嗨游 — We were here

在外国～

The reason this article appeared is that there's a lot of materials about cultural differences between Western and Eastern people in general and working expireince in China in particular, but when it comes to advices on how to actually find a job, all the articles and discussions I've read so far do not explain much at all. When comes to this, experienced expats usually mention that it's all about having a big circle of friends, knowing the right people, being able to fluentrly speak Chinese and be ready to teach kids English or participate in filming advertisements. All this is true, but it makes you even more confused as it leaves more questions than answers.

外国人在外国公司想要上班因为～

And so most of us 老外 just stick to each other at foreign companies. It's much easier to do so not just because we understand each other better or it's a matter of leaving a comfort zone, but also because of how Western recruitment culture is different from local one. Most of the Western companies I've been working at, while hiring new people, had an idea of mutual respect and appreciation, because if you care about your company culture, why would you treat your potential employee differently. In China the assumption is that there are millions of people like you out there, there's no reason to appreciate any of your knowledge, experience, or efforts. Even if the actual labour market situation is completely different.

有的其实的例子。

Some actual examples. 9 of 10 Chinese companies will not bother to reply if you would send them your CV or any questions about the job description, probably they'd not even skim it. About 90% of job descriptions posted on job searching websites or on a company's website are drawn up very poorly and hardly let you understand who they actually need, what are you going to work at, and how you will be compensated. In most cases declared salary is higher then company is willing to give even if you're more than good for a position. Other lies can be made in the job description or during the interview, like telling you that communication in particular and having a foreigner in the company is absolutely not a problem, while in most cases it totally is. None of them will give you their final decision in time, you'll have to call or email them yourself. There's a lot of stories about ugly methods Chinese managers use to pick one candidate when there's too many of them and they are usually true.

中国招聘网站弱爆。

Another thing that makes it even worse is Chinese job advertisements websites. All of those are just terribly designed, hardly useful crap. Biggest and oldest ones like 51job.com, zhaopin.com etc are full of vacancies and even have English versions, but finding anything is a quest. You'll have to fill your resume including all the personal information they could think of before you can actually search anything. Filters are innacurate, there's no map view for search results, annoying gif banners and popups are all around… disaster. There are better ones for IT jobs like lagou.com and neitui.com, they look slick and respect your privacy a bit more, you can actually search even without registering, but to apply for a position you have to register and upload your CV. In about 20% it's possible to find company's email, Weixin ID or phone number, but HR will very unlikely respond to that, chances of getting a response from a website are much higher. Still more than 50% of your requests will be ignored. And no website have a map for search results. How's that for huge cities like Beijing? At the point of desperation I even got to write the userscript for lagou.com to render search results on a map. It's far from perfect, but did the job for me. I'm sure these are some of the reasons why Linkedin recently tried to make a move in China. I just wonder how long it will be till it'll get banned.

如果外国公司有中国招聘人员，也是这样的情况。

All this also applies to foreign companies having local HR managers as well, unless executives understand this cultural difference and train them. And of course it will be unfair to say that all people here share this same way of thinking. I ran into a couple of companies were very nice all the way long and made an offer. But I still prefer to work at a Western company.

谏言。

Some advices I can come up with based on expirience I got so far.
• Be social. Right after you get here, even if you're just about to study language first, get to know people. Go to conferences, meetups, anything that can lead you to having friends can tell their boss: "Oh, I know this 小伙子 who can do it, let's just hire him." This is the way things are here.
• Don't waste time sending CV by email, use one or few specialized websites, even if those are horrible, it'll work much better.
• Prefer phone calls, as they are never in a hurry and will reply to your text messages with a huge delay.
• Don't believe everything you read and hear. Somehow it's not a problem for them to just make a lie and then pretend it never happend.
• Apply to as many companies as you can find suitable for you, as most of them will not reply or will refuse without giving a reason anyway.
• However, don't bother to apply to big companies, your resume will drown in thousands of others, unless you know exactly who to hand it to.
• If you feel that test task you got is too time consuming or has not much to do with the position you're applying to, politely but confidently refuse to do it. Very likely this is the case when they don't want to hire you, but also don't want to say no right away.
• Furthermore if you feel you're being treated unfairly bad, don't hesitate to act strong and even agressive, in most cases it will not cause symmetric response, quite the contrary, you'll be considered a man to be treated with respect.
• Use any chance to talk to executives or head of the department you're applying to instead of HR manager. Especially when it comes to pulling the final desicion out of their mouth.

I might be wrong about something or exaggerate things a bit, since my recent experience is still very fresh, but I spent quite a lot of time researching this, asking around, trying different approaches, overthinking all these things and even running some statistics, so I do believe in what I say.