I love it when a Google search takes me to a colleague’s writing. Frank Mulligan’s blog came up on the first page of a search on “aggregated china data.” Frank has a wonderful piece, “Winning the War for Talent in China,” coming out soon in Guanxi. Here’s a quick preview:

Step 4. Hire for Attitude

Everyone has heard of the mythical creature called the Perfect Candidate, but none of us have ever actually seen one. McKinsey’s original report on the war for talent recommended hiring only top people, but in China, like anywhere else, you need worker bees as well as queen bees.

The best course of action is to hire for attitude, not skills, even though in China the temptation is to do the exact opposite. When a company is new to the China market, it seems logical to hire experienced people directly from competitors. That way the factory or hotel opens on time, and the competitor is compromised. It’s called hiring to hurt, but the downside is that competitors bite back.

And why was I looking up “aggregated china data”? People are continually asking me about data sources, and I also saw a couple of companies exhibiting at the Special Libraries Association with large quantities of China data. What I’m curious about it how data is being organized, edited, and normalized for convenience use by professionals and researchers.