Job Discussion Forums

[shostahoosier]

I'm thinking of China later on but dont want to make a career of ESL (though I'd like to maybe do a year or 2 of teaching there).

How hard is it to transition/get a non-teaching job in China if you think you've had enough of the ESL field?

Are they as strict about giving foreigners jobs in non-teaching fields as the other 2 East Asian countries?

[Zero]

I encourage you think about your question for a moment. If you lived in the U.S. or Britain or wherever, would you ask a career question such as: �What could I do, as long as it�s not accounting?� or �What could I do, as long as it�s not nursing?�

In other words, what is it you want to do? If you identify a field or two that you are interested in/trained for, then the question might be answerable. As it stands, you�re asking what, in the universe of vocations people could take up, would be possible to do in China, except teaching? And the answer is yes, there are tons upon tons of foreigners in China doing jobs other than teachers. There are engineers, managers, journalists, diplomats (and their underlings), even entertainers.

However, without technical, managerial or other highly specialized skills, the jobs you can get tend not to pay any better than teaching -- usually a bit worse, actually. Editing/translation-type jobs come to mind. Probably would work 40 hours/week for 7,000 yuan/month.

In short, the leap from teaching to high-paying non-teaching job is not easy, not because there aren�t the jobs, but because the teachers usually don�t have the skills to, say, walk onto a mining site and manage a project. Getting a teaching certificate and going into international school teaching is probably the quickest route to lucre.

[shostahoosier]

[cormac]

You haven't mentioned either your field, nor the level of experience you have, so I'm assuming you're a fairly recent graduate.

Generally speaking the experience that you gain from teaching won't be considered useful by most business/professional employers. There's been too many people that have done teaching for a year to get a handle on the language, and then make the shift into more business orientated work. So ESL tends to be a bit of a black hole on your resume, unless you can tie your esl directly to your skills (i.e. university lecturing on Business Strategy or Chartered Accountancy). But teaching in kinder, middle or high school is highly unlikely to worth anything to an employer.

The days of westerners being hired by Chinese businesses simply because they're foreign are gone. International companies tend to hire in their home countries or hire Chinese natives simply because there is a rather large pool of qualified graduates to choose from. Even sifting the lazy cheats from the innovative graduates doesn't require much from interviews and training. So in their eyes, there's little reason to hire a westerner with no experience and basic qualifications.

Get some experience at home. Canvass the international companies that have offices in your own country and also in China, making it plain your interest in China. That's the best and most time efficient way to get there if you do indeed wish to live in China. But face the reality of the situation. Unless you have rather high sought after skills, a respectable aptitude, and lastly a reasonable level of Mandarin, you're going to be starting from the bottom.

[igorG]

I agree and it is my observation that local companies prefer hiring locals, not foreigners these days. Locals are cheaper, more loyal and opened up to abuse. However, there still are some jobs out there. Believe it or not, but many locals even with their highest possible education or fine English language skills cannot approach foreign companies abroad. We all know the reasons, don't we? If an employer has an honest plan to expand abroad, and not only to a Chinatown somewhere, s/he will probably seek a foreigner to fill in the post. Would you want to jeopardize your business having a wrong person dealing with whatever you have worked for so hard?

[LanGuTou]

I stated this in another thread related to recruiting non native speakers and it applies across the board in China labour and immigration legislation:

If an organisation in China wishes to recruit a foreign national to fill a position, they must provide an irrefuteable reason why a Chinese national cannot be recruited. The company must come up with some special skill or knowledge that only a foreign national can provide. It is insufficient to say that foreigners are better, more efficient, more reliable etc. It is insufficient to say the person that you wish to hire is better than any of the Chinese applicants.

The employer must complete a form when applying for the Alien Work Licence and Employment Permits as they are so wonderfully named. On the form there is a section in which the employer must give a reason for employing a foreigner. If this reason is not acceptable to the local Labour Bureau, the foreigner will not be given permission to work in China.

As far as I am aware, this ruling also applies in Hong Kong and Macau, both of which used to be havens for ex pats seeking lucrative employment.

