Category News of China

Govt jobs best bet in ‘bad times’

The 775,000 candidates knew only 175 out of every 10,000 would get the chance to work in central government departments but that did not stop them from taking the national civil services exam Sunday.

Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security figures show 21 percent more candidates wrote the exam this year. The candidates, most of them graduating students, are fighting for 13,566 “gold rice bowls”, or central government department posts.

A candidate shows her admit card for national civil service exam in Hefei, Anhui province November 30, 2008. About 775,000 people are competing for 13,566 government jobs this years. [Xinhua]

China Disabled Person’s Federation jobs have attracted the highest number of candidates for a post: 4,723.

Candidates who pass the exam will be called for interviews and have to take a professional test before March 15, 2009. The successful ones can expect to get an offer before June, the ministry said.

“A civil service job is ideal for me. Although my current job might pay better, I want stability, more leisure time and more personal space. And all those can be got only as a civil servant,” said Qian Qi, 22, who now works as an assistant in a foreign-funded company in Jiangsu province.

Yang Shiqiu, vice-minister of human resources and social security, said earlier that more candidates are competing for civil service jobs this year because of growing unemployment and the advantages such posts offer during these difficult times.

Cong Cong, a postgraduate student of Nanjing University, said: “I didn’t think of beating so many candidates for a job when I applied for a position offered in the Ministry of Education. But I have to because I’ve submitted my resume to about 60 firms and got only 10 replies, and no offers.”
November and December are the best time for candidates to get a high-end job, and half the students from Cong’s department should have got offers by now. But this year, only two or three of them have been able to find a job. “Big or small, the civil services exam gives us hope,” she said.

Almost 65 percent of the 5,000 people polled online recently said they would take the exam next year again if they fail this year. The survey also showed almost half of them had already written the exam once before.

“I would definitely try again if I don’t get through this time,” Qian said. “I’ll keep on trying even if the success ratio is 1:100 or 1:1,000.” Qian passed the written exam last year but could not get past the first round of interview for a job in the Ministry of Commerce.

Even if candidates fail to clear the national civil services exam, they still have the chance of passing the provincial service tests.

Sun Han, a student of Zhejiang University’s law department, said: “I know the chance is slim but I will still try. I have prepared for the test for six months, and in case I fail in the national level test, I still have a chance to take a test in my hometown in Hangzhou in January for a job.”

The provincial civil service test is much like the national exam but offers posts in local government departments.

The severe competition this year has made authorities tighten supervision, too. Radio management departments and police have taken steps to prevent candidates from cheating by using mobile phones or radio sets. A person found cheating will be banned from taking exams for five years.

Shanghai to recruit Wall St, City financial talent

SHANGHAI, Nov 28 (Reuters) – Officials from Shanghai, China’s financial hub, will travel to the United States and Europe next month on a recruiting mission, potentially offering jobs to fund managers, policy analysts and others left jobless by the financial crisis.

Wu Jianrong, deputy director of the Shanghai Financial Service Office, told the official Xinhua news agency on Friday that the delegation would go to London, Chicago and New York in search of employees.

Financial institutions in Shanghai listed more than 170 vacancies specifically for foreigners as of Nov. 19, Xinhua quoted Sheng Yuruo, the office’s human resources head, as saying.

Thousands of investment banking jobs have been axed on Wall Street and the City of London as the global financial crisis has pushed some of the industry’s biggest names into bankruptcy or buyouts.

Shanghai hopes to recruit specialists in such areas as risk management and control, asset management, product research and development, macroeconomics and policy analysis, the Xinhua report said.

Institutions looking for staff include the China Financial Futures Exchange, the Shanghai Stock Exchange, the Shanghai Futures Exchange, securities agencies, insurance companies and banks, it added.

Sheng said detailed information would be available on the websites sjr.sh.gov.cn, 21cnhr.gov.cn and www.sh.xinhuanet.com. (Reporting by Edmund Klamann; editing by Simon Jessop)

Chinese companies look to Wall Street for talent

Chinese recruiter Career International announced today it is preparing to go to Wall Street to find financial talent for its domestic clients, the first time for a local human resources company to directly find overseas financial expertise for Chinese enterprises.

Gao Yong, president of the Beijing-based HR company, told China Daily that this is an ideal time for businesses to recruit high-quality personnel engaged in finance, since the financial tsunami has led to laid-offs of banking and financing talents, who have greatly reduced their package expectations.

Meanwhile, unemployed Wall Street staff, with rich experience and professional skills, is eyeing huge opportunities in emerging market, like China and India.

Career International will soon put recruitment ads in the Wall Street Journal and its website and organize teams to hold job fairs in the United States to attract Wall Street talents.

Worsening financial crisis affects job market

China’s human resources authorities say the worsening global financial conditions have begun to weigh on the country’s job market. That’s the message released at a press conference on Thursday. But officials denied rumors that there have been massive cuts in employees

According to the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the employment situation for 2008 as a whole, is stable. Yin Weimin noted that one of the ministry’s top concerns is the ripple effect of the global economic malaise. It has forced increasing numbers of small and medium-sized enterprises to close and caused job losses, especially after October. He said the government is taking measures to maintain employment stability.

