China Recruiting Blog

China is Complicated, This Bridge Shows It

Why Does China Hire Western Companies to Make Big Bridges?  The simple answer is China is complicated, but what does that mean?

For this bridge, the Main Span is by Cleveland Bridge and Engineering Co. and the Cables by Goodwin Steel Castings.

China has built quite a number of new big bridges under one principle. 

Hire Foreign Companies to do it. 

Do Chinese companies not have construction crews? Does China lack qualified technical talent? No, China has more of this than we do outside China. 

So, why do International companies get the nod?

China is Complicated

Chinese companies are complicated and getting people to say A and do A is a big headache. So, they just hire Western firms where yes means yes and things get done by a certain verifiable process.   The picture above is the Jiangyin Yangtze River Bridge. It is quite close to my home here in China.  I was so surprised to learn that a Cleveland company did the construction.

My Chinese friend who owns a company that builds bridges laments that China has this gap, so he cannot compete for big bridges.  All his friends laugh and say that China is just this country.

It is amazing the number and complexity of scams that go on in China. Finally, China just throws its hands in the air and hires expatriate companies to do such work. So, if Chinese leaders are so confused that they need International companies, then why are we so confident we are getting trustworthy talent and trustworthy work in our businesses?  Chinese businesses hire friends and relatives for their management. Why do they do this? They have reasons to know that they cannot trust Chinese people.  Are their relatives talented and easy to manage? Not really, but he knows they will not steal his whole business.

So How Might We Manage?

Therefore, we should not be hiring like we do in the West or like International recruiters do here in China. This is a different place, and we so, should adapt like the Chinese. We find that 72% of the people we find for our Western customers are lying to try to get the job. We filter them out. The real problem is that these lying hires will go farther to cheat you then a Western person would usually dream. The Chinese know and adapt. How about you? See also Recruitment Agency China Needs Great Thinking

We think you deserve Chinese leadership who will really work for you, and we work hard to find and vet them.

See also Ideal China Recruitment: Perfect Hires and Perfect Companies?