October 2006 - Recruiting in China

HR Tips and Practices

Major Flaws in Many Applicant Tracking Systems

By Nicheboards.com
Nicheboards.com Report
Printer Version

Although measuring candidate sources is vital, most ATS’s fail to make the grade.

Many companies are using applicant tracking systems (ATS) to find top job seekers faster and improve hiring efficiency. But many of these systems do not accurately record which job boards are sending quality candidates to their clients, says the world’s largest alliance of employment Web sites, Nicheboards.com. Companies who rely on applicant sourcing reports that are often hopelessly inaccurate may make online recruiting decisions that end up lowering the number of quality candidates they actually receive.

Founded in 2001, Nicheboards.com markets the services of 11 member job boards, each targeting a specific industry or profession. Nicheboards.com’s expertise and massive audience, a combined 3 million visitors, makes the group a leading authority on recruiting trends and practices. Many Nicheboards.com clients process applicants through ATS’s. These systems are designed to screen candidates and track their progress through the hiring pipeline. They also claim to record information about hiring trends, including where companies locate their best employees.

The only effective way to track the source of hires is through “tracking tags”. The least effective way is by giving each candidate a complex tree of choices to indicate where they heard about the opportunity. Nicheboards.com experts say that some ATS’s rely on drop-down menus where candidates are asked how they found a job opening. Some list only a few of the sites being used by their clients. Other systems force job seekers through a maze of several Web pages and menus to determine how they’ve learned about a job. The more menus and choices, the more likely the candidate will either lose patience, not find what they’re looking for, or simply select “corporate site” or “from a friend”.

Here’s a simple example of how drop-down menus result in bad information:
A candidate goes to Google.com, finds a job board, locates a job, then clicks through to the company’s ATS. When asked, the candidate is likely to indicate that they found the job through Google – that’s where they started. But the job would not have been found if it were not posted on the job board.

Here’s another example:
A candidate goes to a crossposting network website, locates a job, clicks through to the job board where the job is hosted (which is paying to advertise on the crossposting network to increase reach), then clicks through to an ATS. When asked, the candidate cannot find the crossposting partner, so has to choose something arbitrarily. Even if the crossposting partner is listed, the actual source of the candidate is the original job board who used the network, which does not get credit.

A third example:
A candidate goes to an ATS system from a job board. When asked, the candidate wants to appear loyal to the company they are apply for (as if it is the only company they would ever want to work for), so choose “Corporate Website” or something similar.

A fourth example:
A candidate receives an E-mail from a friend who has seen an ideal career on a certain job board, telling them about the opportunity and giving them a link to the job details on that job board. The candidate visits the job, then clicks through to the ATS. When asked, the candidate will say they heard about the job from a friend.

A fifth example:
A candidate finds a career opportunity on a job board. To find more information about the company, the candidate visits the corporate website and then applies directly on this site. There is no record whatsoever that informs the company how the candidate originally saw the job.

What is a “tracking tag”?
A tracking tag is a piece of information embedded into the URL of the application link (such as source=TelecomCareers). This is tracked throughout the entire candidate application session, and allows the ATS to give a fully accurate picture of candidate sources. Does your ATS use tracking tags? Call and find out.

How inaccurate can ATS source reports be?
One client of JobsInLogistics.com recently said it had received about a hundred applications and had five candidates on interview for various jobs placed on this board. However, the web site log showed that JobsInLogistics.com had delivered more than 2,000 candidates. In countless other similar instances, ATS reports were showing little or no traffic from job boards even though they had funneled 100’s or 1,000’s of quality applicants their way. “If companies don’t know who’s providing the best value, they have no way of picking and supporting the winners,” says Eric Shannon, the creator of Nicheboards.com member LatPro.com, which serves Spanish-speaking, bi-lingual workers. “Not having information (or having bad information) locks them into a cyclical pattern where they’re using the same boards over and over and not getting the results they need. The way out of the cycle is to track the results of all the players, niche boards and others. ATSs should provide accurate information (through tracking tags) and if they’re not, companies have to speak with their ATS providers about fixing this.”

As a result, job boards may not receive credit for providing promising candidates. Such information is vital for companies deciding how to allocate their recruiting budgets. They should be spending more money on online services that generate the largest volume of strong candidates per dollar and to cut spending on less effective job boards. “Organizations need to know where their richest sources are,” says Don Firth, founder of Nicheboards.com and creator of two of the group’s member sites, JobsInLogistics.com and AllRetailJobs.com, the nation’s leading boards for the logistics and retail industries. “As they scrutinize their budgets, they seek the best values. If they don’t have the right information, they can’t make the best decisions.”

