In the following Q&A, Gina Qiao, SVP of Human Resources at Lenovo, discusses how the technology company recruits and retains in-demand talent that’s right for their business.

When you hear the term Empowering Employment, what does that term mean to you?  To me that means having a strong business that is able to grow and employ more people, empower them to maximize their potential and make contributions. Lenovo is doing that. We have been the fastest growing major PC company in the world for more than two years and moved from fourth biggest PC-maker in the world to the second in just two quarters. We are growing and hiring all around the world. We have over 27,000 employees globally, and we want to attract and retain the best talent in the world. The people at Lenovo have created incredible momentum for our business, and we can now provide more opportunities for other people to join us.

How do you describe Lenovo’s culture, and how have you maintained that as you’ve grown? We are in a very unique position with employees in many countries and from many cultures. We realize how important it is to celebrate our diversity, but also have a unified culture to accomplish our business goals, so we invested a lot of time and resources in developing an integrated culture we call “The Lenovo Way.” It is centered around a simple, but powerful value: “We do what we say, and we own what we do.”  It unites our diverse workforce behind the key principles of commitment and ownership. It helps us align company goals and strategies. Building a cohesive global culture has been one of the most important elements in our success as a global company, and it has become a true competitive advantage. We continue to maintain and evolve this culture by incorporating it into our performance review system, awarding employees for the right behaviors and making our value principles part of our DNA at Lenovo.

There’s been a lot of discussion lately around “hiring for culture and training for skills.” Is this something you practice at your organization? The right cultural fit is an absolute must when hiring new employees. You must, of course, have competencies for the right position, but we look for employees who have a global mindset and would fit our culture at Lenovo. It’s much easier to train for skills than for cultural fit. It takes a special kind of person to thrive in a company like ours — one that is redefining what it means to be “global.” In the end, the candidate who gets the job fits in our global, dynamic culture.

Many leaders have come out and said that companies need to be proactive to do their parts to bridge the skills gap. Does your company have – or plan to have – any initiatives in place to reskill current or potential employees to ensure future growth? At Lenovo, we enable our employees to learn new skills through a 70-20-10 training approach. We believe 70 percent of new skills come from learning on the job. So we often send our employees on international assignments to experience doing business in another country. The other 20 percent of learning happens through building relationships and receiving mentoring and coaching. The last 10 percent comes from formal education. Through this systematic approach we prepare our employees for future growth as we strive to be in the leading position in the industry. To achieve that we also need to hire the best talent in the areas of mobile internet, product design, consumer and commercial channels. So we are not only focusing on training, but also on hiring for skills that will help us become a more innovative company.

What strategies do you believe are most important for businesses to implement today to help moveeconomy forward (e.g., attracting new customers, protecting the base, investing in your people, increasing website productivity, etc.)? All of the above. Businesses like Lenovo must protect their base and attack in new markets.  In fact, that’s what we call our strategy: “Protect & Attack.” We are focusing on protecting our commercial business and our dominant market share in China, while also attacking in new areas of growth, like mobile internet devices and PC-Plus market. The goal is balanced growth across both developing and mature markets, as the economic trends circle the globe. You must also invest in growth, like product innovation, branding and people both in the short-term and the long-term. Our protect and attack strategy, the right product mix, and the people of Lenovo enable us to continue to outpace our competitors. We are outperforming the industry in all geographies, customer segments and product segments. We came back from the economic slowdown stronger than ever, and it takes the right strategy, right products and people to make that happen.