China's human resources service sector goes digital

As graduation nears, university students look at company profiles and available positions at a job fair in Nanjing, Jiangsu province, on May 16, 2021. (YANG SUPING/FOR CHINA DAILY)

China's human resources agencies are introducing advanced technologies such as live-streaming as part of the services they provide for enterprises and job seekers.

Statistics indicated that by the end of 2020, there were 45,800 HR agencies in China with a total of 843,300 employees. The HR agencies helped 290 million people secure jobs, and provided recruitment services for 49.83 million firms in China throughout the year.

"The HR agencies played an important role in stabilizing employment," said Li Zhong, vice-minister of human resources and social security. In 2020, the HR agencies held 36,000 online job fairs, and provided a total of 42.3 million jobs, helping enterprises resume operations as soon as possible, Li noted.

At the first National Conference on the Development of Human Resources Services held in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality from July 28 to 29, HR agencies demonstrated how they have embraced digitalization to improve services.

The employment website Zhilian Zhaopin live-streamed the recruitment process of schools from Liangshan Yi autonomous prefecture in southwest China's Sichuan province. During the live-streaming session, volunteer teachers invited more people to join them to teach in Liangshan so as to improve the local education situation.

According to Guo Sheng, CEO of Zhilian Zhaopin, Liangshan prefecture has always encountered various difficulties in recruiting teachers. To help Liangshan tackle these problems, Zhilian Zhaopin launched a live-stream recruitment program on March 19 this year. The show was watched by 4,500 people, and 300 of them submitted their resumes after watching it.

Live-stream recruitment provides a new approach for medium- and small-sized firms to attract job seekers, as it gives job seekers a range of information about enterprises, such as pay and promotion prospects.

In addition, some live-stream sessions are open to people who are not currently seeking employment, such as college students, to help them become familiar with the hiring process, according to Guo.

Yunray, a human resources service provider based in Chongqing, launched a digital system to evaluate the potential of job seekers. After they complete a test on the computer, the job seekers receive their own potential assessment reports that gives them an idea of their strengths and weaknesses and jobs that suit them, as recommended by the system.

Statistics indicated that HR agencies across China issued a total of 1.647 billion pieces of recruitment information last year, up 307.10 percent year on year. In the same period, they released 840 million pieces of job seeking information, a year-on-year increase of 2.04 percent.

The use of the internet in job recruitment now enables a job seeker to take part in 10 interviews in a single day, compared with 2 to 3 in the past, said Fan Xiaowei, a marketing executive with Honghai Human Resources Group based in Guangzhou. The application of intelligent technologies has allowed enterprises to know more about job seekers, and improve the employer-employee match rate, Fan pointed out.