ChinaJob

Oct, Tue, 2006

Investing in China

China to enhance beneficial co-op with ASEAN

NANNING, China, Oct. 31 – China is fully prepared to enhance mutually beneficial cooperation with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), and will strive to become ASEAN members’ permanent good neighbor, good friend and good partner, the Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao said on Monday.

On the sidelines of the commemorative summit marking the 15th anniversary of China-ASEAN Dialogue Relations, Wen met separately with leaders from the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia and Cambodia. The leaders recalled the development of China-ASEAN relations in such fields as politics, economy and trade, culture, and security, and pledged to enhance their friendly relations to a higher level.

China and the Philippines have selected agriculture, infrastructure construction and mineral resources exploitation as the top priorities for bilateral cooperation. China hopes that all the cooperation agreements in these fields will be fully implemented at an early date, Wen said while meeting with Philippine President Gloria Arroyo.

Singapore is China’s biggest trading partner among the 10 ASEAN members, and the two countries have carried out fruitful cooperation in recent years, Wen told Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong.

Wen hoped that the China-Singapore cooperation project in the Suzhou Industrial Park would be further pushed forward, and that Singapore would take an active part in the economic cooperation in China’s coastal and inland areas.

Meeting with Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, Wen proposed four priority areas to strengthen the friendly bilateral relationship.

The four areas include: to improve exchanges of high-level visits and increase political mutual trust, to launch a feasibility study on a closer economic partnership aimed at pushing forward the bilateral economic and trade cooperation comprehensively, to strengthen energy cooperation, and to reinforce joint efforts to combat transnational crimes.

Describing economic and trade cooperation the pillar for the development of China-Indonesia relations, Wen agreed with Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono that the two sides should work together to expand the two-way trade and mutual investment, and make more efforts to facilitate cooperation in the tourism industry.

Wen also told Cambodia’s Prime Minister Hun Sen that China would take more measures to contribute to Cambodia’s sustainable growth and to achieve win-win outcomes.

With closer economic and trade bonds, China will continue to help with ASEAN countries in their infrastructure construction, encourage Chinese enterprises to invest in the ASEAN market, and join ASEAN countries’ local economic development efforts, the Chinese premier told ASEAN leaders.

On the joint exploitation between China, the Philippines and Vietnam in the South China Sea, Wen said that the cooperation had yielded some results. He stressed that the three countries should strive to push for substantial progress in the future.

The joint exploitation is conducive to maintaining peace and stability in the South China Sea, and significant to enhancing mutual trust and cooperation between the three countries, Wen said, urging the three sides to hold consultations over the joint exploitation for the next phase so as to achieve substantial outcomes.

The ASEAN leaders agreed that their countries’ relations with China had gained momentum, and were willing to cooperate closely with China to achieve substantial development.

They said the China-ASEAN commemorative summit was an important event that would surely usher a new era in the development of the relationship between the two sides.

ChinaJob

Oct, Tue, 2006

HR Tips and Practices

Airbus to train Chinese maintenance technicians

Oct. 31 – China’s Civil Aviation University has signed an agreement with Airbus, the European aircraft maker, on a three-year program to train Chinese maintenance technicians.

The program will start next year and facilities will include a computer-equipped training classroom, a plane installation, and a data room to be completed by 2009, all supported by Airbus.

Airbus will provide training in plane structure, maintenance and repair, according to the memorandum signed here Monday.

The company will also select at least 30 maintenance trainers and send them to Europe for advanced training and technical knowledge after a year.

In the next five years, it was estimated that China would need at least 5,000 maintenance engineers for Airbus aircraft, said Pierre Steffen, vice president of Airbus China in charge of customer service.

“It is the market demand that facilitated this cooperation, forming our training strategy of related Airbus technologies for Chinese maintenance engineers,” he said.

He said the Civil Aviation University had a prestigious reputation in the aviation industry. The cooperation would also help Airbus China to recruit prospective graduates.

China signed a deal last week to buy 150 Airbus 320 planes. At the same time, Airbus signed agreements to open a final assembly line in China, its first outside Europe.

Airbus is displaying a scale model of the A380 super-jumbo jet at a major air show which opened Monday afternoon in Zhuhai, a coastal city in south China’s Guangdong Province.

