Recruiting in China

Survey reports big rise in number of companies planning to take on staff

Service sector employers have reported one of their most optimistic hiring periods in years, with nearly 25 percent planning to hire more staff over the next quarter, according to a survey from global recruitment company, the ManpowerGroup.

Its Employment Outlook Survey, covering the second quarter of the year, said its net employment outlook - which compared hiring and layoff figures - for the Chinese sector was +22 percent, meaning more employers planned to increase than cut staff, a quarterly increase of 4 percent compared to the first quarter.

The company produces localized surveys for many countries, and the exercise is considered one of the widest-recognized of its type.

Zhang Jinrong, managing director of ManpowerGroup China, said: "Vacancies are increasing in the nation's service sector as the central government aims to further boost its development in a bid to make its economy driven more by domestic consumption than by industrial investment and exports."

Within China's 12th Five-Year Plan (2011-15), the central government has prioritized improving the service sector to raise service levels and attract more talented staff to work in the sector.

The plan is to increase the added value of the sector by 4 percent, and add 4 percent more job opportunities by 2015.

In 2012, the added value of the service sector increased by 1.2 percent, 0.2 percent higher than expected.

"It is essential to boost the service industries and offer essential services for consumers to support the economic development of China gradually," Shi Zihai, head of the policy research office under the National Development and Reform Commission, said in an online interview on gov.cn and xinhuanet.com on Friday.

Service sector companies said government policies have started to have a positive effect on business.

Zhuang Qingman, general manager of Happy Lemon Shanghai Ltd, a teahouse chain with 300 outlets in China, said: "The recovering global economy and the enhanced daily living standards of consumers in China are boosting the demands of the service sector, and helping offer more opportunities for job seekers."

Happy Lemon is hoping to double its outlets across the country and recruit 80 percent more employees by the end of 2013.

Zhuang added that further development of the sector is essential, as Chinese residents spend more and their incomes rise.

The Manpower survey said Chinese employers expect to grow staffing levels in all the six main service industry sectors.

Opportunities for job seekers are expected to improve marginally for the second consecutive quarter.

China's net employment outlook of +18 percent (seasonally adjusted) is 3 percent stronger quarter-to-quarter and remains relatively stable year-on-year.

During the second quarter, 21 percent of Chinese employers said they expected to increase staffing levels, while only 3 percent planned to cut staff.

Some 41 percent of employers reported that they have no plans to grow or cut staff levels in the quarter ahead.

Manpower's Zhang added: "We are seeing sustainable growth being aggressively pursued.

"For instance, many enterprises in the coastal regions continue to search for the skills they need, and many are moving their search inland for management-level talent and technicians."

He said that the moderate economic recovery had provided solid opportunities for many companies to develop new business, meaning a renewed search for talent.

During this time, companies should consider implementing improved training systems, and explore ways to increase productivity to prolong the recovery effects and drive long-term, stable development, Zhang said.

The survey showed that positive hiring activity is anticipated in the wholesale and retail sectors, with an outlook of +20 percent, and the finance, insurance and real estate sector, with a +19 percent outlook.

Strong levels of hiring are also expected by employers in both the manufacturing and the transportation and utilities sectors, where outlooks stand at +17 percent, and in the mining and construction sector, with an outlook of +15 percent.

"Chengdu in Sichuan province has seized development opportunities in recent years and benefited from industrial transfers from the eastern coastal provinces to the west," said Zhang.

He added that to reinforce its position as the economic driver and largest market in western China, Chengdu is establishing a modern manufacturing base and creating conditions for its high-end service industry to flourish.

A total of 4,203 employers in the Chinese mainland were interviewed by Manpower to measure their staffing intentions between April and June 2013.

Globally, the survey said that employers in 32 of the 42 countries and regions surveyed expect to add to their workforces in varying degrees during the second quarter of 2013, compared to employers in 29 of 42 countries and regions in the first quarter of 2013.

Hiring optimism strengthened quarter-on-quarter in 21 countries and regions and softened in 15.

Global recruitment company Saongroup is taking aim at the number one slot in the Chinese online recruitment market with the purchase last month of the market number three, China HR.com.

Ciaran Lally, chief executive of the Irish recruiter’s China business, said the company now has 3,100 employees in 179 cities in China, after buying ChinaHR from the US company Monster for an undisclosed sum. Some sites have reported this as about $30 million (¤22.86 million).

Lally says the purchase is timely given the Irish group’s expansion plans, and also a very good fit when the regional spread of myjob.com’s business is taken into account.

With the myjob.com brand, Saongroup had built up a strong position in the second-, third- and fourth-tier cities, he said, and was number four in the market.

The tier one cities, such as Beijing and Shanghai, were dominated by the “Big Three” – 5onejob, which is US-listed, Zhaopin, which is Australian-listed, and ChinaHR.

