Recruiting in China

The employment rate of Chinese secondary vocational school graduates maintained above 95 percent in the five years between 2007 to 2011, according to a report released Wednesday.

The report, issued by the Chinese Society of Vocational and Technical Education, said about 30 million students graduated from vocational schools during the period, with half of them working in the tertiary industry.

Over half of the graduates earn a starting salary of 1,500 yuan (about 241 U.S. dollars) or more, according to the report, which was jointly compiled by experts from vocational schools, research institutes and the media.

The rate of self-employed graduates kept rising in the five years, it said. In 2007, 11.01 percent of secondary vocational school graduates chose to open their own businesses. It was 13.36 percent in 2011.

Rural students accounted for 82 percent of the 22 million students in vocational schools in 2012. Among them, 45.7 percent come from households earning an annual income of 3,000 yuan or less, the report said.

According to Wang Jiping, the report's chief editor, China now has more than 13,000 vocational schools. More than 90 percent of vocational school students are subsidized by the state.

With an improving economy in China, there will be more active job seekers in the first quarter of this year, the recent Hays Quarterly Report found.

Some sectors have ambitious hiring plans, such as life sciences. New companies aiming to gain a strong foothold in China are also recruiting actively.

In the property market, employers are looking for the next generation of leaders capable of critical decision making. They are also ramping up hiring in second and third-tier cities where the real-estate market still has room to grow.

With a talent shortage in some industries, such as IT, employers are looking at overseas candidates.

However, salaries do not always match the expectations of overseas candidates, hence the perennial talent shortage.

In some cases, employers are willing to offer higher salaries, such as to senior candidates with advanced skills or specialized expertise. At the same time, some employers are implementing training programs and retention plans to help grow talent internally.

Additionally, on the whole, the number of overseas candidates interested in working in China is on the rise, particularly in the construction industry. Foreign architects and designers continue to arrive in China looking for opportunities. The majority of candidates are from Europe.

As the Chinese market is faring better than others, overseas returnees also continue to seek opportunities in the world's second-largest economy.

Skilled and experienced professionals in areas of high demand have become far more selective about the companies and positions they will consider. They are taking longer to think about roles and will wait for the ideal position to become available, said Simon Lance, regional director of Hays in China.

"Candidates are also putting more emphasis on the brand and reputation of a company when considering their next career move. Entry and mid-level candidates tend to look at the scope of development in a new company and senior-level candidates assess the cultural fit and salary package on offer. In the sales industry, however, more candidates are looking for a bigger career platform and support from the company rather than salary increase," he said.

Recently, a dating website released a report in which single women take the "starting salary for love" as a minimum requirement to accept their ideal boyfriend. In the report, most women from the 90's, 80's and 70's require a partner who is able to make more than 5000 yuan a month as "starting salary for love". There are differences in different cities. The most expensive are in Shanghai, Shenzhen and Beijing, where "the starting salary for love" is above 8000 yuan. This report made many people astonished and said it was too high.

The appearing "starting salary for love" represents a set of values but not the truth. Will you be happier if you are rich? It can't be answered with yes or no. Just like a pop song lyric said "love is not something you can buy". Similarly, happy marriage is also not something you can buy.

Chinese low-cost manufacturers are trying various ways to retain workers and attract new ones after the Lunar New Year holiday, as the country's economic recovery brings in more orders.

Factory workers, mostly rural migrants, usually go home for family reunions during the traditional holiday. But many take advantage of the break to find better jobs and therefore do not return to their former employers.

Companies have raised salaries or offered financial incentives in an attempt to retain workers.

"Although the whole industry is still mired in gloom, we still plan to raise the workers' salary by 10 percent this year," said Tian Chengjie, vice president of Silverman Holdings Ltd., a textile company in Zibo of eastern Shandong Province.

In a bid to get workers back, many companies reportedly chose to pay year-end bonuses after the holiday. Some promised to offer a reward of 1,000 yuan for each year of their service.

Amid efforts to recruit enough workers, some companies promised to reward staff hundreds of yuan if they brought along new workers. Some even offered hundreds of yuan to workers' parents.

However, for many employees higher pay is not enough.

Increasingly, migrants, especially the younger generation, demand respect and good working conditions.

Executives at Orans Co. Ltd., in Taizhou in the eastern coastal province of Zhejiang, lined up at its factory gates and bowed when staff returned to work Monday, the first day after the Lantern Festival.

The respect the executives showed won praise from netizens.

"This should not be seen as a mere show. You can only make fortunes by showing respect to the labor force," wrote a netizen under the name of "Yunjianwei" on Sina Weibo, a popular Twitter-like microblogging service.

Other netizens also called for better conditions rather than just higher pay or bonuses.

"A friend called me today saying only a low proportion of their workers had returned after the holiday and they also had difficulty in recruiting new ones," said a weibo user under the name of "Liang Yong."

"This does not come as a surprise if the employers do not show care towards the employees' life and psychological needs. Please do not see the workers as machines," "Liang Yong" added.

The labor shortage has attracted more media attention as the economic recovery looks like it will worsen the problem.

It comes as China's labor force between the age of 15 and 59 shrank by 3.5 million last year. It is the first time the country has recorded an absolute drop in the working-age population in "a considerable period of time," Ma Jiantang, National Bureau of Statistics director, said last month.

Hundreds of companies in Dongguan, dubbed "factory of the world" in the booming southern province of Guangdong, reportedly set up booths along a street to recruit workers Monday, but only a few migrants showed up and made inquires.

Many employees have chosen to work near their hometowns in the central and western regions as many companies have relocated there in response to the country's industrial restructuring in coastal areas.

