Online Hiring Wars

By Frank Mulligan ñ Accetis International, Talent Software & Recruit China

The current War for Talent in China has a new victim: The Gaming Industry.

According to the Shanghai Daily, gaming companies in China are having to use a wide variety of different tactics to bring the right people on board. In some cases their efforts are intended to attract individual programmers but in other cases it is entire programming teams that are the target. Studios in China tend to have hundreds of programmers and new entrants can have a disproportionate effect on the hiring market when they set up.

Industry Growth
The companies in the gaming industry donít have much choice about using every and any technique that might yield talent. Years of high growth have resulted in a shortage of people who can deliver, especially those programmers who can manage other programmers.

This happens when young industries grow fast and it is to be seen in many other industries in China. When you have exponential growth in employment for many years, by definition there is a very shallow pool of talent. There are few professionals with enough experience, or time, to manage and develop other professionals. Most are busy enough just developing themselves.

According to the China Game Producersí Association, sales of online games will rise an average of 35% per cent for the forseeable future. The creation of ìgame collegesî, which offer game development courses were supposed to solve the problem but the skills shortages remain. The courses are 6-8 months long and are quite expensive, at over RMB15,000 (US$2,000) each so they cannot be expected to solve the problem alone.

Overall the industry boasts almost 20,000 people worked in Shanghai alone, and this is where most of the programming is done in China. The shortfall of staff amounts to about 2000 programmers already, and rising, according to the Shanghai Multimedia Industry Association.

As is often the case, IT or Computer Science graduates in China are not work-ready and need extensive training before they can function in the work environment.

Radical Solutions
One company, Shanda Entertainment, stationed four Mercedes cars outside the recent China Digital Entertainment Expo and Conference (Chinajoy). The cars were intended to allow Shanda to ferry potential teams to their offices, and in one day more than 10 teams took them up on the offer. Other companies in the industry face similar challenges and have had to be similarly innovative.

Most still rely on the old faithfulls like salaries and benefits to attract and retain good people. But other companies have actually gone to the market and bought out competitors just to acquire the talent.

This is not the only industry where this happens and we are likely to see more of it.

Note: The girls in the picture attended the recent Chinajoy event and are a necessary addition to this article. They are probably programmers. No, really... címon...

Email frank.mulligan@recruit-china.com
Frank Mulliganís blog ñ www.talentinchina.com