Recruiting in China

In the fast paced hiring environment that we have in China right now, just having a career website will not make you a winner.

Not even close.

Research around the world shows that the United States has moved towards a near-complete adoption of online hiring among mid to large size firms. That¡¯s almost 100% of all serious competitors. In other countries the figures are lower but not significantly so. China also lags but again not seriously.

So at the same time as we are experiencing rising salaries and skills shortages in many industries in China, your competitors are beginning to adopt technologies and systems that improve their ability to source and evaluate good people. That makes it even more critical that companies in China use the web to compete for candidates attention.

Using some form of online hiring system can deliver a strong employment brand that attracts people, with an integrated approach that keeps them in inside your process. Your new Careers@ website is only the first part of this process and it no longer gives the advantage that it used to. ¡®First mover¡¯ advantage in this area was lost at least 4-5 years ago. But if you have not built one already you would need to start now.

First Steps

Your starting point could be to just list current vacancies in China but it would not be so complicated to include other countries.

An easy second step would be to provide pages on your company, its mission, its values, the culture, or some profiles of existing employees. You could also take this a little further and videotape existing staff. This is normally done in the form of a ¡®Day in the Life¡¯ series but you can do it any way you want.

The third, and hardest step, is to map out the hiring process that you want, and build an automated system to run it. This application is generally called an Applicant Tracking System(ATS) or a Talent Management System(TMS). Most of the Fortune 500 companies already have such a system but there is still time to gain advantage.

The opportunity to regain the advantage comes from the fact that a majority of companies are still using onlline hiring systems to just automate the existing, and bureacratic, hiring processes in their company. In China this is still very much the case because many of the international systems are adapted to the US and cannot support the unique environment in China.

But the real advantage of these online hiring systems is to redefine your hiring process so that you can maintain confidential relationships with excellent people in your industry or market. Over a long period of time. This would enable you to work toward just-in-time hiring and to focus on candidate quality, not quantity.

Many, many companies in China have not done this yet so it is still possible to take the lead, and get ¡®First Mover¡¯ advantage.