More worrying is the lengths that the Chinese authorities are adopting to prevent foreigners coming into the Chinese job market. I read this morning that the Labour Bureau in Dalian are refusing work permits for foreign recruitment at any company with registered capital less than 440,000 USD (3 million rmb). That is fine for medium to large size manufacturing enterprises but is impossible for SME is the fields of research and technology. It is a ridiculous ruling that will prevent many talented individuals entering China with new skills and ideas. It is entirely self defeating. It will almost certainly result in a rise of illegal service providers or force many to register their business interests outside China if this policy is extended to other cities.

Many foreign teachers completely underestimate the complexity of obtaining permission to work in China because the school does all of the donkey work. In fact it is an onerous process taking many weeks and involves immense red tape and bureaucracy.

I know that because I quit being a teacher this year to concentrate on my own business activities. I have completed this process alone and I can guarantee even if you have your own fully registered business in China, getting permission to work is a major headache. I am now a fully licenced alien outside teaching!

Yes, there are many foreigners with jobs outside teaching but do not for one second believe that it is going to be easy. I guarantee here and now to change lines of vocation in China is far from easy!

[cormac]

[cormac]

[Zero]

This is a good discussion, but I think it's getting a little far afield from what the OP was asking. I think the OP meant, can you teach in China for a couple of years, and then transition to a non-teaching job? And my answer would be yes, you can, maybe -- but the options aren't very good, and it's likely you'll go back to teaching, because of the better conditions and pay.

There are better non-teaching jobs out there, for sure. But they don't usually go to former ESL teachers. They go to people with particular skills in that field, probably people who gained extensive experience in that field back in their home country and never even thought about going to China until the opportunity happened to arise. Managerial, scientific and engineering fields.

An example of a job that an ESL might be able to transition into is editing of an English-language magazine. I was contacted about such a job once. It was going to be 40 or more hours a week, 7,000 yuan a month. I needed more money, or at least lower hours so I could find other work to make more money.

I have heard that translation jobs aren't much better. And I doubt run-of-the-mill, low-level "trade assistant" jobs are any better, either. With translation, of course you need high-level Mandarin, but a lot of other "half-pat" jobs want intermediate or advanced Mandarin, as well. Which is fine, but the salaries they offer hardly make one motivated to pull out those Hanzi flashcards, do they?

Teaching is not so bad.

[LanGuTou]

To answer some of Cormac's points individually:

Yes, you are right that the same restrictions to immigration exist in western (and all) countries save for one very important factor - antagonism!

Other threads convey the level of anti-foreign feeling that can exist in China. Local Labor and Supervision Bureaux are particularly antagonistic to to "foreigners stealing Chinese jobs". It doesn't matter to them the level of skills shortage that exists or how useful a particular person may be within Chinese society. They just don't care!

Australia has certain well documented parameters on which immigration is based. They have the ability to assess cases on an individual basis. China has the same but it comes down to the decision making of one usually pretty uneducated and oblivious individual.

I will quote my circumstances to illustrate how galling this whole matter can be. I have a certain background and experience that could not be more in demand in China. In fact the central government made it their number one priority to vastly improve the situation in my field. At local governmental level, they simply couldn't care less. They are oblivious to need and I guess even believe that the Chinese lead the world in my field (which blatantly obviously they don't!).

When I was a foreign teacher, I would often search websites like www.zhaopin.com for suitable openings. Some very large Chinese and foreign owned companies constantly advertised for people with my skills set. Some of them for months on end without apparently filling the vacancies. I applied for several of them without even a sniff of a reply. I first blamed it on myself and my teaching background thus manipulating my CV. Still not a sniff.

Now that I am self employed doing exactly the same work freelance, these same companies cannot wait to contact me. They are prepared to pay three or four times what they would have paid to recruit me as an employee. Right now, I have three multi-nationals "Dutch Auctioning" remuneration to get me to sign a contract.

