Recruiting in China

By Mr Wallacy Gao

Mr Wallacy Gao, CEO of Career International, one of the most important chinese recruitment agencies, shares his vision of the trends and stakes of the recruitment industry today in his home country.

What is the actual shape of the recruitment market in China?
What you have to understand first is that twenty years ago there was no recruiting market in China. The government allocated all jobs. Then, when China began to embrace free enterprise, the local recruitment market started to develop. But at that time, employers still mainly used referrals and job fairs as sourcing channels: they were the traditional government channels.
Suddenly, after 1990, there was a rapid rise in the number of job seekers, and at that time, new sourcing channels appeared. Today, job seekers can choose between many different channel types as Online recruiting, executive search agency, news papers, job fairs ect.
Not only foreign ventures, but also local HR service companies face a booming market. To use a popular Chinese expression to describe a market with such a great potential, I would say that the recruiting market in China is quite a "big cake." I believe the size of China¡¯s recruiting market will reach to over $1 billion in 2006.

How did the first recruitment agencies appear?
Once the Chinese door have been opened on the outside world, the big cities and business centers as Beijing or Shanghai have quickly attracted foreign companies -- giant corporations as well as small start-ups. All those companies need to recruit, and so need professional HR agencies to help them source their ideal personnel and build their Chinese HR structure. This is how we first met these clients.
That was specially the case for small "start-up companies", for which competition increased quickly. In the same time, skills and abilities were hard to find. They needed professional recruiting experts to help them improving management team¡¯s quality.

What are the key success factors for non-Chinese multinationals when they start recruiting in China?
First of all, multinational should know that attitude is the vital thing when they start recruiting in China.
Then, they should be prepare to face real shortage of candidates in certain circumstances. Sometimes the war for talent is as fierce as in many parts of the Western countries, although China has a population of 1.3 billion people. Most foreign companies entering into China, have been surprised to find that managers were particularly hard to find.
I think there are four points playing a key role in the success of non-Chinese multinationals when they start recruiting in China:

Get professional recruiting staff in their HR department. That¡¯s very important for a foreign company in China.
Get an effective vendor management system.
Deploy perfect Recruiting tools.
Implement an Internal staffing inspiriting process system.
Is the using of a recruiting technology a good option when recruiting in China?
Yes. Certainly it is.
As skilled managers are in particularly short supply on the Chinese market, attracting good ones can present a special challenge. The truth is that recruiting for any position in China can require a whole new outlook. Usually, recruiters in HR department always aim to decrease costs and increase recruiting quality. For that, an excellent recruiting technology is the vital thing for making the difference and recruits the right staff.
That is why we promote Talent Management Solutions to companies in China.

What is your assessment of the added value brought by recruitment technologies on the Chinese market?
Using Recruitment Technologies, especially when associated with Process Outsourcing, can help recruiters decrease costs and increase working efficiency. For example, in a traditional model, a recruiter has to take a lot of time to filtering resumes from the Internet, mails, job fairs ect. The follow up of candidates¡¯ interviews with line managers is also very time demanding. Recruitment technologies can help recruiters save more time and more money.

What is your vision of the future of recruitment in China?
It is a difficult question: the major fact about our market is its capcaity to change and evolve in a fast fast way. Tomorow can be a totally different thing. Still, I think that in the future, the evolution of the recruitment market in China will be driven by three important sectors:

The quality of candidates
The ability to build efficient recruiting processes,
The ability to integrate technology

My friends in the executive-search business are all talking about the boom in new jobs. But we all know not every industry is booming, and I know it especially well: One of my company's regional offices is near Detroit.

Whether the automotive professionals are leaving their industry or getting left by it, the end result is the same: They need new jobs. I specialize in corporate marketing search and consulting assignments; that means many of these corporate refugees end up sitting on the other side of my desk.

It's a difficult first meeting. I start it with a dose of reality.

