Govt to hire more civil servants with grassroots experience

Applicants are busy doing last-minute preparations before taking the national civil service exam outside a test site in Shanghai, Nov 29, 2015. [Photo/IC]

China will recruit more civil servants who have experience of working at grassroots level, said the country's top human resources authorities on Thursday.

The grassroots workers refer to college graduates working in rural areas or West China, including village heads and rural school teachers. To apply for a post at central and provincial government agencies, two years' experience?working?at grassroots level is required.

Fifteen percent of posts at city or county level (or below) that are directly under the central administration will go to grassroots workers, up 5 percent from last year.

"Grassroots officials deal with common people every day. The tasks are complicated and demanding, putting one's will and ability to test," said Lu Jingfei, an expert on civil servant recruitment exam.

China's civil servant recruitment exam will be held in late November. This year, candidates will compete for 27,061 job openings. Among all the posts, nearly 80 percent are with government bodies at or under county level, and less than 10 percent with central and provincial government agencies.

Tax departments at various levels are the top recruiters, providing 64.58 percent of all posts.

Last year, nearly 1.4 million candidates competed for 27,817 posts.