Recruiting in China

Fast and personal customer service is what I insist is core to being an effective 21st century recruiter. Every candidate should receive a personal response customized to their questions and needs. Candidates should be sold positions on the basis of the goodness of their fit in the position and to the degree they exhibit the skills and competencies needed.

Yet, many recruiters are challenged to provide this level of service. Here are a few quotes from recruiters: "I have received almost 500 resumes. Over 90% of these people are not qualified or not what my company is looking for." Another said, "I have been overwhelmed with candidates. Some fit our needs, but most don't even take the time to read the job description...I wish I could reply to every candidate, but if I did, I would not be doing my job!"

Candidates, on the other side of the fence, say, "Now, as a candidate going through a very bad dry spell in finding recruiting work, I rarely experience this common courtesy among recruiters who post jobs that don't exist and fail to follow simple due diligence." And this: "I'm a downsized corporate executive who has been repeatedly appalled by the way companies and recruiters are treating candidates."

We all, I believe, want to provide candidates with great service, and we all know that those who have been ignored, dismissed as not qualified, and otherwise treated with discourtesy will not forget and may never recommend our firm to friends or apply again, even when they may be excellent choices.

Every act of discourtesy will eventually be incorporated into the overall reputation that our firms have about people and how they are treated. As they say in the customer satisfaction business, for every customer that tells you they are satisfied, there are at least 3 dissatisfied customers who have said nothing. The same applies for candidates.

So, what does the overworked, overwhelmed recruiter do? How can you provide responsive service in the face of huge numbers of resumes? Here are three tips:

Don't Post Job Descriptions, But If You Do, Make Them Precise and Specific

I have taken an excerpt from a job description I found on a website that is representative of many I see every day. The question I ask is who, with even a modicum of technical ability and a dash of experience, will not feel qualified for this job? There are no specifics, no details, and no firm requirements. I almost feel that I could apply for this and justify why if asked.

You're looking for more than just a job in Information Technology. You want a career that challenges your IT experience while giving you the freedom and support to succeed. Look no further than [company name]. Our Professional Services offerings span the entire application life cycle, giving our customers a complete solution and our employees the opportunity to excel on all platforms.
With our technical focus and emphasis on delivery, we strive to hire experienced Information Technology professionals with broad skill sets and the desire and versatility to learn new businesses and skills. We are selective in hiring and serious about retaining those we do hire.
We are looking for candidates with the following attributes:

Oracle Financials experience
Oracle 11i application development experience
Strong PL/SQL
I am sure that this has generated many hundreds of unqualified resumes. Unfortunately, most job descriptions are written this way deliberately so that they will generate a large number of responses. When we lacked technology and reach, this was a marginally acceptable approach. But today, it creates big problems. Most candidates are very concerned with applying for an appropriate job, but how can they really tell from the way descriptions are written? Are the specific requirements spelled out? Are you using technology to screen for these?

We need to focus on a building a new mindset. We do not need mass marketing for most positions, we do not need to generate hundreds of responses to make sure we've "covered the field," and we can't ignore hundreds of applicants because of our own inadequacies. Many of us have attitudes that would be similar to those of a store clerk who, when overwhelmed with customers, simply walks off and leaves them.

We Need to Use Technology, and Use it Better
The new recruiting tools and systems have built-in tools for communicating, screening, and maintaining relationships with candidates. These candidate relationship management tools are not magical, but they ease the burden and automate a portion of the task. However, the sad fact is that after these systems are purchased, only a fraction of recruiters utilize their powerful communication and screening features. Most recruiters are still focused on the zero value-added backend "administrivia" and don't see as clear a connection between the candidate experience and the type of response they get from recruiters.

Salesforce.com and all the larger Applicant Tracking Systems can automate the responses candidates get to various actions they take on the website. They can periodically send e-mails and newsletters, and they can be better programmed to send intelligent responses to candidates' questions.

