Recruiting in China

BEIJING, Nov 07, 2008 --

China's online recruiting websites lured 118.726 million individual members and 7.65 million company members as of Q3 2008, respectively leaping 70% and 34% from a year ago, according to a recent report by technology, media and telecom (TMT) market researcher Analysys International.

The top three recruiting websites, 51job, Inc. (Nasdaq: JOBS), ChinaHR.com Corporation, and Zhaopin.com respectively had 37.10 million, 23.15 million, and 14.90 million registered job hunters, as well as 1.01 million, 1.038 million, and 420,000 company members.

Efficient browsing time of Chinese online recruiting websites increased to 16.22 million hours in September from 14.11 million in August, representing an increase of 15%. And the number is forecast to grow further in October, according to an earlier report.

Monthly coverage index increased 4.1% from the comparable period one year ago. The top six recruiting websites all saw their efficient browsing hours climb during the period. Yingjiesheng.com, a recruiting website especially for new graduates, witnessed its efficient browsing hours rise drastically by 273.7%.

Public funds have been used to cover the 7 million yuan ($1 million) owed in back pay to employees of the collapsed Dongguan Weixu Shoe Company, a spokesman for the Chang'an town government said yesterday.

The press official, surnamed Chen, told China Daily that a series of measures has been introduced to deal with the aftermath of the closure of the Chang'an-based firm, which is owned by investors from Taiwan.

"When we learned on Saturday that the boss of the company had fled, we set up a task force to deal with workers' grievances and other matters arising from the incident," he said.

"The government has advanced about 7 million yuan to cover the wages of the 2,000-odd workers."

Chen said the government had been in contact with the boss of the firm and set a deadline of Tuesday for his return to discuss possible solutions.

"As he failed to return, the local government will take possession of the factory and auction off its equipment, as it is entitled to do under the law," he said.

Luo Hongliang, one of the 2,000 people left jobless by the shoemaker's demise, said yesterday that although he is grateful to the government for paying his wages, he fears for his future.

"The welfare package was good; I got more than 2,000 yuan, which covered my salary and overtime pay," he said.

"My fear now is that although some other factories are recruiting, I will probably have to take a pay cut.

"I just can't understand how such a big factory could close all of a sudden," he said.

"We've all been talking about what might have happened; some people have said the company had cash flow problems," Luo said.

According to a report in yesterday's Nanfang Metropolis Daily, the firm had been experiencing financial difficulties following a period of rapid expansion.

The final straw came when one of its partners withdrew 50 million yuan from the firm, it said.

Huang Chunming, secretary-general of the Dongguan leather and footwear association, claimed the boss of the firm had also been accused of defrauding his suppliers, the report said without elaborating.

SHANGHAI (AFP) — Spotting an opening in the global fight for talent, China's ambitious financial institutions are planning recruiting trips to London and Wall Street on the wounded financial titans' home turf.

Sovereign fund China Investment Corporation has begun a global search, multi-billion dollar Chinese-French fund Fortune SGAM plans interviews on Wall Street and Shanghai's government is headed to London and New York next month with job offers in hand.

"There are layoffs on Wall Street since the crisis but China's financial industry is still in its infancy and is hungry for talent," Pei Changjiang, chief executive of the Fortune SGAM Fund, told AFP.

It is estimated that the economic turmoil could lead to 165,000 job losses in New York over the next two years, while British think tank Oxford Economics predicts 194,000 job cuts in London over the same period.

But from Shanghai the message to the brightest finance minds is unmistakable: China is hiring.

Han Zheng, mayor of the China's rapidly growing economic hub, has previously said by 2010 -- when Shanghai hosts the World Expo -- the city will have an infrastructure worthy of an international financial centre. By 2020, he said, it will be one.

Since the financial crisis, city officials are saying that could now come even sooner.

"The crisis has presented a rare lesson and opportunity and generally it will help accelerate the establishment of Shanghai as a global financial hub," said the city's deputy mayor in charge of economic affairs, Tu Guangshao.

