China Helpdesk

China Helpdesk

There are still a lot of questions related to doing business in China. Club China offers you the unique opportunity to ask your questions to the Europe China Institute through our China Helpdesk!

How to recruit and retain technical staff

The Club China Helpdesk offers you support when you need business advice on any business practices in China. If you have any questions for us, just leave a comment below. In the meantime, learn from the advice we’ve given some of our other members. 

Our member question this week: 

How to recruit and retain technical staff. We are opening an office in China, initially supporting European and North American companies who manufacture in China. In addition to an effective leader we need Bsc. in IT and Electrical Engineering level people.

There are many channels to find technical staff. A first step is to visit the local human resource centres. Also you may find connections with universities. They are in most cases more than willing to connect you to smart students. A third option is to register yourself in job employment websites. Some useful websites include:

21itjob.com (specialized in IT and engineering)
alijob.com  (Specialized in IT and engineering)
51job.com (English employment websites)
265.com (list of employment websites)
chinahr.com (most used websites)
hr.wtojob.com (searching for English speaking people)

Be aware that there are large regional differences; in terms of technical background, professional skills and wages. For example: the wages in Chengdu (Sichuan province) are substantially lower compared to Tier 1 cities such as Shanghai and Beijing, while the labour force is considered to be relatively well educated because of the more than thirty institutions of higher education. 

It is difficult to compare the average wage levels between cities, but a proxy to do that is by looking at the minimum wage levels. For example, the monthly minimum wage level in Shanghai on January 1 2012 was 1,280 Yuan. In Chengdu it was 870 Yuan. It should be noted that in both cases, you must expect 50% additional labour costs due to mandatory welfare allowances on top of the wage.

How did you recruit and retain your technical staff? Let us know on our Facebook page. 

Read more answers from our China Helpdesk:

Would you like to comment on this article? Please log in on the right hand side of this page or:

Join Flying Blue Club China now or Connect with Facebook

Comments

There are no comments yet. You can be the first to leave a comment.