The bottom line is that all recruiters need to do a better job letting candidates know where they stand in the recruiting process by sending regular updates and letting them know as soon as possible that they are no longer being considered. Even automatic bounce-back responses can be more intelligently written and distributed.

Relationships and Referrals Are Keys to Your Success
I am more and more convinced that posting job descriptions is an archaic process. While I have no doubt that the practice will live on for a long time, it is not the best, cheapest, or faster way to find good people.

Using technology to develop relationships and to communicate regularly with a selected and screened pool of candidates is the key to your real success. By developing and using tools that allow candidates and hiring managers to co-create requirements and refine requirements as needed, more good people will find jobs that fit them better. Posting jobs on job boards and pushing descriptions that seem to have been written by a PR firm out to wary candidates is no longer effective.

Recruiters have to use social networks, referrals, Internet search, and face-to-face conversation to build trust and establish a relationship with candidates that can be leveraged whenever needed. Unfortunately, face-to-face relationship building is slow, expensive, and clumsy. Social networks allow you do this with much greater ease and gracefulness at a lower cost in time and money.

Base your recruiting on the customer service mindset, go for quality (not volume), and do that by building relationships and asking for referrals. If you are generating hundreds of responses to a job posting, you are doing something terribly wrong.

February 1, 2008
Foxconn has told local media that with the coordination of the Shenzhen Labor Department, it has reached an agreement with the security guards who asked for more pay and will pay them before the Spring Festival holiday.

Foxconn says that the security guards' request for back-pay was caused by some misunderstandings. A rumor that Foxconn will dismiss all securities guards had made the guards uneasy, and the salary the guards are receiving right now has already included the back-pay, but the security guards were unaware of this, according to the company. Foxconn says that it is reviewing its salary structure and revising it according to the Labor Contract Law in China.

Foxconn claims that it has signed an intercession letter with the security guards and will compensate them for the extra work hours before the Spring Festival based on the business accounting of the labor department. However, Foxconn has not disclosed the accounting results of the labor department.

Foxconn has also made a response to the report that it has put one of the security guards under house arrest, saying that the person was actually transferred to work at another factory of Foxconn under his own decision.

On January 29, more than 200 security guards of Foxconn gathered at the gate of company to ask for more payment for their extra work and another 40 went to Shenzhen Municipal Labor Department to appeal for help.

BEIJING, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) -- More than 40 percent of employees in China were unsatisfied with their salaries in 2007 amid rising costs of living, said a latest online survey.

Covering more than 8,000 people of various professions nationwide, the survey was conducted earlier this month by www.zhaopin.com, one of China's leading job-hunting websites.

When the respondents were asked to rate their degrees of satisfaction on salary, 21.5 percent ticked 70-100 points representing "very satisfied and satisfied," 36.4 percent chose 60-70 points indicating "an average degree," with the remaining 42.1 percent opting for 60 points below to express their strong dissatisfaction.

Only one fifth of the employers have taken financial measures to increase employees' income to reduce the effect of price hikes in the past year, according to the survey.

Most respondents said they hoped their salary could be raised this year, with 30 percent of them hoping for a 20 percent increase, 36 percent for a 50 percent rise, and 21 percent for a doubling of their salary.

At the same time, more than half of the people surveyed said they were looking to change jobs.

The consumer price index, a major gauge of inflation, is likely to climb 4.7 percent in 2007, Yao Jingyuan, chief economist of the National Bureau of Statistics (NBS), said in late December 2007.

SHANGHAI -- Multinationals in China face more serious challenges than anywhere else in Asia, paying more to attract talent but facing the region's worst turnover levels, a survey said Thursday.
Across all sectors of China's roaring economy, 32 percent of employers said job seekers expect salary increases of at least 20 percent over their previous position, a report by human resources firm Hudson said.

Yet despite higher salaries, Chinese employers have a harder time than anyone else in Asia holding onto people, with 13 percent of firms reporting turnover rates of more than 20 percent of staffing levels.

