Recruitment and Staffing
What the domain tests
Recruitment and Staffing (招聘与配置) tests channel choice, selection validity, employer branding, and compliant hiring. In China, marks are often lost on the Labor Contract Law and Personal Information Protection Law (PIPL) details that surround the offer.
Core rules
- Start from job analysis and a person specification. Define must-have versus trainable criteria.
- Channels differ in reach, cost, speed, and quality: campus, referral, job boards, search firms, RPO, and internal mobility. Referrals usually produce higher retention but risk inbreeding.
- Selection tools differ in validity: structured interviews and work samples generally outperform unstructured interviews; assessment centers suit leadership roles. Reliability is consistency; validity is whether the tool predicts performance.
- A written labor contract is required within one month of starting work. If not signed, double wages apply from month two, and after one year the contract is deemed open-ended.
- Probation limits: 1 month for contracts of 3 months to under 1 year; 2 months for 1 to under 3 years; 6 months for 3 years or open-ended. Only one probation period, and probation pay must be at least 80% of the contractual wage and not below local minimum wage.
- No deposits, no retained ID documents, no forced medical testing for hepatitis B, and no discriminatory job-ad terms based on gender, ethnicity, age, hukou, or disability unless a genuine occupational requirement applies.
- Background checks need consent and minimum necessary data under PIPL; sensitive data needs separate consent.
Worked example
A firm needs 50 sales staff. Unstructured interviews cost CNY 300 per candidate and pass 40%; structured interviews plus a work sample cost CNY 500 and pass 30%, but reduce first-year attrition from 35% to 20%. For 50 hires, unstructured requires 125 candidates (50 ÷ 0.4) at CNY 37,500; structured requires 167 candidates (50 ÷ 0.3) at CNY 83,500. The extra CNY 46,000 must be weighed against replacing 7.5 fewer leavers, each at a fully loaded replacement cost. If replacement costs CNY 20,000, the saving is CNY 150,000, so the structured process wins.
Traps
- Treating the offer letter as non-binding, then withdrawing without consequences.
- Resetting or extending probation.
- Saying “no social insurance during probation”.
- Using vague “culture fit” to mask discrimination.
- Running background checks without consent.