Regional HR Roles in North East Asia? Try Semiconductors in Taiwan.

When talking with our HR network working for foreign multinational corporations in Japan, Korea and Taiwan, we hear a common desire for HR professionals to develop their careers onto a more international level. While people are happy to become subject matter experts in running HR on a local basis, they still aim for responsibility on a regional basis, or at least covering an additional one or two countries, while remain based in their current North East Asia location.

As we’ve often mentioned before, most regional HR roles now tend to congregate in locations such as Singapore, Hong Kong and China, so there’s a natural disadvantage in trying to base a regional HR career from locations such as Japan, Korea or Taiwan.

However, there is one key exception to this rule, and that is semiconductors in Taiwan. Looking at our network of HR leaders in Taiwan, over 50% of people who are in foreign multinational companies based there have some kind of regional responsibility outside of the Taiwan domestic market. This compares with HR roles in other sectors in Taiwan, or indeed generally in Korea and Japan, where the instances of regional HR roles is below 10%.

So at the moment, our advice would be to aim for a career in the semiconductor sector in Taiwan. However the good news for all other HR practitioners in Taiwan, Japan and Korea is that there is a growing realisation from regional HR leaders that they need to offer HR Leaders in North East Asia more of a long-term career track. So it is no longer good enough to expect HR leaders in North East Asia to hit the ceiling of their careers in country leadership roles, and we are seeing more multi-country and sub-regional HR roles being created as a retention tool to prevent good HR leaders from seeking external roles. We look forward to seeing this trend continue.