Recruiting Chinese Staff

One of the keys to success while doing business in China is management. Since organizational behavior is closely related to culture, management of an organization is affected by cultural differences.

Based on foreign entrepreneurs' experience, it seems to be obvious that 100 percent Western management style could not work with a Chinese team. Thus, foreign managers should learn about these differences and try to adapt their behavior.

The first step to build a strong team in China is to recruit the right people. There are several ways to find candidates in China and a common one is using your personal and business network (also called guanxi). This way you might find trustworthy and motivated candidates who will try to be as efficient as possible in order to keep their credibility within the network. On the other hand, the risk of this method could be the fact that you might accept a candidate introduced by an important guanxi as a favor and the employee could not be exactly the profile you were looking for.

Another tool that could help to find candidates are job-seeking websites. There are several well-known websites in China (e.g. 51job.com and Chinahr.com) where you can post job advertisements and receive hundreds of resumes. Unlike candidates in some other countries, most Chinese jobseekers do not spend much on the form of their resumes; therefore you should focus more on the skills of the candidates, more than the structure of the resume.

When potential candidates are selected, you might need several interviews to choose the right person. To appraise the skills of the candidates, a second in-depth interview might be required to understand better the motivations and skills of your future employees. On the other hand, this longer interview could also help the job applicant to learn more about your company and the tasks that he or she will have to perform in your team.

An important concern while recruiting Chinese staff is to find skilled labor. Indeed most highly educated candidates are found in major cities such as Shanghai, Beijing and Guangzhou.

Generally speaking, we could say that the farther you get from coastal cities the harder it gets to find skilled labor. Therefore you should consider this issue while choosing where to develop your businessin China.

Salary range is a major factor in order to attract valuable employees and to keep them. For this matter, you could check within your network to determine the average salaries that are paid for positions similar to the job offered by your company. Offering monthly-based bonuses are also a good motivational tool.

However bonus payments have to be well defined in order to be fair for all your employees. You could also establish a systematic salary increase once or twice a year, based on performance. In case these methods are not well defined and understood by your team, the risk could be a misunderstanding that could lead to negative feelings.

When the right candidates are chosen, the next step is to establish working contracts. According to Chinese laws and regulations, all the Chinese staff must have a legal Chinese labor contract. This contract aims to protect the Chinese employees detailing the salary and different taxes that have to be paid by the company. However in order to protect your company and ensure the working quality, it is advised to establish an internal regulations agreement that has to be read and signed by each employee that could be valuable in case of any legal dispute with one of your employees.

Staff recruitment could be considered an important stage of your business development and in China it has specific methods and rules that foreign entrepreneurs should know. Building a strongteam can be one of the most valuable assets of a foreign company in China.

Column prepared by Milad Nouri,

Managing Director, China Consultants International Limited

www.china-consultants.biz