ChinaJob

Oct, Tue, 2006

Investing in China

Renewed focus of trade

The adjustment of customs duties that is to take effect tomorrow marks a significant change in the way China prioritizes its trade sector.

As a fast-developing economy, China has benefited tremendously from its export-led growth during most of the past quarter of a century. However, no longer will the country put trade growth before everything.

The Ministry of Finance recently announced that the country decided to impose temporary tariffs on 110 exported goods and cut tariffs on 58 imported products since the beginning of November.

Clearly, this move shows that the Chinese authorities now attach more importance to external trade balance and domestic industrial restructuring than merely double-digit trade growth.

On the one hand, the hike of export taxes and the cut in import duties will definitely put a drag on the country’s soaring trade surplus.

Along with China’s rise as a global manufacturing power in recent years, value-added processing trade fueled by an accelerated inflow of foreign direct investment has hugely inflated the country’s trade surplus.

In the first nine months of this year, the country’s imports and exports increased by nearly one-fourth to hit US$1.27 trillion, generating a trade surplus of US$109.85 billion. This three-quarter net export exceeded that record-high annual trade surplus of US$102 billion in 2005, which had already more than tripled the US$32 billion in the previous year.

Given intensifying trade tensions with major trade partners like the United States and the European Union, which suffer a huge trade deficit with China, it is fairly reasonable for the Chinese Government to rein in the rapid growth of the trade surplus.

Such efforts will both help reduce imbalances in global trade and ease pressure a soaring trade surplus and inflow of foreign investment exert on the country’s monetary policy. The Chinese central bank has been trying to squeeze the credit supply to cool down economic growth, but a ballooning foreign exchange reserve has kept pumping liquidity into the domestic market.

On the other hand, by controlling the export of goods, the production of which involves the mass consumption of energy and resources as well as heavy pollution, the Chinese Government is sending a clear-cut signal to domestic industries that they must bid farewell to the extensive growth pattern for now.

In the past, as long as the trade sector could serve as a growth engine by creating jobs and a trade surplus, local governments did not pay much attention to the environment and resource costs of extensive trade growth.

Nonetheless, as the country is shifting away from a growth strategy that stresses speed towards a new one that focuses on sustainability, the country’s trade pattern also needs to undergo a fundamental change.

A customs duty that discourages energy-and-resource-intensive export is a needed step to push domestic enterprises to raise their energy efficiency and environmental awareness.

China Daily

ChinaJob

Oct, Tue, 2006

Shanghai

Company Introduction:
An European furniture Company, top in the industry (employee more than1300)

Responsibilities:
Assures, based on the indications received from the Direction Purchases on the suppliers from whose to provision and in relation to the programming of the production, the management of the programming orders and the advance store clerks for all the materials relatively to the origin Asia area, guaranteeing timeliness and punctuality in the deliveries of the materials from the suppliers to the productive plants.

On the supply of the requirements elaborates from the office supplying HQ:
1.In charge to forward to suppliers local China of the orders receipts from the other centres of the Group (Italy/Rumania/Brazil).
2.Verification acceptances orders and correspondence with the relative formal documentation (for shape, etc).
3.Guarantee thanks to a follow up continuous, the corrected advance of the order, second previewed how much from the issued orders.
4.Verify all the inherent aspects the opportune emitted document preparation for the export from the supplier and/or the shipping company. It supports the supplier in the operations of booking (ctr and/or you space airplane second) the instructions received during contractual definition. Give information to the issuing centre of the order of the happened shipment with relative accompaniment documents goods (invoice, B/L, packing list, certified origin, certificate quality, etc).
5.Assures the own participation to the program of qualification and supplying certification of the park, guaranteeing the respect of the standards qualitative you and quantitative to you defined in collaboration with the other actors of the team and according to the business procedures.

