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Then & Now | When qualities, not qualifications, counted in the job market in Hong Kong

It may seem hard to believe today, but there was a time when candidates for management trainee courses who held degrees were considered a risk

Recruiters saw them as overqualified for the tasks of entry-level positions, and looked more to candidates’ personal qualities

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University students didn’t fit the bill for management training in Hong Kong. Picture: Getty Images

Published: 7:30pm, 25 Jun 2020Updated: 8:01pm, 25 Jun 2020

Management traineeships in Hong Kong remain highly sought after entry-level corporate positions; entrants for some major conglomerates are still recruited from Britain. These days, an undergraduate degree in commerce or business studies is a minimum requirement; law graduates (even those who have not qualified as a solicitor or barrister) are also desirable.

Contemporary entrants to management-trainee programmes are now years older than their equivalents would have been 70 years ago.

Most initial costs of practical and theoretical training – the first few years spent “learning the ropes”, when a junior was of limited strategic value to their employer – have been fobbed off to institutions of higher learning, with the cost of those not-terribly-useful early years absorbed by an entrant’s parents, the state, or the individual themselves through student debt. Interview success remains key, but without a reasonably relevant degree, even long-term family connections can only help so far.

How did these selection processes evolve? Until the 1960s, a university degree – then far from commonplace, especially among those from modest socio-economic backgrounds – was viewed as a possible impediment to a business career.

Leadership roles in a sports team, or previously demonstrated skills as an “all-rounder” were reliable – if not infallible – bellwethers of character

Companies feared, with some justification, that tertiary-educated entrants might consider themselves “better” than the jobs they started out in, such as double-counting bales of sheet rubber or chests of tea before transport, and become disaffected. In addition, graduate trainees were at least three years older than non-graduate entrants and – having become accustomed to some degree of personal independence from their university days – were less malleable than more junior novices.

Broadly accurate bearings as to a candidate’s overall suitability could be taken by other means; as well as personal recommendations from family friends (which often got them an initial interview) and testimonials from former headmasters, clergymen and other referees, sporting prowess played a part.