labor - The talent crunch

The International Herald Tribune documents the tough struggle to get qualified people on board.

"It's become a very big problem," said Li, client partner at Corporate Resources International, a Beijing-based recruiting agency. "Just because people accept your offer doesn't mean they will join your company."

While pushing out high numbers of graduates is not really the problem, most of them often do not qualify for a job. "Some you even have to teach how to use a fax machines," told me an employer recently. According to a recent report by McKinsey China would not have millions of engineers available, but only 160,000 - comparable to the UK.
Fast growing industries have to rely again on expats, people coming from outside China to join their companies.

"Now the whole thing has been reversed," said Ogilvy's Beijing-based managing director, Chris Reitermann. "We hire many more expats simply because we can't get the quality locally. Good senior local people are as precious as diamonds."
Official statistics suggest Ogilvy is not alone in relying heavily on recruiting from overseas. The number of expatriates working legally in China has doubled to 150,000 since 2003, the Ministry of Labor and Social Security said this month.