In the first ten months, the number of new employees totaled 10.2 million, slightly more than the full-year target of 10 million. And the urban unemployment rate was 4 percent, below the government’s target of about 4.5 percent for the whole year. However, the future picture might be gloomier than the current statistics indicate.

China to monitor possible mass layoffs, large-scale labor disputes

BEIJING, Nov. 17 (Xinhua) — As mass layoffs and labor disputes become more frequent when global economic slowdown wipes out more companies from business, Chinese government has urged local authorities to make best efforts to properly respond.

The top priority should be given to ensuring stable employment, said China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security (MOHRSS) in a notice issued on Monday.

Investigation should be carried out concerning individual companies’ possible layoffs, especially labor-intensive factories, it said. The labor situation of companies that go bankrupt should be closely monitored.

In October, Local government in Dongguan of Guangdong Province, where many labor-intensive companies located, took out more than 24 million yuan (3.5 million U.S. dollars) to compensate for the salaries of over 7,000 workers, who was left helpless when a company owner secretly fled.

Emergency plans should be formulated in order to better prevent and deal with incidents involving a large group of unemployed workers, and make sure to report to higher level of the government and make appropriate arrangement as soon as possible, it said.

An efficient and convenient channel should be created for people to appeal for arbitration of labor disputes, so as to resolve major or mass disputes in time, it said.

The notice also required that arrangements be made to guarantee unemployment insurance, encourage reemployment, and better serve the migrant workers.

HR official: China confident of hitting job goals

The Minister of Human Resources and Social Security says the global financial crisis has had a negative impact on the domestic job situation. But Yin Weimin is confident of achieving the country’s whole-year employment goals.

According to figures from the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, the supply of new jobs in China in the first three quarters fell year-on-year. While growth in the number of new employees has started to slow.

He says the most vulnerable groups during this financial crisis are workers in export and labor-intensive fields. As the economy slows, the impact will be felt in the fourth quarter and the first half of next year. But he says he is confident in achieving this year’s goals of creating 10 million jobs and reemploying 10 million laid-off workers.

Yin Weimin, Ministry of Human Resources & Social Security said “By the end of the year, the employment and social security goals, which were set in Premier Wen Jiabao’s government work report, will be met.”

In the first nine months of the year, 9.4 million workers found jobs in urban areas, and 4 million laid-off workers found new jobs.

Minister Yin says the country’s sound and stable economic fundamentals will guarantee employment and social security. For example, the GDP growth rate for the first three quarters in Guangdong Province was 10.4 percent.

To help increase employment, the government will adopt a series of measures, like providing small loans to support the development of labor-intensive companies and encourage the creation of new businesses.

SMEs Urged to Hire Talents Now

Staff layoffs at a number of multinational companies (MNCs) in the country as a result of the worldwide financial crisis should present an opportunity for small and medium-sized domestic enterprises (SMEs) to grab whatever talent they can, according to the head of a global recruitment agency.

The SMEs should do so before the MNCs realize the resilience of the Chinese economy and start rehiring sometime next year, said Tony Goodwin, CEO of Antal International.

Hiring people now can bring greater long-term benefits than firing, Goodwin told China Daily in an exclusive interview.

In these uncertain times when developed economies, especially the US, are sliding into a recession, corporate executives should think “long-term” in formulating corporate human resources strategies, Goodwin said.

In China, US companies tend to react a little more aggressively to the perceived effect of the global economic downturn in the reduction of their workforce, Goodwin said. Domestic enterprises and European multinationals have shown much greater restraint in their response to the unfolding crisis, he said.

The conservative approach is a wise one because of the underlying strength of the larger developing economies, particularly China.

“Firms that are now firing people will experience problems in coping with the growth of business next year,” Goodwin said. “They will have no choice but to start rehiring then.”

As some MNCs are on the downsizing path, they have provided a window of opportunity for the small- and medium-sized companies to recruit the talents they would not be able to find in the past.

“If the financial crisis had not had happened, the smaller companies would never have stood a chance of competing with the big corporations for top managers,” Goodwin said. “Now is the best time for them to tap the market for talent.”

Goodwin also said that instead of cutting staff, foreign companies can save costs by speeding up the process of localization by hiring more Chinese managers and professionals, rather than bring people from their own countries. The quality of Chinese talent, especially those who have worked at foreign companies, has improved rapidly, he said.

Liew Mun Leong, CEO of Singapore-based MNC CapitaLand, one of the largest investment and real estate companies in China, said the firm will hire even more locals in 2009 to eventually have a 100 percent Chinese management team.

Hard times for migrant workers in Guangdong

Thousands of migrant workers in the Pearl River Delta are packing up and heading home, as jobs and decent wages in the region become increasingly hard to find.