"The US is a fatty and needs to take diet pills but in contrast China is still skinny... It needs to build a strong body," the former vice-chairman of China's securities watchdog wrote in an opinion piece in the official China Business newspaper.

More than 600 financial institutions had offices in Shanghai at the beginning of the year but finance jobs account for only 2.4 percent of the 9.1 million-strong workforce, compared to 11 percent in London and 12.7 percent in New York.

"More foreign financial institutions will be willing to operate in China, where financial service is in short supply, as their business at home contracts," said Fang Xinghai, director of the city's Financial Services Office.

The city government will be recruiting for more than 80 positions in leading banks, insurers, securities firms and asset management companies, Fang said.
Meanwhile the 200-billion dollar China Investment Corporation, or CIC, advertised more than 30 positions ranging from fixed-income investment to stock analysis.
SGAM, a joint venture between state-run steelmaker Shanghai Baosteel Group's investment arm and French bank Societe Generale, confirmed it was sending a team to the United States to look for good quality hires but would not say how many, or who the ideal candidates might be.

"The actions being taken by these Chinese firms are clearly a good move that prepares for the recovery and maximises people's value through the hard times," said Jenny Li, a Greater China managing director of Hewitt Associates.
The biggest deterrent for the finance world's smartest is likely to be the overregulation and the bureaucracy that comes with working for firms that are ultimately controlled by the state or state-run firms, experts said.

"Financial experts are unlikely to want to come to work in a state-owned enterprise unless that enterprise has a tremendous amount of autonomy. I'm not sure CIC for instance has that autonomy," said Menzie Chinn, an economist at University of Wisconsin.

However, with 1.9 trillion dollars in foreign reserves, China is in an unrivalled position to pursue its ambitions to expand its financial and that presents an amazing opportunity to deal-makers, said Linda Stewart, head of Epoch, a Boston-based financial services recruiter.

"At this time China is holding all the cards -- and all the US currency," she said.

Telecommunications company Motorola Inc yesterday said it will cut the number of its employees in China as part of a global layoff plan amid financial turbulence.

The company is currently under an internal evaluation of its Chinese operations, which is aimed at reducing costs and streamlining its products, Chen Lei, spokesman for Motorola China, told China Daily. Details of the layoff may be disclosed in the next few months, he said.

Motorola last week announced a plan to cut 3,000 workers worldwide, with nearly 2,000 from its handset division. The announcement came after the firm disclosed a disappointing third quarter result, in which net losses amounted to $397 million, compared with a profit of $60 million one year ago.

Chen said Motorola's arm in China will get more resources from its headquarters in the United States after a planned restructuring is completed. He said China's strategic position in the company will be intensified.

Foiled by its inability to extend the success of its Razr mobile phone, Motorola's share in the global handset market shrank to 8.4 percent in the third quarter of this year, down from 9.5 percent in the second quarter and 22.4 percent in 2006, according to research firm Strategy Analytics.

The company has also been struggling in the country from fierce competition by market leader Nokia, as well as the rising number of domestic venders and hundreds of pirated handset makers. According to research firm GFK China, Motorola's market share in China dropped from nearly 20 percent in 2006 to less than 10 percent this year.

Such sluggish performance was said to have led to the unexpected resignation of Ren Weiguang, head of Motorola's mobile business in China, at the end of last month.

Earlier this year, Motorola announced its decision to spin off its mobile division to turn around its handset business. But the reduced growth rate of global handset shipments in the third quarter, driven by the financial crisis, has clouded the company's revival plan.

Pang Jun, analyst from GFK China, said the long-term effects of Motorola's layoff plan are still unclear, but the move will at least help the company stem its bleeding in the short term. "The financial crisis will have a significant impact on all the mobile phone makers," he said.

Pang said the growth of the mobile phone market in China, the world's largest handset market, may drop to 15 percent this year, down from 30 percent last year. "The growth rate might be even lower in 2009," he added.

