Shanghai job fair offers expats a foot in the door_美文

Shanghai job fair offers expats a foot in the door

Shanghai started to issue foreign expert certificates in 2005, with 6,000 to 8,000 certificates issued every year.

More than 60 companies from Shanghai and Zhejiang and Jiangsu provinces, mostly social services, culture and education companies or institutions, participated in the job fair.

A total of 1,148 posts for positions such as professors, language tutors, operations managers and TV program hosts were up for grabs.

Li Hongyan, associate consultant of the professional and technical division from headhunting company Kelly Services, noticed a significant increase in expats showing a willingness to work in Shanghai since the debt crisis.

"As some of the multinational companies in Europe have not been handing in good performances, the headquarters of these companies have diverted their focus to the Chinese market, and therefore are hiring for more management positions here," said Li.

"Most of the cases I have handled are Fortune 500 companies hunting for appropriate manager or director candidates. Few would hire relatively low-level employees via headhunting companies."

But usually the salary of an overseas employee is about twice that of a local one, with the bottom annual salary of about 400,000 yuan for each manager. Meanwhile, some multinational companies are attaching more importance to the localization of the company and thus opening some high-level positions to local candidates, Li said.