E-recruitment trending

Tsinghua University is among many colleges nationwide embracing this digital transformation in recruitment due to the outbreak.

In Shanghai alone, universities and colleges are expected to hold more than 50 online career fairs with more than 100 companies participating in each fair, according to the local education bureau.

To cope with a drop in hiring demand, the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security will work to expand employment channels for college graduates, encourage online hiring activities and offer more internships.

The ministry also encourages more graduates to seek work at grassroots level, in rural areas or small and medium-sized enterprises, even to consider applying to enlist in the Chinese armed forces.

A 24-hour online campus recruitment service has been launched by the Ministry of Education. The service is available on the ministry's campus recruitment portal and five leading job-hunting websites－51job, Zhaopin, BOSS Zhipin, ChinaHR and Liepin.

Zhaopin has partnered with more than 100 higher education institutions to launch online hiring campaigns.

The online job platform organized 41 virtual career fairs between Feb 26 and March 8, in which more than 22,000 companies and around 221,000 students participated, with an average video interview lasting three to eight minutes.

Li Qiang, executive vice-president of Zhaopin, says the impact of the epidemic on spring recruitment is limited.

"It disrupted job fairs which were due to be held offline. However, it boosted online recruitment," Li says, adding that students are more proactive online.

"Our survey shows over 52 percent of students want to take online interviews, and 80 percent of employers accept such forms of recruitment," he adds.

Moka, a recruitment consultancy in Beijing, says that the epidemic outbreak has pushed the company to accelerate the digitization of their HR management, which has been taking place gradually over the past few years.

"Using online platform can raise hiring efficiency, process more applications and build a larger talent pool," according to a report by Moka.

"Traditional HR specialists rely heavily on an offline approach. Now they have to learn more digital tools, and become more willing to embrace the information technology revolution. In the future, we will see more and more online recruitment in China," the report states.