“Our most profitable businesses, with scale, are tier two or three. A city like Zhongshan has a population of two or three million people, which is small by Chinese standards but still a significant market, with strong GDP growth,” says Lally in an interview in the group’s headquarters in Beijing, in the old ChinaHR building.

“If you take a snapshot at the end of last year we had 2,500 people, avoiding the tier ones. That project had ran its course. We pumped up the country ; we were very strong in telesales and job fairs,” says Lally.

Denis O’Brien holds a 75 per cent shareholding in Saongroup, while its chairman, Leslie Buckley, holds the remaining 25 per cent. Both O’Brien and Buckley insisted that the company expand its presence across the country, including breaking into the tier one cities.

This was easier said than done. The first-tier cities are seen as too expensive and difficult to break into, as the big three firms already had such a strong presence there.

Then, fortuitously, Monster took a strategic decision to sell ChinaHR. In contrast to myjob.com, ChinaHR did not have a presence in the second-, third- and fourth-tier cities. It seemed a good fit.

The two firms entered discussions and the deal closed on February 6th. If you add the two pieces together, you ha ve
myjob.com in the tiers four, three and two, and then you’ve ChinaHR with its great brand and presence in tier one. Aggregating the two makes perfect sense, says Lally.

“It’s really positioned us in terms of the company . The old staff at myjob.com have gone from telesales operation to SMEs and now, all of a sudden, we can use this network we’ve built over the last years to talk to Fortune 500 companies.

“And ChinaHR’s clients really are a ‘who’s who’ of China – VW, China Mobile, Baidu and others,” says Lally.

“I’ve no excuse if we don’t achieve number one at this stage. We have the products that the number one and number two have, we have the footprint across the country in 179 cities and we have the depth within the team,” he says.

“We have funding available to market and rebuild the brand so we are positioned to keep taking market share.”

“We now have 3,100 people. We were well-placed and the timing was quite fortunate for us. The deal makes sense. All of the changes will happen in Q2 [the second quarter ]. We hope to have a very significant relaunch of the brand,” says Lally.

The group is on track to achieve 41 per cent growth in the first quarter, while the overall market is seeing low, single-digit growth.

“China must succeed for Saongroup. There is a good 10 -15 years of solid growth here.”

Saongroup.com has operations across four continents – Europe, Africa, Asia and the Americas – and websites in 30 countries.

TAIPEI -- Taiwan's tech giant Foxconn will hire 5,000 technicians locally this year, many of them to work on factory robots to build its gadgets, officials said Monday, in a sign the firm is refocusing operations to its home island.

The announcement — one of the group's largest talent recruitment drives in Taiwan in recent years — comes as the conglomerate is slowing new hiring at its sprawling factories in China.

Foxconn said the move was due to increasing automation of manufacturing and assembly lines in China, where rising labour costs have squeezed profit margins.

Some of the new employees are to work at a software complex in Kaohsiung, in Southern Taiwan, spokeswoman Laura Liu said, while others will staff a robot research unit in the centre of the island, and a development unit at the company's headquarters outside Taipei.

Chairman Terry Gou told media that Foxconn — the world's largest maker of computer components, which assembles products for Apple, Sony and Nokia — plans to use one million robots to do “simple” manufacturing work by 2014.

Foxconn already has 10,000 robots for painting, welding and other assembly tasks.

The company employs the vast majority of its workers in China, where it employs more than one million people, roughly half of them based in its main facility in Shenzhen, which borders Hong Kong.

Foxconn has come under the spotlight in recent years over worker suicides, labour unrest and the use of underage interns at its Chinese plants.

It has taken steps such as raising salaries, improving working conditions and enforcing age restrictions to address concerns raised by an independent audit of conditions mandated by Apple.

According to the results of a recent survey on Chinese working women, about 40 percent of interviewed women were unsatisfied with their latest salary adjustment and 50.7 percent said that they usually switch jobs because of job benefits.

The survey interviewed more than 1,700 employed people nationwide in February 2013, including more than 770 working women. Statistics show that 44 percent of the women interviewed had hoped for a salary increase of more than 20 percent, but only 7.1 percent achieved that goal.

In the wake of salary adjustment disappointments, 44.9 percent of women said they would look for new job opportunities, 22.8 percent would work harder and 18.9 percent would have a discussion with their bosses.

In addition, 7.1 percent would choose to keep silent about it, a higher percentage than men. This may be because women tend to be more careful about interpersonal workplace relationships than men.

Women of different ages also differed in their attitudes towards the salary adjustment gap, with more women born in the 1970s saying they would keep silent about it. Women born in the 1980s were more likely to work harder, but those born after 1985 were also more likely to change jobs immediately.

When it came to job-hopping, 59.9 percent of interviewed women said they planned to change jobs in the next three months, six months or one year.

