Job Trends

By Frank Mulligan, Talent Software

So here is the situation. You are a HR Manager or a Recruiter trying to get a deep understanding of the market for jobs in China.

The various salary surveys tell you something but they donít tell you where the jobs are, and by implication, where the industries are located and the candidates reside. For that you think you need the help of a big, expensive management consulting company.

Fear not, a company called Recruit.net has just come up with a simple tool to help you out.

The way that it works is that you choose a job type or family using a keyword such as IT, telecoms, automotive etc. Then you choose the locations, both countries and cities, in Asia that you want to compare. The result is a graph of job demand for that area over time, normally 4 months.

I tested it out and the results are below. If it fails to load please go directly to the site. The graph shows how you are much more likely to find telecom people in Shanghai and Beijing than in Shenzhen, even though Shenzhen is a major electronics production base.

The Job Index is based on the idea that companies tend to advertise where there is a need, and that over time that is where professional will move to. The job data is based on 1,000s of online job sites and covers over 4 million jobs in Asia. It might help some people to understand why they have difficulty hiring for certain skills in their city. And it should allow for good country to country comparisons.