China Paradigm interviewed Jenny Shi, the co-founder of Uniway Recruitment, a fast-growing headhunter in China, to learn how to streamline the hiring process in China to attract the top candidates.
Jenny Shi, an experienced recruiter, the founder of Uniway Recruitment
After getting a Master’s Degree in International Business from Sogang University in Seoul in 2007, Jenny Shi didn’t stop discovering her real passion. In 2013, she finished her graduate studies in Counseling Psychology at Alliant International University in Los Angeles and embarked her life-long journey as a headhunter in China.
She returned to Shanghai right after graduation and started her first full-time job as a recruitment consultant at Robert Walters, a London-based world-leading headhunter in China. In 2014, she switched to a Shanghai-based headhunter firm, Atomic Recruitment China, and took the role as a managing consultant.
With enough resources and sufficient knowledge of the hiring process in China, in 2016, Jenny Shi founded her own headhunter firm, Uniway Recruitment. Since then, she has been leading the recruitment team and developing business with both big corporates and entrepreneurs in China.
Uniway Recruitment: Reliable headhunter in China
Spending almost 8 years in the Chinese recruitment industry, Jenny Shi is passionate about the people business. Therefore, in 2016, she founded Uniway Recruitment to accomplish her personal goal of being an entrepreneur and one of the top headhunters in China.
With three years in the Chinese recruitment industry, Uniway has successfully accumulated 25 clients, mostly overseas companies from Europe and the U.S. Currently, the company is expanding its customer base with more Chinese companies. According to Jenny, Uniway has solicited five new local companies in the E-commerce industry with huge potential.
One of the reasons that Jenny created Uniway in the first place is that she wanted to reform the inconsistent Chinese recruitment industry.
“We want to make recruitment more reliable,” said Jenny, “For us, our definition of the hiring process in China is being reliable, accountable and committed.”
How the technology for recruitment in China help improve efficiency
The Chinese recruitment industry is very competitive, according to Jenny Shi. The secret for Uniway Recruitment to stay in the market is that the team is able to help the client find job candidates in China within 48 hours and finish the hiring process in China within 4-8 weeks.
“The reason why we can be this efficient is that we use technologies for recruitment in China,” said Jenny.
Before signing contracts with clients, the team would first check their background in order to make sure of the quality with Qichacha, a relatively new technology for recruitment in China. To build a powerful database of job candidates in China, Uniway uses different channels to source them, including Lagou, Boss Zhipin, WeChat, etc. During the hiring process, Uniway also utilizes certain technologies for recruitment in China, such as DiSC, a scientific personality test, to test whether the job candidate matches with the company culture in China.
Finding the best-fit job candidates in China is not an easy thing for entrepreneurs
For Jenny, the hiring process in China is not a one-time event, but more of a prolonged process with continuous efforts with consistent actions.
“It’s always important to have one or two persons to stay consistent in the hiring process in China to build a pipeline of internal job candidates,” said Jenny.
After cooperating with both well-established corporates and fast-growing start-ups, she found that because of the lack of a strong branding in China, it is difficult for entrepreneurs to attract good job candidates in China.
To help entrepreneurs tackle this ongoing challenge, Jenny Shi gave four pieces of advice on the hiring process in China:
- Define our target job candidates in China: It is important for entrepreneurs to build self-awareness with clearly-defined company culture in order to build a consistent hiring process in China.
- Find out where these target candidates are and what companies they are working for right now: With this information, headhunters are able to reach out to them through different technologies for recruitment in China.
- Know how to evaluate and attract job candidates in China: Based on specific criteria of talent selection, it is important to have the right technologies for recruitment in China to evaluate the candidates. In terms of attracting talents, it is equally important to identify what the candidates are looking for and what motivates them the most.
- Build a strategic talent management system to retain job candidates in China: The system needs to include both monetary and non-monetary rewarding programs to focus on the professional development of employees.
In the end, Jenny concluded that the most important thing for building a sustainable hiring process in China is that,
“the whole company needs to work closely together to make sure the job candidates in China feel happy at work every day. This is a continuous effort.”
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