It’s Beta, Baby!

Hi Gang! I’ve been absent from Mingtiandi again, but this time it’s been for a good reason – because we’ve been working all hours to launch RightSite.Asia into public beta. We were in private beta for a few months, madly chasing out the bugs and adding content to the site to make it ready for public viewing.  Consider this a big shout-out to all the people who helped us test the site and contributed their ideas.

During the last two months we have been able to accomplish some major tasks that make this public beta version of RightSite a huge improvement over the private beta. F’rinstance…

• Added more than 200 factories warehouses and other facilities to our directory
• Dug up another 40 industrial zones to complement the 1,500 already in the directory
• Created some groovy in-house advertising with the help of Paper Stone Scissors
• Added a directory of Shanghai’s industrial property agents
• Made sure the (*&^%$#@! site works right

Besides working on the site, we have been very busy the last month with building our team.  We are currently hiring interns for a few different areas, a content manager, and a marketing person. Overall, the response to our job advertisements has been very encouraging.  While the economic crisis makes it hard to earn money, it certainly makes it much easier to hire staff. I have been recruiting people off and on for the last six years in Shanghai , so I thought I would share a few notes about this year’s process and how it compares to prior years.

• Application volume — we are getting a much large volume of applicants than previous years. (duh)
• Big companies — a disproportionate number of the applicants are coming from big multinational companies.  Is it because these companies have tbe most experience in managing a downturn (and the local companies will catch up later) or is it just that the mutinationals steered themselves into a mess and now are bailing as fast as they can?
• Marketing — out of the positions that we are hiring for, Marketing Executive is by far the most applied for.  Are companies cutting their marketing staff more than other departments
• Hallucinogen use — we have received applications from a number of folks who have run through three or four jobs in the last two years but still want prime salaries. I thought downturns were when reality was supposed to set in?

But the biggest difference in hiring new team members this year is that we can do so at a sane pace.  One of the key indicators that it was time to sell my previous company when I did so back in 2007 was the challenges of recruiting. During 2006 and 2007 in Shanghai, companies recruiting staff were forced to accelerate and simplify their recruitment processes to ensure that they had a chance at the best candidates.  Quite simply, if companies did not take the first chance they had to hire someone, or agree to overpay, then they would have trouble hiring candidates.

That’s no way to run a business.

So in 2009, it seems that a bit of normalcy has returned to the market.  The numbers of truly desperate applicants are still fairly low — it’s more that the pace of hiring has returned to what it would be during the good times in the US or Europe.

With the recruitment opportunities available, and our sexy new beta site, RightSite should be able to rapidly establish itself as a productive forum for the industrial property community. Hope you will stop by the site and let us know what you think.