Not to sound too understated about it, but it isn’t easy running a business in today’s current economic environment.  However, as a company owner, I have to say that there is one upside to this global recession.  And that is, as an employer, it’s a great time to be picking up and bringing on board some top talent, and to do it at a reasonable cost.  It’s like discount shopping for branded goods.

That’s a dramatically different scenario than before, where it’s always been a sellers’ market in favor of the talent side.  The steady, double-digit growth that many industries have enjoyed in China from the very start has led many global companies to continuously and aggressively hire more and better talent to keep pace with their expanding business and market opportunities here.  As a partner for an international strategy consulting firm put it, “It’s not the market opportunity that is the limiting factor for our growth in this market, but our ability to find enough of the right people who can deliver and meet our engagement standards.”

As recently as a year ago, the negotiating leverage was squarely on the side of prospective employees.  Those with a strong work history and decent track record of performance in this market could command higher titles and salary increases of 20% or more to make a move to a new opportunity, with an increase in excess of 30% not that unusual. 

Different Hiring Outlook
This is not the case today, however, as the outlook of many employers and candidates have changed since then.  With a strong cost control mindset being emphasized across many companies, corporate headquarters are not exactly pushing their China operations to actively add headcount right now, giving companies here less pressure and a rare reprieve on the hiring front.  The result is a first-time ever, buyers’ market recently for most industries in China.

For instance, within the recruitment industry and our own company, we were having little success last year in getting experienced consultants from the large, international search firms to meet with us to consider our platform.  Beginning around early February, however, many began responding to our inquiries to explore a new opportunity with us.  Recently, we successfully signed on several very strong consultants from other top-tier search firms.  We did this even while being highly selective about who we chose to make offers to.

Evolving Job Seeking Emphasis
In addition, although all were making higher salaries in their previous company, they were very flexible and open to our more modest fixed, but high variable upside compensation structure.  In fact, their compensation expectations were extremely reasonable given their sense of the overall market condition in our industry.  Even without our having to emphasize it much, their own orientation was on identifying a solid company that offered long-term development opportunities for their career advancement. 

Although the global downturn is giving us a chance to hire some excellent talent right now, we are realistic that when the market comes back, our competitors will attempt to attract these top talents back again with higher salaries.  As a result, during this time, we will need to demonstrate the value of our company platform in key areas that go beyond just the financial aspect that new employees may consider.  These are areas like the career growth opportunities, new responsibilities and challenges, company culture and employee satisfaction, and qualify of work life that our company can offer them.

Not a As “Opportunistic” As Before
Overall, from speaking with many candidates in the market today, there is a growing sense that the time of “opportunistic” situations where job seekers are able to command big salary jumps has now passed.  That’s being replaced by a growing realization that the momentum is shifting more towards the employer side, as the employment market in China takes another big step closer towards aligning compensation to the actual value that a person is able to offer.  If you’re an employer like us, that’s a pretty good thing.