For many women, having to balance work and family means that job benefits become increasingly important as they get older. For example, they are more likely to accept a lower salary in exchange for more vacation days.

Statistics also show that 69.6 percent of interviewed women would look at foreign companies first for job opportunities, 20.9 percent would prefer state-owned enterprises and less than 10 percent would choose private enterprises. In general, people believe that foreign companies offer better job benefits.

Experts have suggested that women also pay attention to industry prospects, developmental trends, company management and other factors that may affect their career development within a company.

China’s corporate job market has never been so attractive and yet so competitive.

Boosted by steady economic growth in the country and across the region, many multinational companies are starting or dramatically increasing their operations here. Despite health concerns arising from pollution and food safety issues, foreign nationals are still transferring into China. Meanwhile, better education and international company exposure have also made the local workforce much more competitive. This perfect storm now poses a tough question to job seekers in 2013: how do you stand out among this fierce international competition?

To those based outside China, this could be quite a surprising read. It is common knowledge that there are plenty of jobs across many industries in China. However, recent graduates might be shocked to learn that companies just aren’t interesting in education anymore: they are looking for real practical experiences. Below are some factors working against different types of job-hunters:

-- The number of Chinese graduates with rich internship experiences is traditionally low compared to the West. Multinationals also find many local graduates not “international” enough for them, or their language and communication skills not up to standard.

-- On the other hand, the sheer volume of Chinese graduates returning home with shiny diplomas from prestigious foreign universities has unfortunately diluted the value of, even created a slight distrust in, such degrees. State media have reported that nearly half of all Chinese returnees earn no higher than 5,000 yuan (HK$6,000) a month.

-- Finally, foreigners job-hunting in China can be considered expensive and potentially unstable, merely looking for another two to three years of employment in China while maintaining their expat benefits. Companies are also looking to reduce the number of foreign senior managers and replace them with local professionals to localise their business, so the smaller number of roles open with this expat capacity is fiercely contested.

Recruitment companies themselves are actually an excellent barometer for the local recruitment market. These companies, such as Antal International where I work, tend to focus on hiring their own staff based around their clients’ needs. If we are to work with a client, it makes sense that the consultants would be familiar with that industry and company style. At the moment, we will hire local professionals with international experience, good English-language skills and with strong technical understanding of an industry. This is because the majority of positions clients ask us to assist with require those skills too.

When a job market is aggressive and competitive like China, it is more important to stand out from the crowd. Here are some ways job seekers can ensure that:

For a recent graduate, the best way to get into the largest firms is via internships. They offer very little risk to a company, and a young professional can get to know an industry by actively participating in company projects. Even if that training does not result in a full-time employment opportunity, other companies will be more impressed for future opportunities. Also the level of risk is diminished for companies with someone who has working experience.

For the more seasoned professional, it is incredibly important to research the market, to check – for example, on websites like LinkedIn or Zhaopin.com – which job titles are in demand in the industry, and what are the requirements of a job description. Gone are the days when a sales manager of a competitor company could simply walk into another role in the same industry and be hired.

As the market matures, more strategy and more prudence are required. Look at today’s job interviews – they are much longer and stricter than a few years back. A candidate has to stand out by using previous experiences of management, difficult situation resolution and tenure to look like a valuable addition to a team.

In short, China is not the pot of gold at the end of the rainbow. Competition is rife, but for a well prepared professional with patience, it is still the place to be for opportunity and excitement.

“China has slowed down its economic growth, but the employment goal has not been downgraded, which shows the Party and government’s determination to guarantee and improve people’s livelihood”, said Mo Rong, the director of Institute of International Labor and Social Security under Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MHRSS).

Mo said that thanks to the country’s positive employment policy, the employment target has been over fulfilled in the past few years. New records of employment rate were set Last year. But it does not mean that the employment plan in 2013 will be easily completed. Mo added that compared with the past five years, it is more difficult to achieve the employment goal in 2013 because the employment trend has changed this year.

Employment issue is the derivative demand of economy development. The increase rate of gross domestic product (GDP) decreased to 7.8 percent in 2012, and the increase rate of investment slumped last year.

Mo said the impact of investment decrease from last year will emerge this year. The government report in 2013 targets GDP increase rate of 7.5 percent extending last year’s situation, which will generate negative effects to increase new jobs by expanding scale of production. In addition to that, the complicated international economy situation and foreign trade pressure are adverse for the realization of the employment goal.

The government work report has presented some new methods to promote employment goals:

First, increase new jobs by stabilizing economy growth and adjusting economic structure. With a better performance of enterprises, stable economic growth and extended production scale, more jobs will be created. Meanwhile, structure adjustment will also increase working posts.
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Second, improve employability and entrepreneurial capabilities and encourage people to start businesses to motivate employment.

Third, promote the steady growth of urban and rural residents’income to fuel economic growth by strengthening consumption ability.