Recruitment companies in China for Western Companies are not in good shape. I hear complaints about other international recruiters active in China too often. It appears that they bring their methodology from the West to China, and the results get messy. I have been focusing on recruiting in China since April of 1997. Glad to give you my nearly 30 year take on recruiting here.
In China you need a recruitment company that will search and keep on searching even if it gets hard.
Thereafter, you need someone who will consistently send you candidates that are worth your time in the interview.
Finally, you need someone who is willing to find out and kick out candidates who lied to manipulate you.
It is just that simple, but the international recruiters simply pick the lowest hanging fruit, meaning the easiest recruiting. If it get hard, they move on.
Recruitment Companies in China Need a Better Working Model
Kicking out candidates who you might hire creates too much work, so they do not do it. Most never kick out anyone in the background check. Some might spot someone you don’t like and kick him out for show, but they are not filtering to protect you it seems.
I had never worked for a recruiting company before starting this company. I had worked starting and running businesses where I did my own hiring. My philosophy was to find people of functional talent AND true integrity. So from 1997 till 2009, I was refining my methodology on hiring. It worked very well to consider character, so people thought I had a special eye for talent. In truth, I had a special and refined process.
In 2009, I started this company to be totally different than any other recruiter. SHI Group made great placements the first 9 years, but by 2018, we had made our last bad placement. We have not had a bad placement since 2018. SHI Group is a careful and diligent company who focuses on quality hiring every day. We like what we are doing and not about to let our guard down. We are at 96% successful placements and climbing.
SHI Group knows from our data that 72% of candidates are lying to get the job offer. We know this as have found them out and kicked them out in placement after placement. Among the other 28%, we find the gems who are not great at politics, but they are very good at doing real work. They do not need to be skilled at manipulation as they are good at real work and have real stories to tell. Read more about recruiting in China here.