It seems like such an easy quetion to answer but for many of our potential clients (and maybe some current ones) their strategy sounds more like a market summary than a plan of action: "It is hard to find good people." Beyond that there is often the usual discussions about how, when they do find people they often can't meet their salary requirements.  While tis is certainly telling and, to some degree, surmountable it is not a strategy.

The Problem:

The way I see it, today, right now, is that many firms are overwhelmed in China and are not able to segment their own hiring needs into manageable parts-of-a-whole that can be addressed individually.  While some postings are met with thousands of job seekers and the main task is that of screening, others are met with none and the third party recruiters are brought in for "more resumes."  This is the usual request for more candidates who match the job description of a position that is extemely hard to fill and may be open indefinatley. 

We don't have more resumes

We have search strategies, passive candidates, and recruiting processes.  These work best when they are meeting up with their counterpart at the client side.  They become downright useless when they are only used as a way to get "more resumes." 

Create a strategy

I was reading an artice about the talent shortage in the supply chain sector that mentioned that Coca Cola Bottling (not a client, yet) is looking at candidates that match the personality profile of the candidates for whom they are searching rather that the skill set.  Look here: http://www.supplychain.cn/en/art/?1673

"Ainsley Mann of Coca Cola Bottling disagrees with the idea that there is a talent shortage. "With recruitment, I think it's possible that we are looking at too narrow a field. Maybe we need to find people from other sectors that can be retrained for positions in logistics."

This is a strategy and when these candidates are met by the Coke recruiters they will not be screened out as having the wrong experience because they will understand they are looking for this type of person!  An elegant solution that is all to unusual in China at the moment.

So what?

So if you are having trouble finding candidates in China for a specific role and are ready to get beyond the "candidates are hard to find" stage of recruiting you need to get a strategy and see it through.  All strategies do not work as well as you hope but as you continue to measure their effectiveness and modify the techniques used to locate, motivate, and evaluate these candidates it will provide you with hireable candidates that meet your needs.

I recommend to my clients working with a firm they can trust and developing a recruiting strategy together and then making it work.  This will have the added benefit of creating a communication channel between your internal recruiters and external, third party recruiters, that is based on more that a need for more resumes and higher salaries.