Archives 2009

Spending power rises on low inflation

Employees at international firms on China’s mainland enjoyed more disposable income this year than last year due to a drop in inflation, according to a report released yesterday by Hay Group, a global consulting firm.

Though the average salary increase over the past 12 months from August 2008 was 5.3 percent, which is much lower than the 10.2 percent rise last year and 9.1 percent in 2007, the real wage inflation this year is 5.9 percent, even slightly higher than that before the financial crisis because of the high consumer prices in the past two years.

Real wage inflation is the average base salary movement minus Consumer Price Index, the main gauge of inflation.

“Many employees may complain they haven’t got salary increase since last year. In fact they have already enjoyed a rise in disposable income, even higher than last year, due to the lower CPI,” said Henry Sheng, a Hay executive.

Zhu Qingyang, an official of Shanghai Human Resource Agency Association, said: “It is difficult to foresee an optimistic future in the salary increase because of the current uncertain economic environment. We should wait and see.”

Zhejiang: Job market picks up

Summer used to be a slow season for the job market, but things are different this year. Many companies that froze hiring since the financial crisis are recruiting again. Zhou Xiaoye has a story from Zhejiang Province in east China.

At this provincial job fair, a flooring manufacturer is collecting resumés.

The company chief says it’s the first time they’re recruiting since the economic downturn began.

Flooring manufacturer Rao Xianping said, “We’re an export company, and we’ve been hit hard by the crisis. However demand is coming back now, so we need to recruit lots of staff, in every subsidiary company.”

Besides the increase in export orders, the company is also optimistic about the domestic market.

Rao Xianping said, “The company has invested a lot in the domestic market, so we badly need employees in the sales and production sectors.”

Another company says their biggest headache is the lack of staff to handle foreign trade.

Company recruiter Hu Ronghui said, “We’ll send employees overseas as long as we recruit. ”

This isn’t an exceptional case. This job fair used to have more than 20 companies, but this year there are over a hundred.

Wang Changjiang, deputy firector of Zhejiang Laboe Exchange Center, said, “Starting from this May, there’s been a surge in job opportunities. Through July, the number of employers increased by 30 percent, while jobs increased by 4 percent.

Jobs in textiles, electronics, machinery have increased the most, while the most wanted vacancies are for sales people and technicians.

Technical Sales Manager – Paper (mkt369cs)

Job Title: Technical Sales Manager – Paper

Report To: Head of Sales Paper

Location: Changshu

Company Introduction:

Our customer is a leading global producer of industrial minerals, founded in Switzerland and has more than 100 locations in many countries. It mainly fillers and pigments derived from calcium carbonate and dolomite, and a worldwide distributor of chemical products and the major markets are the paper, plastics, paint/coatings/adhesives industries as well as construction, environment and so on.

Job Description:

The job holder will be primarily responsible for the sales performance of the designated market segment with assigned customers in China.

Responsibilities:

1. Be responsible for gathering market information, maintaining and developing business through new applications and technical sales activities;

2. Attend to customers’ feedback and sales projects, implement sales and marketing strategies to meet sales targets;

3. Visit customers frequently, keep clients and expand the relationship, analyze maintenance strategies of clients and improve / stabilize sales volume;

4. Analyze the customer’s new development trend/ business needs and competitor’s activities;

5. Good knowledge about all products, current and potential applications to support customer needs;

6. Provide customer training and education when necessary to support customer use of products and/or development of new products;

7. Take participate in new product promotions activities;

8. Handle all clients’ complaint and share information with all operation departments in time;

9. Provides accurate sales forecasts and participates in annual budget preparation.

10. Control the receivables;

Qualifications:

1. BS in technical component (Pulp & Paper Making Engineering or similar)

2. 6+ experience in paper industry or related industry;

3. Preferred sales or technical service experiences in paper chemicals or related

4. Ability to find solutions and achieve objectives and drive to completion

5. Excellent organizational and planning skill – Proactive problem solver

6. High level communication skills

7. Self motivator

8. Team player, excellent interpersonal skills and understanding of different cultures / work environments

9. Good command of English both in oral and written is a prefer;

10. Readiness to travel within China and occasionally beyond; own a car is prefer;

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mkt369cs@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Java Project Manager (it154sh)

Job Title: Java Project Manager

Report Mgr,: BU Director

Location: _ Shanghai___

Our client is one of the world’s leading software and IT services companies. They provide software and processing solutions for financial services, higher education and the public sector.

