Recruiting Professionals in China

1. Hard-to-fill positions:

Rapid economic growth, insufficient capacity of the Chinese education system and high demand for skilled labor have resulted in a shortfall in supply of professionals who possess the following skill set: multiple language ability, in-depth technical and industry know-how, international exposure, and familiarity with global best practices. In particular, the strong desire of professionals to move into commercial roles, such as sales and purchasing, has created a shortage of technical professionals.



2. High personnel turn-over and recruitment uncertainty:

Professionals move quickly between jobs, particularly in first-tier cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou. Due to this common job-hopping trend coupled with high drop-out rates during the on-boarding process, continuous recruitment planning is a challenge.



3. Low mobility of staff:

There is a general reluctance for professionals to relocate within China or to accept a longer commute to the work place. Therefore, location is a particularly important factor to take into consideration when choosing to establish a branch location and attracting potential employees.



4. Misinterpretation of candidate credentials, profiles and presentations:

Personality characteristics, such as being straight-forward, which might be favorable in the Western hemisphere, or language skills, such as the ability to communicate fluently in English, are often misinterpreted or over-emphasized in the search for suitable candidates. Furthermore, academic credentials are often over-valued. The Chinese education system still emphasizes learning facts by heart rather than developing independent thinking and problem solving skills. Additionally, the frequent job changes of candidates are often incorrectly interpreted by companies as a sign of immaturity. From the perspective of the candidate, changing jobs has been considered for many years to be a means to rapidly gain experience and to speed-up professional growth.



5. CV and credentials fraud:

Falsifying credentials is a prevalent problem which recruiters face in China. Particularly when CVs are provided by applicants in other languages than Chinese, these ‘translation mistakes’ are a convenient  means to ‘upgrade’ titles or certificates. Accordingly the employment risk is amplified and appropriate actions have to be taken to minimize these risks.



6. Lacking calibration of title and salary:

Job titles have a different prestige status than in other cultures. Particularly being a ‘Manager’ or to work in a commercial function are linked to social status. Furthermore, finding the right salary level linked to a job and its title is a challenge. This problem is amplified by the lack of detailed market data and unrealistic expectations colored by candidates’ perception of foreign salary levels. Companies tend to over-emphasize the starting salary, however a clear growth perspective with respect to salary development is often more important to candidates than the starting salary per se.



Continue:
> Candidate profiling
> Employee types
> Candidate identification
> Headhunting
> Candidate selection
> On-boarding process