China Recruitment Marketing

CareerXroads’ (CXR) 8th Annual Source of Hire (SOH) study was published in Feb, 2009,  which provided a detailed description about how one group of corporations fills their open positions (in the US/North America). Or, more accurately, how corporate staffing functions measure and report sources of hires for the openings they fill. Even the data were collected only for US/North America, but I believe it's also a strong reference for China.

Nowadays, we are facing the new digital ecosystem since the media landscape is more fragmented than ever before, explosion of channels (web, blogs, RSS, instant messaging…), boom of connected devices (iPhone, video games…), the consumer is now always-on, immersed in a digital pool growing every day, and the candidates are now in control of communication and trusts more his friends and relatives than traditional advertising when it comes to decision purchase.

China was the fastest growing country in terms of membership registration on Linkedin by Oct. 2008. IBM China Alumni's registration number on Linkedin ranks number one against other key IT MNC players. From that, you can tell social networking is coming in vogue in China, which leads us to think over a new model for talent sourcing, candidate relationship management and branding promotion. If you believe this trend, you might start thinking about the topic: Social network should be explored and utilized as one key recruitment channel for sourcing qualified talents to meet your company's hyper growth demand.

I believe every IT multinational company who aims to expand its business to remote locations will encounter hiring problems. The issue statement is quite simple: talent shortage. According to the remote location talent market research reports conducted by my team, there is a quite limited talent pool in 2nd/3rd tier cities. Recruitment team found hiring difficulties in sourcing, attracting qualified candidates with required skill-sets.

Although China continues on track to meet projections of becoming the world's largest economy, more and more multinational companies have encountered fierce competition and slowing growth in premium market segments and in major top tier cities. These MNCs are now turning to smaller but high potential cities to achieve growth and profitability.

JFPS China is going to hold the 4th Annual Recruiting and Staffing Conference 2009 (July 28-29, Shanghai), so called HR Excellence Week. Yes, I was honorably invited as the IBM speaker for the topic "Sourcing approaches sharing---uncover new avenues for identifying talent" (Day Two, Session Two).

 One page self-introduction about my project experiences and working history at IBM.

The following pictures show you how we did employee referral program promotion for GBS (Global Business Consulting Services) in order to improve program awareness and involvement. Perhaps you will be interested in this new design.