"Employers are having to give both the highest salary increases and the largest bonuses in the markets surveyed in Asia," said Angie Eagan, general manager for Hudson.

Hudson surveyed the expectations of 737 executives in China for the first quarter of the year.

In regards to higher pay it concluded: "This strategy does not seem to be working, as they are also facing the highest staff turnover rates."

Media, public relations and advertising were especially vulnerable to losing employees, with 56 percent reporting a turnover rate of more than 10 percent, and 27 percent of companies averaging a turnover rate of more than 20 percent.

Limited career progression was also a major issue, mentioned by 22 percent of respondents, also more than any other market in Asia, Hudson said.

"With the current buoyant market, employees who feel that they are not progressing in their career fast enough know that they can obtain other job offers fairly easily," the report said.

Employers also expect to pay much higher year-end bonuses this year. Across all industries 66 percent of respondents say they plan to pay bonuses of more than 10 percent, the highest figure for any market surveyed in Asia.

Moreover, nearly 24 percent propose paying bonuses of over 20 percent.

Adding to the bottom lines were strong expectations for expanded staff.

By Frank Mulligan – Accetis International, Talent Software & Recruit China

There are looming clouds on the horizon in China with definite signs of wet weather, and not even the remotest connection to the presence of bears.

Self-inflicted rain.

The Chinese Ministry of Labor and Social Security is apparently working on a new law that encourages employers to pay higher salaries. It has not been announced as specifically mandatory, with compulsion for employers, but the fact of it’s consideration is problematic, to say the least.

The logic behind the move is that there is increased inflation in China, and this must be offset with salary increases. The fact that this would feed further inflation seems to have escaped everyone’s notice. No specific details are available but what is confirmed is the linkage between these salary increases and the Consumer Price Index (CPI).

I strongly suspect that this measure is intended to impact the lives of manual laborers but even if it is not a threat to your average Chinese professional in the immediate term, it will be in the medium term. Higher worker salaries mean that China becomes less attractive as an FDI market, and eventually there has to be a spillover effect on professional jobs.

The impact would include factories that don’t get built; factories that don’t expand; factories that actually reduce worker numbers; and those factories that would have come to China but are moved to cheaper countries. Never mind the effect on retail or hospitality establishments that depend so heavily on manual labor. In all these scenarios fewer professional managers are needed to manage the workforce, and that’s not a good thing in a country with so many new workers coming onstream.

It is also odd that this salary increase law, for want of a better term, should be considered at a time when the world’s economy is drifting, if not actually heading to recession. According to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), the pace of the world’s economy will slow significantly in 2008; in fact they cite an inevitable slowdown. Yesterday they warned that restoring world financial markets was going to be a complex and protracted task.

It could be a bumpy ride in China this year. Let’s hope for as few bears as possible.

WALTHAM, Mass., Jan 31, 2008 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- SLRY | news | PowerRating | PR Charts -- Salary.com, Inc. (NASDAQ: SLRY), a leading provider of on-demand compensation and talent management solutions, today announced financial results for its third quarter of fiscal 2008, which ended December 31, 2007. Third quarter revenue was $9.2 million, an increase of 52% from the third quarter of fiscal 2007 and 8% sequentially.

Cash flow from operations was $2.3 million for the third quarter of fiscal 2008, compared to $1.4 million in the third quarter of fiscal 2007 and $1.5 million in the prior quarter. Year-to-date operating cash flow was $5.4 million, compared to $2.0 million in the same period in the prior year, an increase of over 170%. Total deferred revenue was $20.9 million at the end of the quarter, an increase of 36% year-over-year and 14% sequentially.

Kent Plunkett, founder and chief executive officer stated, "Q3 was a solid quarter, highlighted by record revenue, expansion of our customer base, and continued strong cash flow generation. In the third quarter we expanded our product offerings with enriched data sets for our compensation management solutions and we added key competencies to our talent management solution, which gained additional traction in the quarter."