O.K, grads in the UK thought things were bad and were bemoaning the fact that they can't find enough jobs and won't be achieving the £28K starting salary they expected (see my previous blog post here ), but spare a thought for the Chinese. of the 6 million grads that will be in the market this year, there are jobs for less than a quarter of them available. 4.5 milion grads looking for work?? Really pulls the issues in the UK into focus, with more then double the UK's unemployed total just coming from the grad market it shows China, though considered the "land of online opportunity" (as I heard one american software provider call it), is susceptible to the same global pressures as the rest of us. I heard a huge number of people saying China was crunchproof and it would ride the storm out almost without issue with the rest of the world looking to China to bail them out.
To some extent the sheer size of the chinese economy and the size of the export market do mean that China is best suited to ride out the storm but, let's look at this from a recruitment point of view.
With 51job.com, China's largest recruitment site saying their profits are down 8.1% in Q4 and are down over 50% year on year, the Monster owned ChinaHR.com losing $3.7 million in Q4 of 08 and Zhaopin.com (owned by SEEK), being down $10.7 million in the same period it doesn't make for overly happy reading.
The Chinese government pumped money into larger employers over there and failed to recognise the importance of the smaller players, SME level employers are now finding times much harder and have realised quite quickly that they have to stop hiring and in many cases let large number of their staff go. This creates a massive problem in the online recruitment world as companies at SME level are the ones that were the early adopters and continuous users of Online Recruitment in China.
China's new growth area will be the public sector in 2009 according to the Chinese government a hike of 25% in local government spend has been authorised nationally to try and boost emplyment figures along with a 14% rise in defence spending. However, the "Iron Rice Bowl" jobs (where you have a guaranteed job for life if you are a civil servant) will be a thing of the past so will it be aattractive to the Chinese public to work in the public sector for a comparitively low wage? The other thing is does this all add up? apparently 11.3 million jobs were created in the public sector in urban areas but the official urban unemployment figure stands at only 4.3 million... Something fishy there? Well, let's just say how you become officially unemployed in China is a little different to the rest of the world.
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Well Matt be assured I have your Blog bookmarked now ;)
It is interesting to see how the online recruitment market is evolving and as always there are winners and losers. The winners, as you rightly say are those companies who are looking at the current recruitment market as an opportunity to build an employer brand and source talented individuals for the future. We may be in a downturn now, but skill shortages will always exist and in 12 months time, we may well be on the way up and companies who have been proactive in their approach will be in the position to contact talented individuals who have already shown an interest in their business.
It is interesting to note though, that when it comes to harnessing the power of the web, so many recruiters and employers want to wait until they see an upturn before enhancing their website or in some cases building one! The problem is that this strategy will see these businesses behind the curve, trying to play catch up. If the average cost to recruit is say £5k+, it only takes a few direct hires for a website to pay for itself. And to use an old surfin anology you need to start paddling before the wave arrives, otherwise you're left behind.
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