and owners.

The New Office — well, perhaps I’m jumping the gun to say we have found our space, but we will be making an offer on a space on Suzhou Creek tomorrow. The office is more than 285 square metres, and has a great view of downtown. (Plus, it’s really cheap). Will let you know how it goes.

A Thousand Industrial Zones — Once again, I’m getting ahead of myself, but by the end of the day on Friday we should have surpassed 1000 industrial zones in our database. Once the site is launched, this list of industrial zones will be a key attraction for users. Next, our team will be building a list of 1000 industrial property agents.

Beijing Olympic T-Shirts — If you don’t know how important these are, then it’s too long since you were nine years old!

For developing the site, we are still doing phone calls to India, but only have two sessions this week. (The first was on Tuesday, and the second will be on Friday). We are primarily discussing design of some of the interior level pages, while the development team starts stitching together the Drupal modules that we will be using for building RightSite.

Now that I have taken care of all of this, I can relax some during my jaunt back home. I will be in the US from the 7th to the 17th — a quick trip back home to Minnesota for my brother’s wedding. Plus, I’ll be doing the usual maintenance visit type activities — buying shoes, visiting old friends, buying socks. Will be sure to keep you up to date on all our adventures at the Mall of America. In the meantime, Winni the WonderAssistant will be in charge of operations here at the RightSite headquarters.

Also, on the schedule for next week.

• Sign office lease
• Continue work on site layout design
• Begin technical documentation

That should keep me busy in between the backyard barbecues and the wedding buffets! Hope your week has been a happy one and see you next time here on Mingtiandi!

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