Responsibilities

The role requires a project manager with Java/J2EE technical background to lead a R&D team to support American Financial Software Business;

1. Responsible for project delivery and management. Responsible for end-to-end project management including budget management;

2. Provides strategic and tactical though leadership throughout the engagement;

3. Responsible for people Management – staffing, performance management, and development / coaching of team members.

4. Familiarize ones self with the BU / customer’s needs, specifications, design targets, the development process, design standards, and tools to support your performance

5. Keeps the Team Leader and Senior Management informed of task accomplishment, issues and status

6. Prepare detailed status reports outlining progress against the schedule and budget, identify any issues, and document new project risks

7. Conduct regular status meetings with the client project team leads and managers to review the status reports.

8. Lead a team to work with overseas product group on requirement analysis, coding, unit testing, code reviews, defect tracking and resolution for a financial software product.

Requirements:

1. Bachelor’s degree in computer science or related

2. At least 3-5 year real project management experience or good potential capability to be a PM with rich JAVA development experience;

3. Deep Knowledge about project management and PMP certificate is plus;

4. At least 5 year Java/J2EE project experience, hand-on experience in managing software implementation projects;

5. Master all aspects of java fundamentals such as OO programming, distributed computing, IO, network, Swing GUI.

6. Master all aspect of J2EE framework such as Java Servlet, JSP, JDBC, EJB (Session Bean, Entity Bean), OR Mapping framework (Hibernate) ,JMS, MDB

7. Familiar with MVC web framework such as Struts.

8. Master of relational database using SQL, query optimization. Extensive knowledge of Oracle and SQL Server.

9. Strong problem solving capability.

10. Proficient with a variety of application servers: JBoss, Websphere, WebLogic, Oracle App Server.

11. Familiar with Eclipse IDE.

12. Familiar with SVN for version control

13. Knowledge of Test Driven Development using JUnit.

14. Knowledge of Java Server Faces.

15. Fluent English in both verbal and written

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_it154sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

13th month salary not to draw full tax

CHINA has dropped the practice of levying full income tax on the 13th month salary, or double pay, as it wants to ensure the tax is fair, said the State Administration of Taxation yesterday.

Before the move, the 13th month pay was subject to full income tax, without deduction.

For instance, social welfare, health and public housing fund and the 2,000 yuan individual income tax threshold can be deducted from a regular monthly salary of 10,000 yuan (US$1,464) before income tax is levied. However, the full income tax was fully levied on the 13th month pay of 10,000 yuan.

The SAT was not available for immediate comment.

As the SAT doesn’t usually give a clarification on a new practice, an unnamed tax industry expert with one of the big four accounting firms said there are two possibilities.

One possibility is that the 13th month pay can be deemed as a one-off whole-year bonus, which enjoys a low tax burden.

The pay is divided by 12 months and then taxed. For instance, the taxable income is 833.33 yuan (10,000/12) in the method based on 10,000 yuan monthly salary.

The other option comes with a stricter tax. The 13th month salary can be combined with the December salary for taxation. It means a higher tax with pay being doubled.

“It really depends on the explanation from the local tax man on the practice,” said the source. “In practice, both methods can be applied.”

Meanwhile, SAT also makes it clear that Chinese studying or working overseas can’t be regarded as overseas Chinese to enjoy a bigger tax deduction.

People who obtain property rights in a divorce are exempted from income tax. But if they sell the property later they have to pay income tax on the transaction.

Senior Cost Accountant (fi242hz)

Company:

Job Title: Senior Cost Accountant

Location: Hang Zhou

Responsibilities:

1. Utilizing ERP system to calculate costs for internally manufactured bulk, subassemblies and finished goods, analyzing manufacturing accounting in the ERP system to ensure that activities have correctly captured materials issued, completions, labor and overhead, analyzing work order variances, analyzing reserve accounts, analyzing and allocating various product related expenses.

2. Maintains and reconciles basic and complex general ledger account balances. Analyzes account balances for accuracy, budget variances, and unusual trends. Advises management of reasons for unusual trends, budget variances, or other pending issues. Assigned accounts/activities may include work order variances, cost of sales, business use orders, inventory balances, inventory adjustments, obsolescence, and purchase price variances.

3. Analyzes the data integrity of all new inventory items. Works closely with Configuration Management Department to identify gaps and discrepancies and to recommend core database changes to ensure accurate financial reporting.