It's almost certain that these professionals will have to change industries. On the agency side, when a company like DaimlerChrysler decides it doesn't need separate agency teams for Chrysler, Dodge and Jeep, two-thirds of the players find themselves on the street. As Ford and GM cut back, the same goes for the client-side guys. There simply aren't enough marketing jobs in Detroit for all these people.

Unfortunately, with most of the folks I've met, automotive is all they have ever done. And while there are exceptions, the hardest thing so many of these executives learn is that much of what they've being doing in their careers may not be valued outside of the automotive world.

The problem is exacerbated by the very scope of the auto business. A marketer may move from one nameplate to another and from one agency to another, but once he's tagged as a "car guy," it can be very hard to break out.

So here we are. And the job-seeker wants to know: Now what? I have a number of answers. They apply principally to the automotive world, but the thinking and strategy can, if properly tailored, apply to many a marketer at a career crossroads. Here's how it works.

A job search demands a strategy, a business plan with target audiences and a communications structure. Decide whom you want to reach, what it is that you have to offer that will meet their needs and how much of your time you have to invest in reaching each target. I also believe there are two kinds of resumes: those that help get a job and those that get in the way. For our auto pros, sometimes the same resume is both. Hence, I advocate using a two-pronged strategy.

First, I suggest the searcher think about industries, businesses and companies that might value some or all of what he's accomplished in his auto career. Look for other businesses that are adjacent to the sale of automobiles, such as tires, batteries, oil or gas. We talk about tearing down what the marketer has done into the functional parts. Rather than considering his career as one that's about automotive marketing, we think about his experience in local and regional marketing, event marketing or trade shows.

For plenty of people, however, this approach can only go so far. It's then that I suggest thinking about the nonresume world, which means the personal network of friends, contacts, peers, superiors and acquaintances everybody has. There are probably people who know you and your work so well, they don't care about what your resume says. These are the folks who can see how you may be successful in a role that has nothing to do with your previous titles and experiences, in a role you may never have thought of.

It always surprises candidates to learn exactly how many people are actually in their network once they think about it. Friends, neighbors, vendors, folks from church or clubs or associations you've been part of. Whatever happened to your college roommate or that favorite professor? Make a list of everybody.

Then I have candidates segment the list into three groups: Those who will take your call without question, those who will need a little reminder of how they know you and those who are indirect contacts, people with whom you've had some professional contact.

Next, start calling. Begin with those you know the least so you can practice your technique. Don't presume someone can't help you just because he works in a totally different industry. You may not know that your contact's brother-in-law happens to be an HR exec at a company that's perfect for you.

These skills will, alas, probably be needed for quite some time. The auto business is in a downward spiral and it's not clear how or when it will pull itself back up. No doubt, some marketers think their own industries are invulnerable¡ªbut in this economy, is that presumption wise for anyone?

Perhaps an old saying about careers suffices: If you're really good, you're always looking.

Ed Tazzia is managing partner at Gundersen Partners, Bloomfield Hills, Mich., a global executive search and management consulting firm. Contact: (248) 258-3800 or edtazzia@gpllc.com.

The Labor Department sent a notice to state officials earlier this year saying the benefits of America¡¯s Job Bank "no longer outweigh the costs of operating and maintaining this system. Therefore, AJB will be phased out during the next 18 months and cease to be operational on June 30, 2007."

The notice argued that maintaining and improving the site no longer makes sense "given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector."

That logic rings true to Peter Weddle, recruiting analyst and executive director of the International Association of Employment Web Sites industry group. Weddle says the Labor Department is wise to shutter America's Job Bank because it replicates services offered by a range of private-sector sites. These include sites targeted at lower-wage and blue-collar workers, says Weddle, whose association includes the major job boards CareerBuilder.com, Monster.com and Yahoo HotJobs.

"Why should the government duplicate what the private sector is providing already?" Weddle says.

