Whom do you think is more difficult to get a decent job, fresh graduates or executives from big companies? Ask your friends about this, nine out of ten might respond saying the former.
That’s not the case for Wang Lan, the founder and CEO of 211job.com, an online recruitment initiative targeting top-level executives. According to Wang, on some level, it’s even harder for people who hold an important post in conglomerate to do a fancy jump.
How come?
First off, putting your resume online is like putting your career at risk. On regular online recruitment offerings including Zhaopin.com, ChinaHR.com and 51Job.com, users can set their online resume status to be “Open”, “Only for myself” or “Entrusting”. “Open” means anyone can view you resume and get to know you’re looking for a new opportunity, which might be a little awkward for you if you’re not aware enough to block your Human Resource colleagues.
“Only for myself” means no one except yourself can view it, while “Entrusting” means that only staff at those recruitment solutions can see your resume and set up you with new offers. But the problem is, they’re nowhere near professional head-hunting companies in terms of either connections or aptitude. It would take a little bit longer for them to help you with a great bound. Besides, the confidentiality of you resume is still a question.
Secondly, high-level positions are always limited, there’s no way for you to get at whether your next employer is a fit or not. Random jumping is an unaffordable risk for high-level employees.
211Job.com is trying to save all those hassles for them. Except for its promise of never sharing resume with any third-parties, 211Job has also been providing down-to-earth member services as well, sending latest and confidentially positions to them so they don’t have to look up for such information. Also they can talk to seasoned consultant with relevant experience in certain areas, for example, Wang Lan, founder of 211Job, has been in IT industry for over 10 years. Some of the other consultants used to work in energy, medical, chemistry or FMCG industry.
As such an initiative which attach much more importance to its offline part rather than online part, its hard to tell an intriguing tale for investors who mainly engaging in internet business. Wang tell me that :”At the current stage the company is running smoothly, the best we can get from getting invested is that we can expand more aggressively to take over more markets.”
Companies which leveraged 211Job to locate their employees include HP, Microsoft Research Asia, SIEMENS China, Fujitsu and so on.
stupid site.
What a lame domain name!