4. Responsible for the development of standard costs, product costs and reporting systems required to provide accurate financial information. Interacts with various departments to review cost for products.

5. Responsible for monitoring and analyzing inventory, obsolete inventory, and applicable general ledger accounts. Works with respective business partners to ensure proper costs (freight, duties, overhead, etc.) are applied.

6. Prepares monthly, quarterly and year-end schedules for internal reporting and external audits for accounts and activities assigned.

7. Assists in preparing annual budget

Requirements:

1. Bachelor degree or above.
2. At least 3 years working experiences as cost accountant in manufacturing industry.
3. Be familiar with ERP system.
4. Be excellent in both oral and written English.
5. Customer service originated
6. Good team work spirit.

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_fi242hz@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Senior Test Engineer (Electronic Circuit) (eng190sh)

Job Title: Senior Test Engineer (Electronic Circuit)

Report Mgr.: Project Manager

Location: _ Shanghai___

Our Client is a leader in the Electronics Manufacturing Services industry and has more than 40,000 employees in the whole world. It mainly offers complete end-to-end services to some of the world’s largest electronics manufacturers.

Responsibilities?

1. This role shall provide Project Management with accurate and timely quotations for all relevant tests, diagnosis and repair functions.

2. To act as the main interface with assigned for all tests related issues. Review all assemblies for testability and interact with the customer and design facility to improve test access, coverage, and reduce the cost of test.

3. To provide accurate test quotation for new or existing customers, or meets with customers to determine requirements, and prepares plans and quotes.

4. Along with the customer to develop the test process and Test Specifications, upgrade the test process to meet client’s requirement and obtain an optimized Test Process balancing cost, coverage and test time.

5. Develop and improves test procedures, tester hardware and software for electronic circuit board production;

6. Design and support the build and maintenance of tester, fixtures, and environmental chambers as required;

7. To provide support to the operations department through participation in the Continuous Improvement Program, and promotion of a “Quality First” mentality.

8. Contribute to the training of Test Engineers, Test Technicians, Diagnostic Technicians, Test Operators and Component Programmers.

9. Introduce control systems to ensure conformity to ISO standards and that he/she continually reviews all Department systems in order to improve their efficiency and ease of use.

Requirement:

1. BS or MS degree in Electrical/Electronics engineering with at least 4 years working experience in Test or relative Engineering field;

2. Able to develop test method and provide hardware and software that can fulfill the project needs;

3. Good understanding and practical experience on Circuit test;
4. Strong analysis & troubleshooting skills; Familiar with Circuit Test standards is a plus;

5. Excellent oral & written communication and interpersonal skills.

6. Work requires initiative and judgment, within standard procedures and a thorough knowledge of department and corporate policies and procedures dealing with the area of responsibility.

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_eng190sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

New jobs work out for 7.6m, unrest ruled out

Job creation momentum has let the nation’s minister of human resources and social security to believe that social unrest triggered by unemployment could be a thing of the past.

“I am convinced the current measures taken by the central government will prevent further social unrest from happening,” Yin Weimin told China Daily on the sidelines of a press conference at the State Council Information Office.

China has not seen any social unrest so far this year – protests, riots or demonstrations – triggered by unemployment.

The minister said Wednesday that the country created 7.57 million new jobs in 2009, some 84 percent of its annual goal.

And he added that the registered unemployment rate in urban areas stood at 4.3 percent and had been stable for some time.

Experts pointed out, though, that China’s urban unemployment rate excludes migrant workers, and said that segment of the Chinese workforce was hardest hit by the global financial crisis.

“Updated statistics have shown the employment situation is generally stable,” the minister said.

“The worst-case scenario we prepared for earlier, in which migrant workers who lost their jobs might turn up protesting, did not take place.

“And college graduates are also quite stable, with sufficient employment measures in place,” the minister told China Daily.

Government data shows that 95 percent of migrant workers had jobs last month, which was on par with the percentage working last year. And a recent shortage of labor in the Yangtze River Delta and Pearl River Delta areas, both economic heartlands, underlines the recovery of the economy and the creation of new jobs, the official said.

“This is a significant signal underlining a U-turn in China’s economy,” said Chen Yu, director of the China Institute for Occupation Research at Peking University.

But Yin pointed out that the overall employment situation remained “severe”.

More than 30 percent of China’s 6.11 million fresh college graduates were unemployed as of July and China had more than seven million young unemployed people seeking work.

About 30 percent of China’s five million recently laid-off workers remained jobless in August.