But shutting down America¡¯s Job Bank will be a major blow to employers and job seekers, says Gerry Crispin, co-founder of job-site consulting firm CareerXroads. Crispin says the site has been a way to aggregate all the job postings of some 2,000 state employment offices around the country, giving smaller, local employers the ability to broadcast their jobs nationwide for free. And the AJB site is often used by lower-skilled people who turn to state employment offices, he says. Those people may have to rely on a fragmented network of state job sites or private-sector job boards that will not have all the job listings that employers currently give to America¡¯s Job Bank, Crispin says.

"We are basically losing a public resource that provides job seekers a more convenient and easy way to identify the employers who were local and had smaller budgets," he says.

America¡¯s Job Bank dates to 1995, and the free site currently lists more than 2.1 million jobs and more than 682,000 r¨¦sum¨¦s. But it has been criticized as difficult to use. The Labor Department said in a notice that the cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million a year, but that "AJB has not been able to keep up with private-sector job boards or industry standards regarding up-to-date technology."

The slated closure of America¡¯s Job Bank could force both companies and states to change the way they do business. Idaho, for example, enticed employers to list jobs on its state job bank with the promise that the listings would get on the better-known America¡¯s Job Bank site.

"We¡¯ve used the national distribution of job postings through AJB as a promotion," says Bob Fick, communications manager at the Idaho Commerce and Labor Department.

America¡¯s Job Bank also has been used by companies as a way to abide by the guidelines of the U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission, Weddle wrote in an online newsletter last month.

"Because this site was operated in conjunction with state employment agencies and open to all U.S. citizens, posting an opening there was a de facto commitment by the organization to consider any qualified person, regardless of their race, ethnicity, age, gender, religion or sexual orientation," Weddle wrote. "The openings may have also been posted on other job boards or on the employer¡¯s own Web site, but as long as candidates from America¡¯s Job Bank were considered, the government was (usually) content that the company had made a conscientious effort at compliance."

An alternative for demonstrating a good-faith effort at EEOC compliance, Weddle wrote, is posting jobs on a variety of sites, including general-purpose employment sites and "diversity" sites such as those that specialize in candidates of a particular race.

The notice sent to state officials said that during the past two years, the Labor Department's Employment and Training Administration had reviewed and evaluated the ongoing viability of maintaining a national job site. "Since the launch of AJB, the number of private-sector Internet-based job boards (Career Builder, Monster, Yahoo! Hot Jobs, etc.) has proliferated, calling into question the need for a Federal government-sponsored job board," the notice said.

The notice, titled "The Phase Out of America¡¯s Job Bank," also said: "The cost of operating AJB has been as high as $27 million per year, with a current operating budget for maintenance-only of $12 million per year¡­ . The cost to maintain AJB and constantly upgrade the foundational technology and make improvements to the site is no longer justifiable given that AJB duplicates what is already available in the private sector."

The notice said the Labor Department has developed an initial transition plan "to ensure that states and other entities, which currently utilize the AJB platform as part of their suite of services, are able to plan and make changes accordingly."

It also indicated that the federal government could contract with a private-sector employment Web site to create some kind of national job board in the future.

"The (Labor) Department recognizes there will be a periodic need for a national job board due to unique circumstances, such as the recent dislocations related to the hurricanes in the Gulf Coast," the notice said. "It is the Department¡¯s assessment that it will be more cost effective to contract for this type of service with the private sector on an ¡®as needed basis.¡¯ "

In addition to the notice, the Labor Department also sent state officials a set of questions and answers about the phase-out.

Workforce Management received copies of the two documents from Ted Daywalt, president of private-sector job board VetJobs. Daywalt said he received them from a contact who works in the U.S. Labor Department, and that the documents were sent to state officials. Daywalt declined to identify his contact.

The U.S. Labor Department confirmed the documents were authentic and sent to state workforce administrators in March. In a statement, the department also said a conference call on the subject was held with state workforce administrators on March 17. The department did not respond to a request for further comment.

Although the demise of AJB amounts to a headache for Idaho state officials, it is a relatively minor one, Fick says. Of greater concern, he says, are cutbacks in federal grants for programs such as unemployment insurance and workforce training. "It¡¯s another problem, but in a long list of problems," he says.