“There just wasn’t enough work; I was barely making my basic salary,” Wen Caixia, who quit her job at a shoe factory in Dongguan, Guangdong Province, in favor of a return to her village in Hubei Province, told China Daily yesterday at Guangzhou East Railway Station.

Migrant workers who quit their jobs in Guangdong Province arrive in Zhengzhou, Henan Province, November 3, 2008. [China Daily]

Wen said she and her husband had been working in Dongguan for more than two years.

“Over the past few months, the company just wasn’t getting enough orders. There was never any chance of overtime, so we were unable to save any money,” she said.

“The living costs are very high here, so I think it’s better if I go home and take care of my son,” she said.

Before boarding her train, Wen said she hoped to return to the province in January for the Spring Festival.

“It might be easier to find a job then, and hopefully I’ll be able to make more money,” she said.

Also waiting for a train yesterday was Liang Dong, an IT engineer who said he was taking a sabbatical from his job at a printed circuit board factory in the Nanhai district of Foshan.

“The company has seen its orders plummet since the beginning of the financial crisis,” he said.

“My boss said that I could take a long holiday, but it will be very hard to make a decent living.”

Liang said he will have a good rest before deciding whether to return to Guangdong or look for work elsewhere.

A ticket seller surnamed Guan at Guangzhou East Station, said that over the past few weeks there had been a marked increase in the number of migrant workers heading home to Chongqing and Sichuan, Hunan and Hubei provinces.

Liang Jiamin, an official with the Guangdong labor department, said on Thursday: “Many workers have lost their jobs or gone without pay as a result of firms going bust or downsizing their operations.

“Labor and social security departments across the province, especially those based in the Pearl River Delta region, have been told to do all they can to help people get the money they are owed,” he said.

“We are also trying to help people to find new jobs,” Liang said.

In the third quarter of this year, the number of job vacancies in Guangdong fell by almost 17 percent year on year to 2.1 million, he said.

Yahoo to lay off at least 10% of workforce

Internet giant Yahoo announced on Tuesday that it planned to lay off at least 10 percent of its workforce over the next few months as sales declined for the third consecutive quarter this year.

At least 1,500 employees will lose their jobs as part of Yahoo’s cost-saving plan, which Yahoo hoped would reduce costs by 400 million U.S. dollars a year.

The company said it would also achieve “substantial additional cost savings” by addressing “structural inefficiencies.”

Also on Tuesday, Yahoo said its third-quarter sales, excluding commissions, were 1.32 billion dollars, a decrease of 21 million from the previous quarter.

Its third quarter profits were 54.3 million dollars, or 4 cents per share, down 77 million dollars from the previous quarter, a 64-percent decline.

In a statement, Yahoo Chief Executive Jerry Yang said that economic conditions and online advertising had softened during the third quarter.

Yahoo now projects that 2008 revenue will be between 7.18 billion and 7.38 billion dollars, down from a forecast, issued three months ago, of 7.35 billion to 7.85 billion.

Yang said the company would continue to balance the investment in new products with a tight control on costs.

“Despite a tough environment, we remain optimistic about Yahoo’s future,” he said during a conference call with analysts.

Following the release of the third quarter revenue report, Yahoo shares lost 6.1 percent, or 79 cents, to 12.07 dollars in regular trading on Tuesday and then gained more than 5 percent in after-hours trading.

Overseas Chinese urged to come home

The government will continue to promote policies aimed at enticing skilled overseas Chinese to return home to develop their careers and build an innovative country.

“It is the talent pool that empowers China to compete in the campaign of global innovation,” Wan Gang, science and technology minister, said during the 5th Overseas Chinese Forum Worldwide yesterday in Beijing.

The government has always endeavored to cultivate the nation’s technological talent base, and its human resources in regard to the technology fields are now among the best in the world, Wan said.

China is emerging as an ever-popular destination for foreign students, with numbers steadily rising over the past few years, he said.

The country already ranks sixth in the world’s overseas study market, according to the latest research of the China Association of Science and Technology.

“However, the market is still hungry for cutting-edge technological talents,” Wan said at the forum, which attracted more than 200 overseas Chinese from 14 foreign countries.

“The forum aims to be a bridge for overseas Chinese to learn about the favorable policies of the Chinese government, and share cooperative purposes with domestic peers,” Li Haifeng, the chief of the Overseas Chinese Affairs Office of the State Council, said.

“I made the right decision to come back to China and restart my career here,” Xue Lan, chief of Tsinghua University’s Public Policy and Management School, said, after studying and working in America for about 20 years before the 1990s.

However, Xue said that China still has a long way to go to promote “trilateral networks among academia, state and industry”.

The current global financial crisis could increase world unemployment by an estimated 20 million, according to the International Labour Office earlier this month.

Insiders said that although the crisis might also plague China, it could serve as opportunity to entice more overseas Chinese home.

“My former colleagues in America call me every day to consult me on the latest information and chances to work in China since the recent economic crisis hit America,” Wang Dazong, general manager of Beijing Automotive Industry Holding Company, who studied in America and worked for General Motors, told China Daily.

The Overseas Chinese Forum will finish today.