Shanghai has China's second-largest population of
foreigners and overseas Chinese, and 27.3 per cent of them have come to the
city purely for jobs, according to a report released on Monday by the municipal
statistics bureau.
A total of 104,300 residents,
more than 50 per cent of the city's foreigners and overseas Chinese - people
from Hong Kong, Macao and Taiwan - came to the city primarily for long-term
work or short-term business in 2010, said the report, which is based on the
sixth national census conducted in November 2010.
This is the first time
foreigners and overseas Chinese were counted in the census.
"Shanghai has seen a
rapidly increasing flow of foreigners coming for jobs over the past three to
five years, and the trend continues and is expected to grow significantly in
the near future, given the booming local economy," said Sun Haode,
director of the labour and employment center for foreigners under the labour
and social security bureau in Shanghai.
Sun said that he and his team
are working to help local enterprises recruit foreigners, sign work agreements
and apply for work permits for them.
According to the report,
foreigners in Shanghai stay on average for 21 months, with people from South
Korea, Malaysia, Singapore, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Canada
staying the longest.
"I found it easy to settle
in my first job in China within a month of my arrival, and I worked for a 3-D
animation company for a while before I got my current position," said Gary
Williams, a 26-year-old business director at Thread Design, a foreign-invested
creative design company in Shanghai.
Williams used to work as a bank
manger in Newcastle, England, but he wanted to do something more exciting and
came to Shanghai in January 2009 looking for a job in design and media.
"The projects and
opportunities that I can work on here are great, and I've learned that
developing countries will turn to China, not the US or UK, for inspiration when
looking for the best practices in design, branding and architecture," he
said.
"I think a foreigner can
either come to teach English, or come as a highly educated and experienced
expat with a good offer for a position and salary in hand. Those who don't
belong to these two categories may have to fight for a job, because the
requirements for foreign workers are quite high in the city," said
Williams, who considers himself lucky.
But not every young foreigner
in Shanghai is so lucky.
"I graduated last year
without any work experience, and I had studied in Shanghai and Beijing over the
past two years," said Piero Marzullo, a 23-year-old Italian who has been
looking for a job in the city for more than two months.
Marzullo, who majored in
Chinese at an Italian university, came to China in September hoping to find
work as an interpreter. Although she has spent about five hours a day sending out
resumes to employers, she has had no success yet.
"I've sent thousands of
job applications to companies in Shanghai, and I just got about 20 interviews
in return, which makes me doubt that speaking fluent Chinese is enough to get a
job in China," she said.
Marzullo has noticed that most
of the positions for foreigners in Shanghai are related to business management,
marketing and finance. She is proficient in none of these.
"Hopefully, I can find a
job that matches my education background as soon as possible, with a basic
monthly salary of about 7,000 yuan ($1,100)," she said.
A number of headhunters and
human resources consultancies have opened special sections to help foreigners
find jobs.
"We've noticed that there
are fresh graduates having problems finding jobs in China, for they lack work
experience, which is essential if a foreigner wants to work in the country.
We've suggested they go back to their home countries and return when they have
at least two years' experience," said Tan Qian, an account manager in
charge of foreigner recruitment at FESCO Adecco, one of the leading HR services
companies in China.
As a HR services company, FESCO
Adecco has long-term agreement with the government of South Korea to hold two
job fairs annually in Beijing and Shanghai to help South Koreans find jobs in
China.
Yu Ran
China Daily
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