I recently had meetings with two of them. I posed the question of why they would not employ me full time. The answer from both of them was the same. Nothing to do with money and nothing to do with my background. It was everything to do with difficulty in getting work permits for a foreign national already living in China. I now have my own work permit so it is no longer an issue.

I have had the same issues applying for jobs in Hong Kong. I guess the reasons are the same.

Your point about the change in Dalian Labor Bureau policy is erroneous. There are many SME's and RO's with registered capital of less than 440,000 USD that has the need to employ foreign nationals but will be prevented from doing so. Very few of them are fronts for larger companies. This category of mainly WFOE's or RO's includes foreign traders, inspection companies and consultants. Many of them are not connected directly with larger companies and organisations but provide a service to them. They are a very important part of the overall supply chain.

China is still developing and there is a clear need to attract experts in many fields to accelerate the process. Putting up barriers for them to ply their skills in China is certainly not the way forward. We all know that China is not a meritocracy and I would hazard a guess that the person who ultimately made this decision is both envious of the skills that such experts possess and oblivious to the needs for them to be here. All these government people are concerned with is $$$$. A point very eloquently raised by an emminent Chinese lawyer who wrote the article that I read.

Of course smaller SME's can afford to recruit foreigners. I have considered it myself although the registered capital of my consultancy company is way below that 440,000 USD threshold. Some employees are self financing. Incidently, this Dalian requirement could also apply to the right to work for the owners or investors in smaller companies too. It is quite a ridiculous ruling.

I keep jumping backwards and forwards from the teaching situation to business situation because this is a board predominantly read by teachers and the OP question was related to how hard it is to transition from teaching to some other non teaching role. Dealing with the immigration matters and work policies are key to that transition.

To get a work visa in China within five days is impossible. Yes, you can arrive at a school with the 'z' visa already stuck in your passport and and get a RP.

If you are transitioning from teaching to another vocation, this is roughly the timescale that you are lookin at:

You must first get your letter of completion from the school, cancel any outstanding RP and 'z' visa. You should then convert to a 'L' visa.

The next step is to have a another medical examination. The results take three to four days to obtain.

You then must apply for an Alien Work Licence. This takes seven days to obtain. You can only do this on a "L' visa or leave the country and have someone in China complete the process.

Once you have the Alien Work Licence, you then apply for the invitation letter. This takes five working days to process.

You then take the Alien Work Licence and Invitation Letter out of the country to apply for a new 'Z' visa.

Once you have the 'z' visa, you then take the Alien Work Licence back to the Labor Bureau to apply for a work permit. This takes another seven days.

You need the work permit to apply for a RP. But you must first install the PSB approved software on the office computer. The PSB expect you to have a webcam to take your own photo but it must be with approved software and their stipulated webcam. The system is difficult to download on English OS so it is easier to first install the Chinese version of an OS.

Finally, you can apply for the RP. Like the FT situation, you must go in person to the PSB and have your photo taken again. You then hand over your passport and five days later you are legal.

In between all of these steps there is masses of paperwork to collate or fill in. I have never met anyone who has completed this whole process in less than a month. Every business person that I have met, which is many, understand my frustration at the complexity and inconvenience of the process.

My accountant does some of the donkey work filling in forms and collecting documents. But it is still cumbersome. I looked at various visa agencies but frankly, for the cost, did not present an adequate case to use them. I did use a visa agent in HK to obtain the 'Z' visa. Most of the process is unavoidable because it has to be done in person.

You say that the right connections make the process easier. This week, I had a meeting with a very large state owned enterprise. The meeting was with a European national who worked with this company in a very senior role. She was there because of the connections that this company has internationally.

This company is a SOE. As such, it has a department run directly by the Communist Party. It is a governmental organisation with immense power and influence. I was speaking to this manager about application for WP. She informed me that she had just been through the same process and had faced the same difficulties. She had to arrive on a 'F' visa, deal with the administration, go to her home country and re-apply for the 'z' visa. Nothing was made easier or quicker even with top notch connections.

The person in charge of foreign investment in our city has helped me immensely but there is only so much that connections can do.