Hiring Realities in China

By Frank Mulligan, Talent Software

After a hard session of soul searching about candidates and hiring managers, we came up with a few diamonds in the rough:

- Not all candidates found on recruitment portals are a waste of your time. But a huge number are. Within 3 months of hiring someone you found on one of the portals, check if he has updated his Resume.

- If you are not doing reference checks or background checks you will be caught out, sooner or later.

- If you don’t have the technical skills to add value during your interview, do something useful. For example, suggest that before completion of the hiring process your company requires a salary note as confirmation of the candidate’s stated current salary. You don’t have to use this later on but it may be useful when the final negotiations about salary are underway.

- Better still, change the format to a phone screen and ask the hiring manager for the questions.

- Even better still, just pass on the candidate to the hiring manager and let him make the assessment of his fit.

- If you are not using behavioural interviewing, or some other scientifically validated assessment, don’t call what you are doing an interview. It’s a conversation, with the interviewee in complete control.

- Don’t make your skills test freely available on the internet. Ever.

- If the candidate is right for the job ie. it has real value for him, and he is not going for it, admit that you are doing something wrong. Find out what it is.

- If your perfect candidate is never available to take your call then he’s not persuaded that this is good for him. Spend some time persuading him. If you can’t, rethink the role.

- Don’t delay an offer in the China market more than 2-3 days. If the candidate is good you have lost him. If he is not good then you might get him.

- China is a candidate’s market. If the candidate has stated an expectation for his salary, don’t even think about offering him anything less than this expectation. If he is good he will have a better offer somewhere else. If not you may get him, and spend your time wondering what his flaw is.

- In such a market as China a bird in the hand is worth two in the bush. If you have the right person in front of you, close him fast. The other ’possibility’ may prove to be a chimera.

- If a candidate is about to be given an offer, test it first. Never give an untested offer to a candidate because you don’t know what the response will be. Surprises are not welcome in the hiring process.

- If he says he has a counter-offer tell him that he will never be trusted by his company again. This is backed up by research, so it’s not a lie. If he accepts the counter-offer then thank God for your luck. If he doesn’t accept the counter-offer, find someone else anyway. If you have to hire him because there is absolutely no one else, consider the fact that this was part of his game plan all along, and make plans for the future.

Comments to: frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com