Leanda Lee
One of those statistics in Macau that isn’t what it is: unemployment, 1.7% (Q3)! MDT’s award-
winning cartoonist with an eye to the absurd saw the jocularity in the topic (MDT Oct 31). This downtrend purports badly (well) for this “endangered species” and raises further resigned sighs of helplessness from growing organisations in this burgeoning economy (blip-like mass market monthly gaming revenue decline notwithstanding) forever seeking talented and skilled employees (or anyone, for that matter).
For a number of years now the larger employers in town have been courting Macau’s university graduates. The enlightened companies led the way, targeting the traditional universities in collaboration with Student Affairs teams and career service centres in the larger institutions. Over the last 6 years smaller institutions with lesser profiles have been included with companies showing slicker productions to entice the highly employable graduates and SMEs joining the race for labour. The senior HR management teams began to realise that students were more engaged meeting with recent hires the students’ own age than the mature HR teams selling the marketing hype “employer-of-choice” blurb. Graduates like to hear these stories – of what it is really like to be employed in those companies – from people who have similar values, whom they can trust and whose experience is likely to reflect the realities of entry level positions.
Highlighted in the dialogue about the labour market is usually the demand side, the poor employer. Numerous CEOs and Presidents over the years have ventured to publically announce their confidence in import labour quotas being eased in a veiled attempt to either pressure government bureaucrats with blatant logic (not reputed to be an efficacious tactic here in Macau) or ingratiatingly labelling said officials with excellence of foresight.
In the meantime little seems to change and the pressure is back on to find more workers from somewhere.
Many foreign-run companies are keen to hire local workers who have been foreign educated; like attracts like. I was impressed by the potential power and influence that the foreign educated could have in this market when I attended my first charity ball event years ago with the American Chamber of Commerce. I wasn’t prepared for the ceremonious entrance of the chamber’s dignitaries – the who’s who of the Macau plutocracy. Putting aside for a moment those educated in Portugal, American education had its heyday. It was those educated in the 70s and 80s whom I was observing that evening. It seems to me that Canada then had its moment, drawing to its fold permanently those educated there in the 80s and 90s who fled from the uncertainties surrounding the handover. Then young Australian educated managers started to come to my attention.
A few years ago I became involved in the Macau Students Association (MACSA), Australia; a support association of Macau students studying in tertiary institutions in Australia. I became concerned for the returning graduates who had lost track of their place in a fast-changing society, not knowing how or where to fit in anymore. The vision of the American-educated power-brokers suggested potential for these Australian-educated Macau students to take similar roles in Macau in a couple of decades; and many an expatriate manager was found desperate for enthusiastic, engaged, energetic and cognitively exercised graduates willing to take initiative and in need of a mentor. But ideas have their day, and it wasn’t time yet.
Since then the nascent alumni branch of MACSA
has been having quiet discussions with various groups and institutions. They have gained much in-principle support from the likes of government bodies (Macau and Australian) and chambers of commerce to develop an organisational structure to facilitate graduates’ return to Macau and into positions relevant to their interests and education, and also to broker connections with organisations that crave exactly these types of graduates. At the anniversary of the handover this December, the MACSA alumni are aiming to move another step forward to assist our young educated back into the fold, and this time those large employers are reaching out and working with them. The idea is about to have its day.
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