Tomorrow will be the last day of the initial training for newcomers in the company. In many ways it has come time to say goodbye to pleasant evenings in Shanghai, time to move on to the heat of Beijing. The stress-free training will come to an end and busy and responsible work life will start.

To sum up the training, I have to admit that it was surprisingly similar to what I would expect to receive in a Western company. Since I don't have anything to compare with I don't know if this training is different from given by a company that is totally Chinese owned.

I am also very happy to conclude, that 90 per cent of the training time I could follow the instructors who were speaking Mandarin. A big help for me was that they all used slides in English. That was very helpful since there were a lot of field-specific vocabulary that I wasn't very familiar with. The powerpoint slides in English kind of provided me translations where I needed some. I think it was clever move from the instructors also to introduce the English vocabulary of the key terms for the Chinese participants (if they were paying attention to the slides).

Even my overall experience of the training is above expectations; there were some stuff "with Chinese characteristics". One thing was the timetable. Sometimes one theme was given 90minutes in the schedule, but the instructor finished the topic already after 30 minutes. As nobody usually complain being able to finish earlier than planned, it was acceptable, but made me think about efficiency. If we had known the afternoon session only last about 30 minutes instead of 90 minutes, wouldn't it have been better to have it to start before lunch and then let everybody be free after lunch?

Another case of feeling Chinese style of doing things being present was, when the instructor was talking so fast using strange concepts to the extent it was impossible at least for me to fully understand. Yet, nobody asked any questions. I checked the best alternative to the evaluation form for all the evaluation subjects, as I saw everyone else to do... Anyway, I didn’t understand so much, so I let the native speakers to decide whether it was good or not. Afterwards, I found out I was not the only one having difficulties to understand, even the native speakers didn't understand! I felt a bit, but only a bit guilty giving full points to an instructor that obviously failed to deliver even the key message not only for the foreigner but also for the natives.

The latter part of the training involved going to the office and follow the colleagues. Sometimes we were left alone to read some materials, but most of the time we were given more detailed lectures in small groups and given opportunity to ask questions where not understood. One day we could follow really close colleagues’ work, which I found very helpful and interesting. It was also a nice way to have an opportunity in a casual way to learn to know new colleagues and more from the work itself.

I think the major difference to training with Western company is that we have not given any opportunity to put our hands on the real work, just watch and learn. In my experience, in a Western company the new employee is handed over the tasks faster. The training is done more in a way learning–by-doing as the company’s senior employee will take a supervisor role and give guidance for the new colleague on how to perform the work.

Since I like taking things easy and make more preparations I don't mind watching a bit longer how other people do their work before taking over the tasks. I am also quite sure I won’ be afraid to ask for guidance when needed.

Would be nice hear about your experiences about the newbie training in other Chinese companies in comment below.