Yin said the central government would invest more money to ensure additional people find work.

“Though the employment situation is brightening, the authorities should open more channels to let migrant workers know about new jobs in the coming months,” said Liu Junsheng, a Beijing-based labor researcher and government advisor.

Experts welcomed the fact that the central government was placing so much emphasis on creating employment.

“Given the current measures, unemployment will be, perhaps, the last reason for social unrest in China,” said Chen, from the China Institute for Occupation Research.

Because any widening of the gap in affluence between rural and urban areas could lead to social problems, the authorities have pledged more efforts to close that gap.

Hu Xiaoyi, vice-minister of the human resources ministry, Wednesday said that the government was trying to improve China’s social security system. He said a rural pension program and a new cooperative medicare system were among initiatives aimed at narrowing the urban-rural gap.

The pilot rural pension program, launched in August, offers farmers older than 60 in rural areas a monthly endowment. The central government wants to roll the program out to 10 percent of counties this year and make it universal by 2020.

Minister Yin said the central government “stands firm” on its commitment to bridge the income gap between rich and poor and has plans to put a ceiling on the skyrocketing salaries of executives with State-owned enterprises.

The new document will call for executives’ pay hikes to be in line with workers’ increases, and the relevant union will have a say on bosses’ pay, the minister told China Daily.

“The central government is clear that the incomes of the masses must grow, in line with the growing economy,” he said.

Last week, the cabinet issued a new set of guidelines urging government-funded hospitals, schools and other agencies nationwide to bring in performance-related pay, instead of persisting with fixed salary increments and bonuses.

Business Development VP / Consultant (mkt368sh)

URGENT – Shanghai – TOP $$$ for an outstanding Business Development Professional with exposure to the Market Research Sector

Our Client is a leading provider of Market Research support and Data Management services. The organization has seen rapid growth with new services added every year. With 450 employees in India and China it offers a comprehensive range of data management, marketing research and business research services to clients around the world. Our client is listed by Deloitte as one of the Top 50 fastest growing technology companies in India.

Due to their rapid growth in the APAC region our client is urgently looking for a:Business Development VP / Consultant APAC to be based in Shanghai China, reporting to the India based CEO

Key Responsibilities:

Managing Sales across DMS and Market Research in APAC region:

• Develop and manage sales plan for APAC
• Developing, maintaining and growing senior client relationships and leading client project teams from project planning through execution
• Facilitate the delivery of client satisfaction including addressing key issues, problems and opportunities, and bringing in resources when needed

Own Revenue Target for APAC Region

• FY10 0.3 MM USD (new sales)
• FY11 1 MM USD

Requirements:

• Minimum 10 years’ experience, desired 5 years with market research sector exposure
• Master’s degree from reputed institution with specialization in Sales
• Market research industry knowhow
• Strong client servicing background
• Solid IT (SI/BI) Knowledge
• A proven track record of overachieving sales targets
• Excellent communication and negotiation skills
• Local Chinese or Asian Expatriates only

Our client is offering an outstanding financial package to the right candidate.

* Please send us your complete resume (in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mkt368sh@dacare.com'(Please replace “#” with “@”)
* In the email subject please include the position name and job #

Migrant workers harder to find

Now is traditionally the low season for recruiting migrant workers in the coastal areas where most exported goods are produced. But this year the peak season has continued and some manufacturers have found it hard to find workers.

In a labor market in Zhuhai, a southern coastal city in China, companies are trying to find the migrant workers they need, but very few can get enough.

One recruiter said “We only needed 50 to 60 workers this time last year. But we have hired 100 people this year, and we still need 200 more. ”

According to data from Zhuhai’s human resource center, labor demand in the city for July and August increased 100 percent over the same period last year. However, the firms got only 20 percent migrant workers they needed.

Chen Xianfeng, Department Director of Zhuhai Human Resources Center said “All of our space has been used and still more is needed.”

In Nanjing, east China, migrant workers are also hard to find. They have started to be more picky about which jobs they take.

One migrant worker said “I want to have a better job with a higher salary and free accommodation.”

One migrant worker said “I want a job with less hours and a factory that is easy to get to.”

Analysts say the new situation in the labor market is a result of more orders for manufacturers. In addition, some migrant workers find it easier and more comfortable to work locally. They are now able to find jobs in their hometowns with salaries they can accept. And so, some manufacturers are starting to transfer some of their production from coastal areas to inland locations.