Are Recruiters Hurting You in China?
I am afraid many recruiters do little for the recruiting industry name in China. Some recruiters are even hurting you. Are recruiters hurting you?
I learned about a Western company recently that is failing in China. It has recruiters that speak his language and are bankrupting him. Most candidates work for him 6 months, and then the recruiter who placed them places them with another company. They keep moving these people around quickly to increase their placements. They encourage these people to lie on their resume, so it does not look like they are job hopping though they are.
The Western company has two apparent problems.
- They have the wrong company leader who people like to leave.
- They pit recruiters against each other, and so get greedy low-level recruitment.
Their recruiters only get paid if they win, so they need many projects and fast turnaround on people. People who interview well need to be placed again and again. They offer a 6 -month guarantee to make it seem that they place good people.
Are Recruiters Hurting You Like This?
They tell these untrustworthy placements that they must stay 6 months. They will coach them in, so it is a kind of partnership between the recruiter and the candidate.
This makes things very hard for the hiring manager. They must not only defeat the candidates who are not coming clean, but must also defeat the recruiter whose central goal is to sell the candidate successfully. Then the company has to pay the recruiter for putting them through this.
Is it any wonder that hiring is mediocre? It is a sad state of affairs and dooms the hiring manager as well as the company.
The problems are structural in that they pit recruiters against each other thinking this gets them a more complete pool. Unfortunately, it gets them a more troublesome filtering process. Too many candidates can lead to beauty contests between recruiters where the most perfect resume wins if he or she can interview OK. Recruiters are just trying to get lucky and massaging the truth helps them get lucky more which is the only time they get paid. China HR planned recruiters are most often like this. You may laugh to see how Chinese Candidates describe recruiters.
Here is to better hiring in China.
and here is to a deeper look at Hire Slow, Fire Fast.