Foreign-invested companies losing luster

Siemens is attempting to attract candidates by introducing the company and its work. The company hosts many programs for students, including a summer camp for interns, to help them better prepare for their careers.

Workers may be exposed to more challenging work in multinational companies, she said, but they also may have more opportunities to learn advanced management methods and develop their capabilities.

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"There are always more solutions than challenges," Ma said.

Lin Peng, HR director of Dentsply, a leading dental products company based in the United States, also said foreign-invested companies are less popular in China than a decade ago.

"In campus recruitment, especially in big cities, fresh graduates value hukou (China's household registration) more than before, which SOEs have the advantage of being able to offer," Lin said.

Lin also said talented professionals who leave foreign-invested companies sometimes return.

Sun Huijuan, principal consultant at RMG Selection, a human resources and recruitment consultancy, saw a similar trend in recent years.

"The longer one stays in a foreign-invested company, the more difficult it is to adapt to other environments," Sun said.

"Foreign-invested companies used to pay considerable salaries and offer full welfare packages to attract talent. However, when private companies started to increase wages, the salary advantage for foreign-invested companies cooled," Sun said.

The country stopped providing preferential tax policies for foreign firms on Dec 1, 2010.

"Due to the global financial crisis, many foreign-invested companies from Europe and the United States have become more stringent on human costs," Sun added.

Meng Guang, a senior officer in charge of campus recruitment at zhaopin.com, a popular job website, said foreign-invested companies reduced their scale of hiring in 2008 but increased hiring again three years ago.

"The number of new hires has remained almost the same in foreign-invested companies each year since then," he said.

Contact the writers at luowangshu@chinadaily.com.cn and hedan@chinadaily.com.cn