Requirements:
1.Bachelor degree or above
2.Good communication skill
3.3 years working experience or above
4.Working experience in logistic is preferred

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mn109sh@dacare.com’

ChinaJob

Oct, Tue, 2006

Shanghai

Buyer

Company Introduction:
An European furniture Company, top in the industry (employee more than1300)

Responsibilities:
1.Responsible for the purchase of the raw materials, relatively at the market Chinese, through the phases of market research, dealing, definition of the price and of the contractual conditions and monitoring of the delivery, predisposing the opportune ones reports for the control of balance-sheet.
2.Assures, online with the indications of his own Responsible, the realization of deepened market researches (finding technical information, trades, of performance, etc) to the aim to identify the suppliers, relatively to coming from materials from China (-a- item standard; – b- of new fabrication on the base of the demands advanced from R&D), in possession of requirement of quality and price online with the business requirements
3.Assures, on the base of the standards defined from the just Responsible one, the deepened analysis of the productive ability to the suppliers, is in qualitative terms and quantitative, to the aim to assign to every supplier perfectly realizable orders and to the smaller costs for the Group.
4.Support his own Responsible in the definition of the price of the acquired raw materials, preparing the comparisons of the useful offered ones for the final dealing, to the aim to obtain prices and quality of the favourable products in relation to the particular business requirements and the total strategy of the Company
5.Assures the statistics and predisposition reports finalizes you to the continuous monitoring of the costs supported for the supplies. It assures the own participation to the program of qualification and supplying certification of the suppliers park, guaranteeing the respect of the standards qualitative you and quantitative to you defined in collaboration with the other actors of the team and according to the business procedures. Verification the level of “ethical”of the supplier, in observance of the rules of Social Responsibility and Acclimatizes them. It second assures the subscription of supply contracts the directives received from the just responsible one.

Requirements:
1.Bachelor degree or above
2.Good command of Italian.
3.2 years working experience or above
4.Working experience in purchasing is preferred

* Please send us your complete resume (both in Chinese and in English) to: ‘topjob_mn108sh@dacare.com’

ChinaJob

Oct, Tue, 2006

Investing in China

IBM, Lehman create 180-million-dollar fund for investments in China

BEIJING (AFP) – Computing giant IBM and investment bank Lehman Brothers, both of the United States, said they had tied up to create a 180-million-dollar fund earmarked for investments in China.

The China Investment Fund will target mid-stage to mature public and private companies across several industries, the companies said at a joint briefing in Beijing.

Christopher Manning, managing director of Lehman Brothers Private Equity, said the two companies had capabilities that were “highly complementary.”

The partnership, which marks the first cooperation between the two, will bring together 90 million dollars and three support staff from each side to manage the fund.

Beyond funding, IBM and Lehman will also provide management and technology support to the companies in which they invest.

Manning said that Lehman Brothers currently has an investment group focused on China’s real estate market, a sector excluded from the China Investment Fund’s scope.

ChinaJob

Oct, Mon, 2006

Announcements

China’s biggest air show set to open

ZHUHAI, China The world’s major aircraft makers gather this week for China’s biggest air show, looking to the booming Chinese market to drive sales in coming decades as their industry’s growth elsewhere slows.

Boeing, Airbus and companies from 18 other countries including Russia and Brazil are displaying aircraft, radar equipment and other technology at the five-day show, which opens Tuesday in this southern town near Hong Kong.

China is expected to be the fastest- growing market for commercial aircraft over the next two decades. Boeing said last week that it expected carriers to purchase 2,900 new planes worth $280 billion over that period.

Held every two years, the Zhuhai show is the premier showcase for competitors hoping to break into China’s aircraft market and for the fledging Chinese industry to attract customers.

China signed a deal last week to buy 150 Airbus A320 planes, in a boost for the European aircraft maker, which has suffered costly delays with the A380 superjumbo jet. At the same time, Airbus signed agreements to open a final-assembly line in China, its first outside Europe.

At the Zhuhai show, Airbus was displaying a scale model of the A380 but no full-size aircraft.

Other exhibitors include Embraer, a Brazilian maker of smaller regional jets, which in 2004 became the first foreign aircraft maker to open a factory in China. Dozens of companies from China’s state-run aerospace industry also are showcased at the exhibition.

Displays include a model cabin of an ARJ-21, which is meant to be China’s first contender in the market for mid-range jets. The plane, which reportedly is to seat 78 to 105 passengers, is made by China Aviation Industry, also known as AVIC I. The company has not said when it expects to bring its first models to market.

Russian manufacturers are showing off fighter jets and military cargo planes, reflecting China’s importance to Russian arms exporters. The United States and the European Union have barred arms sales to China since its 1989 crackdown on pro-democracy activists.

Russian aircraft on display in Zhuhai included supersonic Sukhoi fighters, but there was no indication Monday that Moscow would be showing its most advanced aircraft. Russian military planners are reportedly uneasy about selling their best technology to China.