|
CHINA> National
![]() |
|
Related
Young foreigners hunt jobs in China amid crisis
(Agencies)
Updated: 2009-09-20 20:33 BEIJING: When the best job Mikala Reasbeck could find after college in Boston was counting pills part-time in a drugstore for $7 an hour, she took the drastic step of jumping on a plane to Beijing in February to look for work. A week after she started looking, the 23-year-old from Wheeling, West Virginia, had a full-time job teaching English.
Young foreigners like Reasbeck are coming to China to look for work in its unfamiliar but less bleak economy, driven by the worst job markets in decades in the United States, Europe and some Asian countries. Many do basic work such as teaching English, a service in demand from Chinese businesspeople and students. But a growing number are arriving with skills and experience in computers, finance and other fields. "China is really the land of opportunity now, compared to their home countries," said Chris Watkins, manager for China and Hong Kong of MRI China Group, a headhunting firm. "This includes college graduates as well as maybe more established businesspeople, entrepreneurs and executives from companies around the world." Watkins said the number of resumes his company receives from abroad has tripled over the past 18 months. China's job market has been propped up by Beijing's 4 trillion yuan ($586 billion) stimulus, which helped to boost growth to 7.9 percent from a year earlier in the quarter that ended June 30, up from 6.1 percent the previous quarter. The government says millions of jobs will be created this year. Andrew Carr, a 23-year-old Cornell University graduate, saw China as a safer alternative after classmates' offers of Wall Street jobs were withdrawn due to the economic turmoil. Passing up opportunities in New York, San Francisco and Boston, Carr started work in August at bangyibang.com, a Web site in the southern Chinese city of Shenzhen that lets the public or companies advertise and pay for help in carrying out business research, getting into schools, finding people and other tasks. "I noticed the turn the economy was taking, and decided it would be best to go directly to China," said Carr, who studied Chinese for eight years. Most of his classmates stayed in the United States and have taken some unusual jobs - one as a fishing guide in Alaska. China can be more accessible to job hunters than economies where getting work permits is harder, such as Russia and some European Union countries. Employers need government permission to hire foreigners, but authorities promise an answer within 15 working days, compared with a wait of months or longer that might be required in some other countries. An employer has to explain why it needs to hire a foreigner instead of a Chinese national, but the government says it gives special consideration to people with technical or management skills. |
清水县| 梓潼县| 荣昌县| 醴陵市| 山东省| 湖州市| 昌图县| 平潭县| 深泽县| 泸西县| 安阳市| 内丘县| 凤山县| 长海县| 那曲县| 青田县| 屏东县| 鄂州市| 通道| 华容县| 西乌珠穆沁旗| 金山区| 嘉黎县| 青冈县| 永寿县| 杨浦区| 琼海市| 读书| 昌乐县| 囊谦县| 盐城市| 黎平县| 临江市| 宜章县| 昌都县| 康平县| 兖州市| 绵竹市| 吉木萨尔县| 曲阜市| 灌阳县|