Pricewater-houseCoopers (PwC) plans to hire about 2,000 graduates in China next year, as part of its long-term plan to expand in the country despite the global credit crunch, the firm's China operations head said yesterday.

PwC, one of the world's "Big Four" auditing firms, also plans to retain the pace of hiring for the next three to five years and will open new offices in the country "very soon" to support its rapid business growth, said Frank Lyn, PwC's China markets leader.

Lyn added that Chinese companies intending to expand in the West through mergers and acquisitions could wait another six to nine months when deals are expected to be cheaper.

"The current economic crisis is something that everyone is very, very concerned about," Lyn said.

"But if you take a longer-term view and the fact that we're here to stay, we are not just hiring for now but ready to train our people for the next five to 10 years," he said.

Last year, PwC hired 1,800 graduates and 800 experienced executives in China, Lyn said, adding it would be difficult to forecast how many experienced staff would be hired next year because the market environment will be different.

PwC has about 11,000 employees in the Chinese mainland, Hong Kong and Macau.

BEIJING, Nov. 1 (Xinhua) -- In the space of a year, Yang Chanjuan's career plan has changed direction. A soon-to-graduate college student in economics, Yang is feeling her fortunes being buffeted by the financial crisis.

Yang was recently told by her schoolmates already working in the financial sector that their companies would cut staff, or there would no bonus this year. Amid the turmoil and full of uncertainty, a job in banking or securities company was no longer desirable to her. As a result, she decided to apply for a government job.

Migrant workers fill in application forms at a job fair in Chongqing, southwest China on Jan. 1, 2008. International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated earlier that the financial crisis would cost 20 million jobs globally by the end of 2009. (Xinhua Photo)
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Yang's change in career plan came as the financial crisis is spreading around the world. As it is now beginning to hit the real economy, more and more people, not only those in banks, have lost their jobs.

International Labor Organization (ILO) estimated earlier that the financial crisis would cost 20 million jobs globally by the end of 2009. The ILO said the new projections could prove to be underestimates if the effects of the current economic turmoil are not quickly confronted and plans laid for the looming recession.

In the birthplace of the crisis, the United States, big companies from Goldman Sachs to Coca Cola, Motorola to Alcoa, have all announced their job cut plans. Economists believed the jobless total could increase by 200,000.

Back to China, unemployment now becomes a concern too. Although with 2-trillion U.S. dollars of foreign reserves, a budget surplus and a controlled capital market, China would suffer limited direct impact from the crisis. However, weakening demand from its major markets, North America and Europe, is now leading China's real economy in the export sectors into a tough situation.

In China's coastal areas, export enterprises are now struggling with soaring labor cost and fewer orders from foreign customers. Many toy factories in South China's Guangdong Province were shut from January to July this year.

Earlier last month, two big factories of a Hong Kong listed toy-maker were shut. As a result, 7,000 workers lost their jobs. Affected by the global financial crisis, the company was suspended from trading thus it faced severe shortage of current funds.

Statistics from the Ministry of Commerce showed that China's export suffered a growth slowdown in the first three quarters compared with the same period last year -- from 27.1 percent to 22.3 percent. The government said the gross domestic product (GDP)growth rate in the first three quarters this year slowed to 9.9 percent - a 2.3 percentage points fall compared with the same period last year.

"The greatest impact is on these labor-intensive, small and medium-sized export enterprises," said Wang Dewen, a labor economist from China Academy of Social Sciences.

These export-oriented enterprises that make China the world's workshop, are mainly small and medium-sized and vulnerable to market changes. These are China's major employers, absorbing 70 percent of the aggregate 20-million new jobs every year.

Wang said that the lower-end labor market, especially the migrant workers who are the biggest source of employees in the export enterprises, would suffer from unemployment. As the crisis is now just beginning to hit the real economy, the whole situation could be worse if there is no countermeasure.

The fear of unemployment is also hovering over other places. College students and white-collar workers are now worried about their future in the open market.