If you haven’t read the first social recruitment benchmarking infographic and analysis of how Global Fortune 500 companies perform on WeChat, you can find it here.

For full infographic please scroll down.

As WeChat reported, reaching the intimidating number of 377 million monthly active users in September, it is safe to say that WeChat has secured a strong market leader position in the mobile messaging and social networking space in China. In the past, Chinese companies have been lagging behind in terms of employer branding and recruitment presence on social media compared to multinationals. With the rise of WeChat being the first truly home grown mobile native platform, we are seeing signs of change in how Chinese companies are starting to embrace social recruitment. 

Numbers vs. Content

At first glance, purely looking at the numbers, WeChat recruitment seems more popular under Chinese companies. 23% of them have a WeChat recruitment account, which is more than triple the number from the Global Fortune 500 list. Half of them even have two or more accounts. Many of the companies listed in China Fortune 500 cater to different areas of the national market and have specific recruitment needs in each of them. The recruitment accounts differ from each other in focus on geographical location, business units, and core skills. On top of that, decentralised recruitment policies in some cases explain why some companies have up to 10 different recruitment accounts under their company name. 

In contrast, the level of activity is relatively low compared to the recruitment accounts from the Global Fortune 500 list. With a total of 208 registered accounts, 12% of them never showed any activity and have been given the ‘ghost’ status. Also, when looking at their monthly activity, only 11% manages to post an update every month. The average number of posts is less than half of the Global Fortune 500 companies. This could be a sign of a lack in strategy or limited resources for content development. However, quantity does not always reflect quality. 

Key insights:

23% of China Fortune 500 companies have opened a WeChat recruitment account with over half of them even having two or more accounts. 
The best-represented industries are Technology and Finance. 
 As official accounts are divided into 2 types, the subscription account seems to be the most popular among China Fortune 500 companies. Higher posting frequency seems to be chosen over channel visibility (subscription accounts are all grouped in one folder and allow 1 post per day versus service accounts are listed separately and restricted to four posts per month).
 A customised menu bar is offered on 44% of the WeChat accounts. 
As the total number of 208 registered recruitment accounts is rather high, 12% have no posting history at all. Moreover, only 44% show activity from January to June 2014 from which only one-tenth post on a monthly basis or more.  
Half of the WeChat accounts that share links to their career website surprisingly have career websites that are not mobile optimised. 
10% of the recruitment accounts support direct application through WeChat. 

As the high number of registered accounts does indicate that WeChat is on the minds of HR departments in China Fortune 500 companies, the level of commitment and engagement don’t seem to be on par as of yet. There is definitely a lot of room for improvement to further hash out long-term strategies that can deliver on effectiveness and return. These points have always proven to be challenging to quantify in social recruitment practices, but highly important for internal buy-in and securing resources. 

Next up, we will analyse specific accounts and discuss best practices in employer branding and recruitment on WeChat. In the meantime, if you have any questions or need help in this area, feel free to reach out to us on enquiries@maximum.com