In Crispin¡¯s opinion, the loss of America¡¯s Job Bank adds to the economic insecurities faced by many Americans, and is likely the result of political lobbying.

"It¡¯s simple greed on the part of job boards and newspapers who have always feared that a free site will hurt them," he says.

Weddle, though, says he had no knowledge that the decision to close America's Job Bank was based on any lobbying. He also noted that there still are other free job-posting sites, such as Craigslist.

Weddle gives the government credit for launching the site more than a decade ago and helping to spark the online job board field. "It was so successful that it spawned a $2 billion industry," he says.

HANGZHOU, Nov. 4 (Xinhua) -- The fourth Chinese Private Enterprise Summit, the largest of its kind in China, opened Saturday in east China's Zhejiang Province.

More than 3,000 private entrepreneurs both at home and abroad attended the two-day summit held in Hangzhou, the provincial capital.

With the theme of "Innovation, Credibility and Harmony", the summit had a series of forums on innovation, real estate development and Chinese private entrepreneurs.

"Weakness in innovation and enterprise management now hinder the development of private enterprises in China," said Jiang Zhenghua, vice-chairman of the National People's Congress Standing Committee, China's top legislature, at the opening ceremony.

Chinese private enterprises should make use of the opportunities in globalization and nurture their own brands on the basis of good management, he said.

The summit was sponsored by the Private Economic Studies Centerunder the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences, Zhejiang Provincial Administration for Industry and Commerce, and Zhejiang Private (Non-Governmental) Enterprises' Association.

A key sector in the province's economy, private enterprises hold 90 percent of jobs and 70 percent of the gross domestic product in Zhejiang. Enditem

China will give half a million U.S. dollars to Central Asian countries to support their human resources development, said China's Vice Finance Minister Li Yong.

The money will come from the Regional Cooperation and Poverty Reduction Fund (RC Fund) set up by China at the Asian Development Bank (ADB), said Li at the Ministerial Conference on Central Asia Regional Economic Cooperation (CAREC) in Urumqi.

"China actively supports regional economic cooperation in Central Asia," said Li.

China provides technological aid for the area's agricultural development, environmental protection and capacity building through the RC Fund, and supports cooperation in prevention and control of AIDS and bird flu, said Li.

China is committed to providing 20 million U.S. dollars to Central Asian countries between 2005 and 2009. It established the RC Fund last March to promote regional cooperation in reducing poverty among the developing member countries of the ADB.

In June 2004, China gave Kyrgyzstan 60 million yuan (7.5 billion U.S. dollars) in aid to build a 937-kilometer highway linking the country with China and Uzbekistan.

From 2006 to 2008, the ADB, together with the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, the International Monetary Fund, the Islamic Development Bank, the United Nations Development Program and the World Bank, will invest 2.3 billion U.S. dollars in regional transport, energy and trade infrastructure in Central Asia, with 1.4 billion coming from the ADB.

Created by the ADB in 1997, CAREC is a regional cooperation mechanism focusing on transport, trade and energy initiatives that are critical to the economic performance of the region.

It is also financing infrastructure projects in order to improve living standards and reduce poverty in CAREC countries.

Source: Xinhua

The Chinese government is to encourage more foreign investment in energy-saving and environmentally-friendly industries, Vice Minister of Commerce Ma Xiuhong has said.

The government would also make more efforts to optimize the industrial structure of foreign investment, said Ma.

Foreign investors have invested 665 billion US dollars in China in the past 27 years, Ma said. By the end of last September, China had recorded capital from over 200 countries and regions and more than 800 research centers have been established by foreign companies.

Foreign investment played an important role in China's economy, with taxes from foreign firms contributing 634.9 billion yuan (80.36 billion US dollars) last year, 21 percent of the country's total tax revenue.

By the end of last year, foreign-invested companies were employing more than 25 million people, accounting for 11 percent of China's total jobs.

Foreign companies are also encouraged to set up regional headquarters as well as purchase, logistics and training centers in China.