Also many young migrants now do not wish to work for low-cost manufacturers where work conditions are not good even though they offer higher pay. For them, the routine work offers no excitement or career prospects.

Wan Zhong, president of Wanjia Shengshi Human Resources Co. Ltd., in Jinan, capital of Shandong said, "The labor shortage could prompt low-cost manufacturers to accelerate industrial restructuring and upgrading as well as offer workers better conditions."

JINAN - Migrant workers who used to demand unpaid wages from their bosses before traveling home for a family reunion may find their positions reversed after the Spring Festival.

After the week-long national holiday, Wang Jiwan, board chairman of Qingdao Hengda Co., a shoe manufacturer based in eastern China's Shandong Province lined up with 50 senior executives at the factory gate, bowing to welcome returning workers.

It may seem odd, but he is not alone. Many companies are trying every trick in the book to attract workers and make them feel wanted. Some distributed cash ranging from 200 yuan (31.85 U.S. dollars) to 500 yuan to parents of employees who promised to come back after the holiday. Others offered a 15-percent pay rise in the new year.

Due to a lack of fixed employment contracts and rising living costs, each year after the Spring Festival, a traditional family holiday, it is common that migrant workers default on their jobs to settle back down again in their hometowns.

Labor shortage, a concern that has long plagued Chinese business owners, is an old problem and as the economy picks it will only get worse.

This year, manufacturers are suffering from shortages. However, it is not due to staff leaving but the warming economy, which has meant more orders on the books.

Labor shortages become particularly acute after the Spring Festival. However, this year is somewhat different, said Wan Zhong, manager of Wanjiashengshi, a human resource company based in Jinan, Shandong Province.

Enterprises have not lost a significant number of staff. Instead, they need more employees to fulfill rising orders, according to Wan.

"The 40 companies that had outsourced a recruitment process to us reported a lower staff turnover compared with previous years. They want more workers simply because the economy has survived the crisis and they would like to expand production," he said.

China's economic growth quickened to 7.9 percent in the final three months of 2012 after hitting a three-year low in the third quarter, according to data from the National Bureau of Statistics.

Official data also showed that the purchasing managers' index (PMI) for China's manufacturing sector has been kept above 50 percent for four straight months since October. The January figure fell slightly by 0.2 percentage point from December to 50.4 percent.

A PMI reading above 50 percent indicates expansion, while a reading below 50 percent indicates contraction.

Manufacturing is regaining momentum, boosted by domestic and global recoveries, said Zhang Weiguo, an economic expert with the Shandong Academy of Social Sciences. He forecast that manufacturers will do much better than last year.

"This year the company has plenty of orders. Workers can soon start work once they are in place," Wang Jiwan said, adding that Hengda, which ships 40 percent of products overseas, will see sales up about 30 percent in 2013 as international demand rebounds.

Meanwhile, Shandong Haosheng Group, a home textile manufacturer, is short of about 500 workers due to increasing orders from the domestic market.

The company has seized orders from seven upstream firms in Jiangsu and Zhejiang provinces after the Spring Festival, according to the company's human resource manager, Sun Luguang.

Most employers will scale up hiring in the first quarter this year, especially the post-Spring Festival period, as the economy rebounded in last quarter, said Feng Lijuan, a human resource expert with 51job.com, China's leading online job-hunting service provider.

Labor-intensive industries including real estate, automobile parts manufacturing and pharmaceutical companies posted a high number of recruitment requests, according to a survey conducted by 51job.com.

Meanwhile, experts said China's economy will pick up steam this year. A report compiled by Xiamen University forecast that the country's economic growth will rise by 0.43 percentage points from last year to reach 8.23 percent in 2013.

More than one third of Chinese businesses are struggling to recruit skilled workers, posing a major challenge for their growth prospects, a report by international accounting firm Grant Thornton said on Wednesday.

Almost 50 per cent of enterprises from industries such as technology have reported difficulties in hiring skilled workers, the report said.

The survey suggests a lack of general work skills and specific technical skills is the key factor making recruitment difficult.

"In such circumstances, job seekers should improve their general workplace skills in areas such as teamwork and communication and their specific technical skills in order to stand out in the fierce competition for employment," said Xu Hua, CEO of Grant Thornton China.

The Grant Thornton International Business Report revealed that 61 per cent of businesses in China cite shortage of general work skills as the primary problem in recruitment and 55 per cent of them cite a shortage of technical skills as the major concern.

Over half of both traditional industries - construction, food and beverage and healthcare - and emerging industries such as technology and business services, said that both factors hinder recruitment.

"The dilemma and difficulties in both obtaining employment and recruiting workers are still prominent," said Xu. On one hand, the labour market is saturated and the employment situation is still severe for graduates, and on the other hand, businesses find it difficult to recruit qualified labour.

"In the long term, businesses need to improve their own training programs which will be able to help staff's growth and deliver talent in a sustainable manner, rather than pinning their hopes on recruiting skilled workers from the talent market," he added.

Businesses are also worried about the upcoming "job-hopping" season. According to research, besides increasing the workload for the remaining staff, 32 per cent of businesses said losing staff also results in loss of business orders and increases operating costs.

Hospitality enterprises are more worried than other businesses that a loss of staff may result in a fall in customer service standards, with 37 per cent citing this as a concern.

And 25 per cent of businesses in technology said staff losses will delay the development of new products or services, more than any other industry.

"A business is nothing without its people. A great team with an average plan will be far more successful than an average team with a great plan. With the upcoming job-hopping season, businesses need to do more communication work with its staff, and build up their talent pool at the same time," Xu added.

Contact the writer at huyuanyuan@chinadaily.com.cn