Robert here, writing from Austria, where I am vacationing with my family near a place called Altaussee. Wonderful place; I’d be happy to talk to anyone about it if you are coming this way.
We continue to see a pick up in the lateral hiring market in Asia, especially in HK / China. However, the deal flow is picking up at a much higher rate than the lateral associate hiring and that will likely be the case for many months, well into ’10. Even as some US practices in Asia potentially become understaffed, hiring will not necessarily follow quickly. Until the US markets fully rebound, some firms will continue to have global hiring freezes and not all US partners with hiring needs in Asia will have the green light to staff up in ’09 (although some of these same firms are being aggressive in partner hiring and we have been fortunate to have made a few partner placements recently in Asia).
Here are some of our more pressing US associate needs:
*M&A – class of ’08 (or ’09 that has been deferred) – Tokyo – native Japanese required
-new hire likely to come from US markets
*M&A – 4+ years – Tokyo – Japanese required
-new hire likely to come from NYC or Tokyo market
*PE / M&A – 3 to 5 years – Shanghai (Mandarin not required, but commitment to SHG is)
-new hire likely to come from NYC market.
*Cap Markets – 5 to 10 years – Hong Kong (native Mandarin required)
-new hire likely to come from HK / China or NYC market
*Cap markets / M&A – 1 to 3 years – Hong Kong (Korean required)
-new hire likely to come from HK / China or NYC market
*M&A – 4 to 7 years – Hong Kong (native Mandarin required)
-new hire likely to come from NYC or HK
*M&A – 1 to 7 years – HK qualification required
-new hire likely to come from HK market
*Finance – 2 to 5 years – Hong Kong (native Korean required)
-new hire likely to come from NYC market.
*PE / M&A – 2 to 5 years – Beijing (Mandarin required)
-new hire likely to come from NYC market
*Project Finance – 2 to 5 years – Tokyo (Korean required)
-new hire likely to come from NYC market
It is an exciting lateral market in Asia now, considering the significant expansion plans of US practices and the current rebound in deal flow, but also one that is complicated and difficult to navigate. Some successful job searches will take months, rather than weeks, with many rounds of interviewing, rather than the typical one round in a hot lateral market. It is common for there to be a lot of lag time between interviews (and also between initial application and first interview) so it is important to have an agent / recruiter who can affectively represent you for months at a firm, rather than simply fire off a one shot email and perform only admin type tasks of scheduling interviews. For example, some of our candidates who are interviewing now in Asia would not be interviewing if we did not advocate for these persons for months in face to face meetings and over the phone with the relevant target firm’s partners.
Potential openings will not be advertised or well known and by the time they become very active openings, the firm at issue will already be emotionally invested in a handful of great candidates who partners have already been in discussions with for months. With that said, it is a bad idea to simply have your resume blasted around the market and hope for the best. It is important to conduct a job search while knowing where both the active and potential real opportunities are.
It is also a very selective market, due to there being still more supply than demand, when considering candidates and openings. Unfortunately, there are many very well qualified US associates who could easily lateral to Asia during what we came to believe were normal market conditions in 2006-2008, but who will not be asked to interview in this current market. It is important for those persons to not jump into the market too early, some months before they can be competitive candidates on paper.
Deal flow in HK / China in particular is picking up substantially from the very down period of late ’08 until recently. For example, Goldman Sachs predicted earlier this month that there will be as many as 100 IPOs in HK / /China by end year (there were zero IPOs in China for nine months until early summer). There are currently over 30 China IPOs that have received regulatory approval by the Chinese government. Thanks mainly to a recent surge in China deal flow, total M&A deal value for the Asia Pacific region for the second quarter is up 84.4% from the first quarter, while globally M&A deal value is down 24.1%. The total number of M&A deals in the Asia Pacific in the second quarter was up 11.6%, ending a 5 quarter down trend.
However, even with the surge in new business, some USand British firms in Asia will hold off on new lateral USassociate hires. We predict that there will be some US practices that become understaffed in second half ’09 and early ’10, due to increase in work but without enough new hiring. There is understandably a lot of pressure on most US firms to keep costs down in order to help prop up what are going to be woeful global profit numbers for ’09. Therefore, some busy USpartners in Asia will not be able to get clearance to make new hires for some time, especially when associates in US markets are not busy and more layoffs likely.
Some US and British firms are hiring US associates in the coming months and the lateral market is much better than it was earlier this year. Things will continue to improve, but it will be a slow, difficult and complex lateral market through the rest of ’09 and most likely into second quarter ’10.
Of course, please feel free to call or email us with any questions and to discuss the market in much more detail. As always, also please feel free to ask questions in the comments following this post.
Our Asia team of Robert Kinney, Yuliya Vinokurova, Daniel Roark and myself are always happy to meet US associates who are interested in potentially moving to Asia in the future. Robert leads our Asia team and splits his time between US and Hong Kong. Robert is a walking encyclopedia on the Asia legal hiring markets. Things have slowed down significantly in the region as well as worldwide in the associate market recently, but we are fortunate to be still making placements of associates even now, supporting our primary mission of understanding and communicating information about the markets where we work.
Robert is originally from Singapore and is a former NYC biglaw associate and US Marine. Yuliya is in Russia all summer, helping us build that market, but is also very knowledgeable on Asia and has traveled to and worked the Asia markets for a few years. Daniel is based in Austin, but spends time inAsia and is familiar with the HK / China markets. He is a former biglaw associate in Texas. I have been involved in the Asia markets for several years and before becoming a biglaw attorney and then recruiter, lived and worked in Hong Kong. Many of my closest friends are in Hong Kong and I have traveled there frequently for years. It is truly a second home for me. My focus in Asia is mainly partner placements (Robert is also heavily involved in partner recruiting in Asia), but I am always happy to discuss the Asia markets with US associates who are interested.
As Robert has mentioned in previous posts, many of the US associates we have placed in Asia contacted us a year or more before starting a job search. A US to Asia move is a major career and life decision. A move within the Asia markets can also be a more critical career decision than simply moving down the street in New York, due to a variety of factors. We enjoy advising on such potential moves, even though we can’t expect to place everyone with whom we meet. I am in fact certain that many people we have advised have ultimately found their way to Asia through other means, and that is fine.
Unfortunately, most of the attorney recruiting industry is simply not up to the standards of the very people they allegedly represent. In a recession, the service standards in the industry lessen even more, unfortunately. At Kinney, we focus on long-term representation of biglaw attorneys and we accomplish that by being more than the standard recruiter, but instead career-long agents and advisors to our attorney clients. On the law firm side, we focus on and are successful in building practices and offices for the long-term. Although we enjoy being paid as much as the next guy, we don’t look at our attorney clients as only a placement fee, which is the attitude of most of the recruiting industry, an industry that has too much greed and incompetence.
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