Recruiting in China

ALIBABA.COM Corp, China's largest e-commerce company, has ventured into the online head-hunting sector to serve its nearly 20 million member companies trading on its business-to-business platform.

At present the service is focused on helping e-commerce professionals, especially those familiar with trading procedures on Alibaba.com, to find positions at small- and medium-sized firms, the company said yesterday.

The small- and medium-sized companies can also post their own vacancies on Alijob, a channel on Alibaba.com dedicated to the human resources service, which was launched last Friday.

"It will be free to individual job seekers, but we will charge a certain amount of money for corporate users," said Wang Yunfeng, a spokesman for Ali College, a company division for training and certifying e-commerce professionals.

Wang said the rate hasn't been decided yet, but it should be under 10,000 yuan (US$1,250) a year for a company to post job ads and view applicants' resumes. There there will be a special price for companies that already pay for listing their information on Alibaba.com.

Ali College has been working with universities in China to promote Alibaba's e-commerce standards and certificates since the beginning of 2006. More than 100 graduates who have been certified by Alibaba had started working in its member companies by the end of last year.

Alibaba.com had more than 18 million registered member firms by the end of last year, of which three million were overseas customers, the company said in Shanghai last month, when it launched a business software division, Alisoft.