What is the biggest shortage of the automotive industry in the 21st century? - Talent

A month ago, Xu Xudong certainly did not expect that he could stand out from the more than 5,000 white-collar workers and become the marketing director of Dongfeng Nissan's annual salary recruitment. He is "the first millionaire in the history of TV recruitment in China." After the game results, the northeast man shed tears of excitement.

In February of this year, Dongfeng Nissan and CCTV-2's "Absolute Challenge" section jointly organized the "Zhen Feng Marketing" large-scale TV reality show program and recruited the marketing director with millions of annual salary.

According to media reports, more than 5,000 white-collar workers nationwide signed up to participate in this “absolute challenge”. After passing the tests of sales, marketing, and promotional business cases, they also experienced eight rounds of different considerations. Jin Xudong from Liaoning He eventually became the "laughing last person" in this application.

Before CCTV's camera, the successful application of Yan Xudong is undoubtedly the biggest news in the recruitment of the automotive industry. Nissan has also won the attention of the industry and the outside world because it has ingeniously combined the recruitment draft with the release of new cars, becoming the biggest winner in the eyeball economy. Some experts pointed out that although millions of salary do not rule out the purpose of corporate speculation, but the lack of talent in the automotive industry has reached the point of no time.

Zhu Mingrong, deputy chairman and secretary-general of the China Automotive Talent Research Institute, further exclaimed: "We don't lack land and capital. What we lack is talented people, especially those who lack the development of the automotive industry!"

The scarcity of talent behind the battle

Former General Motors (China) imported car market and sales director Cai Qingcheng, after switching to Shanghai Volkswagen, has become the most concerned event in the flow of high-level marketing talent in the automotive industry this year. Of course, it is not Cai Qingcheng who is being scrambled for. At the beginning of this year, Yan Yanfeng, general manager of FAW Group, did not hesitate to hire Su Weiming as sales general manager with more than one million salary, and Xu Hengwu, the successor of Huatai Modern, has become a real manager with an annual salary of over one million.

According to a notice issued by the Ministry of Personnel Development of the Ministry of Personnel, the automotive talent has already topped the shortage of talents in 2006. Dongfeng Nissan has become the norm in the car industry for its "joy and thirst" for senior marketing professionals. There are only two options - either sticking to the rules of the past, enduring the urgency of talent shortages, or using "unusual means" to solve the urgent need to dig people from their peers and even set their sights on faraway overseas.

"Between the auto industry, the flow of people is common." Zhang Yanbo, deputy general manager of FAW-Volkswagen dealers and Jieyatai Automobile & Trading Co., Ltd., gave a perfect view. "It can be said that every month, sales people flow in the same industry or Excavation corner phenomenon."

"Why did I change jobs? I jumped and jumped from a normal sales person to become a manager. The salary also rose from the initial 1,000 yuan to more than 7,000 yuan." Mr. Zhao, a sales manager who jumped four times in three years told reporters , Beijing's dealerships are everywhere, and the number of auto 4S stores is still growing.

"If you can really recruit competent assistants, then you can count on millions of salary," said Ren Yong, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan, in an interview with the media. Recent data show that the gap in automobile sales talent is about 600,000, and high-quality marketing professionals are particularly in short supply. At present, 30% of the employees in the foreign automotive industry have received higher education, while the proportion in China is less than 15%.

The lack of talent in the automotive industry

Tang Teng, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Peugeot, believes: "There is a shortage of marketing talents and maintenance personnel."

"Marketing is the lifeline of a company," a senior market analyst said in an interview with reporters. Under the circumstances where auto companies have reduced their costs and their profitability has gradually become low, all manufacturers who are deeply involved in price wars have to shift their attention from the production field. Marketing area.

"Marketing talent who understands both the market and technology" is a complex definition. Ren Yong, deputy general manager of Dongfeng Nissan said that because the professional requirements of the automotive industry are very high, the marketing staff must first understand the car, be familiar with the structure, parts, and performance of the car, and secondly, formulate an effective marketing strategy based on the market and products. .

Xu Hexiang, senior recruiting consultant of Zhaolian recruitment, believes that R&D and marketing are the two most important sectors in the automotive industry, and the meaning of the latter is more direct. However, there are still a lot of gaps in domestic high-quality marketing talents. According to Zhao Yaoping, head of human resources department of Beijing Hyundai Motor Co., Ltd., the graduates with outstanding performance and strong ability in activities in the school community will surely stand out when the auto companies recruit marketing talents. The automobile industry is an industry that requires talents' intellectual support at all levels. The increasingly fierce competition in the industry will inevitably require auto companies to start from the graduates to establish a professional marketing team with higher overall quality.

In addition, production and maintenance personnel also become the most critical talent in the automotive industry. According to statistics, high-skilled personnel in developed countries account for more than 40% of the technical workforce, but in China this proportion is only 3.5%. Zhao Yaoping stated that there is a large gap in the operation and maintenance of modern equipment in the country, because domestic workers rarely have access to modern equipment and are basically unable to adapt to the upgrading of industrial equipment. He believes that the automobile is a very comprehensive industry, automotive maintenance, spare parts and other industries require a group of highly skilled industrial personnel, such as the current domestic demand for car maintenance personnel at least 800,000 people.

Why is there a shortage of talent in the automotive industry?

Compared to developed countries such as Europe and the United States, China’s auto industry started late. Although it has developed rapidly, the pace of development has followed closely with foreign countries. Under the prevailing lag of the industry, relevant automotive professional education has lagged behind, and there have been many in the recent two years. The higher education colleges have also recently put the automotive talent training in an important position. "The theory is enough, practice is the most important" is what most auto technical colleges claim, and the actual situation is "too many theories, practice is not." Many cultivated talents often fail to meet the needs of the society.

As the largest developing country in the world, domestic productivity costs are low, and foreign companies generally do not use fully automated assembly line equipment to save costs. Instead, they use cheap Chinese labor. In most joint ventures, all the core tasks of business decision-making and technology research and development are served by foreign staff, and domestic talents rarely participate. This will cause the country to have no true core technical talents, and we often fall into the embarrassing position of “dressing others”.

Due to the late start of the domestic auto industry, including the sales and sales model of 4S stores, almost all production and sales links are copied from foreign models, and they are not self-created in accordance with their own characteristics. From one side, it reflects that the full set of foreign production and sales model is indeed more mature, but to a certain extent, it impedes the sense of innovation and spirit of the domestic automotive industry personnel.