Not This Kind of Reference!
Much is happening at RightSite these days. We are cashflow positive thanks to some strong sales this year, RightSite now ranks among the 5,000 most popular sites in China according to Alexa.com, and we have been putting countless hours into recruiting new team members so that we can grow even more. (Which might be why I haven’t updated this blog in so long).
In doing all this recruiting, on top of the hiring that I have done in previous years and at prior jobs, I have learned a great deal about the hiring process in China, and would like to share some of this wisdom with both employers and job-seekers.
Despite whatever economic downturn may have occurred in China and all the newspaper stories about unemployed university graduates, 2010 seems to have brought the most competitive hiring market for employers in recent memory. Job advertisements bring in fewer applications and employers who attempt to follow methodical recruitment processes will find the most desirable candidates snatched up before their process is complete.
At RightSite we follow a fairly involved hiring process for a small firm. We require all candidates to fill out an application, insist on resumes in English, do pre-interview screening by phone, have skills tests before interviews, face-to-face interviews and reference checks after the interview before we make any offers to candidates.
And it is this next to last step — the reference check which seems to be a rare creature in Shanghai. After being an employer in Shanghai for eight years and employing somewhere north of 300 people, I have only been contacted for a reference twice. Even with the advent of online tools like LinkedIn.com which make it considerably easier to track down and contact former employers, virtually no one gets in touch.
Which leads me to my advice to job-seekers. Feel free to inflate your resume. Pad your educational criteria. Fib about your employment history. Even mislead people about your skills and experience. Because no one is really checking.
While every foreigner in the pub has heard stories of dishonest staff and companies being bilked of large sums of cash by sneaky team members, the main reason for this has nothing to do with any tendency towards dishonesty in China. Instead it has everything to do with employer carelessness and sloppy procedures. If you leave cash lying on the sidewalk, people will pick it up. And if you give people the opportunity to make more money by falsifying their employment history, then they will take advantage of it. So taking a chance on inflating your qualifications on an employment application is a safe strategy in China.
But not if you apply at RightSite. Although we are a small company without full-time HR staff, we believe that ensuring a qualified team is the best way to build our company. So we check references for managers, interns and even the ayi. Last week we asked for references from four employment candidates. Two of them we never heard from again. I am sure that those two people will have no problem finding jobs elsewhere. And I’m also certain that RightSite will be better off with having these reference-less individuals working for someone else. Hopefully our competitors.
Until next time, enjoy the Expo fever and see you again soon on Mingtiandi.
Dishonesty seems a big obstacle for employers to recruit a right person. Besides strict recruiting procedures, Every employer also has some kind of “feeling” or “insight” to tell the “true” from the “fake”. A candidate with strong career goals, passion for certain kind of job, and solid skills will come to your front with a special magnetic field that can be detected by employers who desire for talented persons. Right?
Hi Jillian,
I wish that there was some supernatural way of determining who is the best person for each job. I have been hiring people for about 17 years, and it still is hard to tell which people will fit what roles.
Honest people will love the comoplex hiring processes ’cause that’s the best way to differentiate them from the dishonest and the disqualified. But that kind of process will burden you greatly. Maybe the person you first need to hire is a Chinese partner, who have the same goal and passion with yours while have the deep knowledge about the Chinese persons and society.
Hi Jillian,
Yes, finding a local partner is one way to tackle this problem. But hiring is pretty important to us here at RightSite, so I usually handle this one directly.
References are weak indicators of a persons ability. Some study was made in the west where it was accurate in 13% of the cases. There are several reasons for that. One cause could bean employer who wants to get rid of his under-performing staff and promises him or her a nice reference if he or she leaves. Likewise, an employer may be unhappy with someone who they have invested a lot of time and money on departing all of a sudden and will therefore not give a good reference.
As written references are very rare here, I have occasionally asked for a contact person to call at the candidates previous company. If the candidiate avoids giving one then I would shy away from that candidate.
Still, all an employer should reasonably expect to get out of an reference is the past employers name, time of employment and title.