The Chinese are coming
12 Aug 2008
The article was firtst published in Controllers Magazine
Suddenly they are there, “the Chinese”. During the last months, recruitment- and selection agencies are flooded with CVs of Chinese who just have graduated from a Dutch university. And in many cases these fresh graduates show an outstanding quality.
Most of them were so-called self financed students and have studied in a very disciplined way. In addition to this, they often experienced a strong personal development through living and studying in a completely different environment with a culture which is not related to a China.
Therefore the Chinese are often the top of the bill and excellent candidates for vacancies in the Dutch labor market. Our clients should be very happy to see them in our labor market, but until now they are still not very active in recruiting this group.
Barrier
Why is that? A major reason is that the Chinese do not always have proper work permits (though legislation recently was changed and foreign graduates can get a working permit for a number of years). Another important reason for this attitude of the Dutch business community is the lack of speaking the Dutch language by the Chinese. That is a barrier.
Fortunately there are, however, strong signs from the government that the salary border for highly skilled migrants will go down further.
As a result, more and more Chinese job-seekers are then able to get the (legal) status of the so-called highly skilled migrant.
Good opportunities
This is the first year that so many Chinese graduate students in the Netherlands are trying to enter the labor market. This trend will continue. I hope that companies realize that this is a good opportunity for them. In addition to this, I hope that the universities will focus on Dutch language teaching to this group of people. Then especially our international companies can have more benefits from these Chinese workers!
Olfertjan Niemeijer (o.niemeijer @ independentrecruiters.nl)
Senior Consultant Finance & Financial Services by Independent Recruiters
See original article in Dutch:
http://www.controllersmagazine.nl/weblog/1983/de-chinezen-komen