A Brief Evolution of Digital Recruiting in China

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Digital recruiting is becoming more and more popular in China, evolving from the past when headhunters, campus recruiting, internal referrals, advertisements (newspaper and online job postings) and recruiting fairs were the major recruiting channels.

Online recruiting sites zhaopin.com and 51job.com both have dominating positions in China for digital recruiting. The former has 3.5 million jobs listed everyday; the latter is the only Chinese HR company listed on NASDAQ. Together, these two sites are widely used by companies throughout China for international and domestic positions in both state-owned and private entities.

LinkedIn has also emerged in this field in recent years.  In China, most LinkedIn users are recruiters, foreign companies and professionals rather than entry-level workers. Although Facebook and Twitter are mainstream options for recruiting talent in many parts of the world, these sites aren’t accessible in mainland China.

Similar to other countries, recruiters use LinkedIn to boost their databases and update the status of potential candidates, while individual professionals use LinkedIn to expand their network and exposure within the talent market. Foreign companies tap LinkedIn as a proactive approach toward sourcing strong candidates who may not be actively looking for work. However, LinkedIn is not quite yet a mainstream recruiting tool among domestic or private local firms, with few local Chinese companies utilizing it as a recruiting tool. That said, I expect this to change quickly as the “Computer Generation” enters the job market and we will soon see digital recruiting playing an even more more vital role in the China job market.