More companies are recruiting foreign talent locally than abroad, a new study reveals.

 

International human resources experts Hewitt Associates worked with several foreign chambers of commerce in China to compile its comprehensive document "China Expatriate Compensation and Benefits Study 2006".

 

More than 140 companies participated in the study.

 

Diana Yang, head of Hewitt's China Compensation and Benefits Consulting Practice, said many companies were trying to minimize their costs by hiring foreigners already living in China.

 

"Locally hired expats are often hired through the idea of talent first, package later," Yang said.

 

With China's presence on the international scene increasing, it is no longer considered such a remote or tough place to move to, according to the study.

 

Therefore employers are less having to offer such large, lucrative salary packages to lure talent to China.

 

"But as long as there is a gap between talent and supply, foreigners can find work in China," Yang said.

 

And then there is networking.

 

Since there are a significant number of jobs not advertised, social connections "on the ground" play a crucial role in expats finding work.

 

That sort of "China connection" is not easily accessible for a jobseeker in another country.

 

"If expats don't speak Mandarin, and are not yet located in China, getting a job can be challenging, because employers often prefer somebody who is here," explained Ross Cranwell, a business development associate for AmCham, the American chamber of commerce in Shanghai.

 

He started as a scholarship student at Fudan University, and after one year commenced an internship at AmCham.

 

Cranwell has worked for AmCham, China's biggest foreign chamber of commerce, for one and a half years.

 

He spoke highly of internships as a good foot in the job market door.

 

Networking was also the key for Australian Lawyer George Patton who scored a job offer before he arrived in Shanghai, but he knows plenty of people who arrived with nothing.

 

For him, finding a well-paid job was easy.

 

"Shanghai is like the old Wild West, it's a frontier town where there's opportunity aplenty," he said.

 

(China Daily March 29, 2007)