In the first quarter of 2024, China's import and export of goods trade exceeded the 10 trillion yuan mark for the first time, reaching the highest level in the same period in history, and the growth rate also set a new record in six quarters. This exciting data fully demonstrates the strong resilience of China's foreign trade and effectively boosts market confidence and expectations in achieving this year's economic growth target.

In the bright “report card” of foreign trade data in the first quarter, Guangdong, Jiangsu, and Zhejiang, the traditional major foreign trade provinces, all achieved historic breakthroughs in foreign trade scale. Among them, Guangdong’s foreign trade scale jumped to more than 2 trillion yuan for the first time, ranking first in the country; Jiangsu has maintained a double-digit high-speed growth trend in the export of electromechanical products such as ships, automobiles and accessories; Zhejiang has maintained strong growth in market procurement, cross-border electricity The growth rate of imports and exports in business and other fields is higher than the national average.

From the perspective of RMB pricing, China's total import and export value in the first four months reached 13.81 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 5.7%. Among them, exports increased by 4.9%, imports increased by 6.8%, and the trade surplus narrowed slightly to 1.81 trillion yuan, a narrowing rate of 0.7 percentage points. Single-month data shows that China's total import and export value reached 3.6389 trillion yuan in April, a year-on-year increase of 8%, of which exports and imports increased by 5.1% and 12.2% respectively, both exceeding market expectations.

Looking back on 2023, my country's cross-border e-commerce import and export total reached 2.38 trillion yuan, a year-on-year increase of 15.6%, and the growth rate was 15.4 percentage points higher than the overall national import and export growth rate. Cross-border e-commerce market entities continue to grow. The number of companies nationwide with foreign trade import and export performance has reached 645,000, of which more than 100,000 are cross-border e-commerce entities. The proportion of cross-border e-commerce in my country's import and export of goods trade has steadily increased from 1% in 2015 to the current 5.7%.

The rapid rise of cross-border e-commerce platforms is inseparable from the continuous innovation of business models and the rapid development of the "full custody model" of new service formats. Under the fully managed model, the platform provides one-stop services for merchants, effectively lowering the threshold for companies to "go overseas" and broadening order source channels. This not only provides new business infrastructure for overseas companies, but also enhances their independent controllability.

Recruitment trends for traditional foreign trade companies and cross-border e-commerce companies

In recent years, the business model of the foreign trade import and export industry has continued to evolve. As a new trade format, cross-border e-commerce has established 165 comprehensive cross-border e-commerce pilot zones across the country. A large number of market entities have poured into the field of cross-border e-commerce, including cross-border e-commerce platform companies and many small, medium and micro enterprises, which sell products to all parts of the world through cross-border e-commerce platforms. At the same time, many traditional import and export companies have also begun to use cross-border e-commerce platforms to explore new paths for business growth, providing strong support for coping with external uncertainties. Against this background, the demand for traditional foreign trade sales positions has shown a year-on-year downward trend, while the recruitment demand for positions related to cross-border e-commerce operations is still strong. The changes in the talent demand structure echo the industry iteration trend.

According to Henderson, a cross-border e-commerce headhunting company in Guangzhou, small, medium and micro enterprises with less than 500 employees are the main force in recruiting cross-border e-commerce operation talents, and the number of recruitment positions accounts for about 90% of the overall recruitment demand. Among them, small businesses with 20-99 employees account for about 50%, followed by medium-sized enterprises with 100-499 employees and micro-enterprises with less than 20 employees each accounting for 20%.

Hot cross-border e-commerce positions include: cross-border e-commerce operation, Amazon operations manager, Walmart operations manager, Tiktok operation, independent station operation, e-commerce operation assistant, e-commerce artist, warehouse manager, supply chain management, quality manager, finance Manager etc. Compared with previous years, cross-border e-commerce companies have recently seen significant growth in their demand for Russian e-commerce operation talents and Eastern European e-commerce talents. However, due to the lack of Russian-speaking talents, Eastern European and Russian e-commerce talents are very scarce in the market.

Since 2023, in addition to the steady development of the old e-commerce platforms such as Amazon and eBay, new platforms such as Shein and Temu have also attracted merchants to settle in. This digital model provides one-stop marketing, transactions, payment settlement, customs clearance, tax refund, logistics and Financial and other services extend their influence to the entire supply chain upstream and downstream, bringing great convenience to small and medium-sized cross-border e-commerce companies in foreign trade, providing global buyers with diversified "Made in China" and lightly customized services, and further expanding The demand for cross-border e-commerce operation talents has been increased.

Compared with the popularity of cross-border e-commerce, the sales demand of traditional foreign trade companies has shown a continuous downward trend. The reason is that on the one hand, the personnel of traditional foreign trade companies are often more stable and have lower mobility than those of cross-border e-commerce; on the other hand, On the one hand, it is also because the growth in the number of new registrations of traditional foreign trade companies is far less than the number of new registrations of cross-border e-commerce companies. According to a survey by Guangzhou foreign trade headhunting company Henderson, the average age of current employees engaged in traditional foreign trade is over 30 years old, while the average age of employees working in cross-border e-commerce is around 27 years old.

Hot recruitment positions in traditional foreign trade companies: foreign trade manager, foreign trade business specialist, independent station operation, Alibaba international sales, AliExpress operation, foreign trade follower, warehousing manager, quality manager, etc. The foreign language requirements for talents in traditional foreign trade sales are much higher than those for cross-border e-commerce talents. According to the introduction of a Shenzhen foreign trade headhunting company, cross-border e-commerce companies are inherently more attractive to young people than traditional foreign trade companies. In addition, young people’s foreign language professional ability is generally not high at present, which further reduces young people’s interest in traditional foreign trade companies. enthusiasm. Therefore, traditional foreign trade companies generally face recruitment difficulties, which in turn has a certain impact on the development of traditional foreign trade companies.

According to EVE, a consultant at a foreign trade headhunting company, the foreign trade sales position faces three major problems: First, foreign trade salespeople generally have low base salaries and have to work for a long time before receiving commissions. Jet lag issues lead to serious overtime work, and they often get ready to go to bed after 11 p.m. , only interested customers sent messages, and it was already early in the morning after replying to customers. Second, the feedback cycle is long. From development letter to order shipment, it usually takes several months. Especially with the current economic downturn, the customer development cycle is getting longer and longer. Third, the work content of foreign trade salesmen is single. The longer they work, the higher the cost of silence. If they switch to domestic sales, their work experience is often not valued, and unclear development prospects can easily deter new entrants.

Mr. Shen, the owner of a foreign trade company with his own factory, said that training a foreign trade salesperson is very costly and takes a long time. He not only needs to learn product knowledge, but also needs to know how to conduct market research and grasp market trends. After that, he can participate in exhibitions and visit customers. , it’s not enough to know English. The company has spent time and money to cultivate the talents, but it is possible that the core sales talents will take away the company's customers and set up their own business, or the sales team will encounter good market conditions and feel that they have made money after a few years. Enough is enough, I started to rest on my laurels, stick to the original big customers and get commissions, and I am not willing to work hard to improve performance. There are also some newly recruited employees who, halfway through their training, couldn't bear the loneliness and switched jobs to cross-border e-commerce companies. Mr. Shen said that these situations are unacceptable. At present, the company prefers to recruit experienced foreign trade employees. Even if they are recruited through foreign trade headhunting, it is better than training them themselves.

What aspects should cross-border e-commerce companies pay attention to when recruiting talents?

1. The recruitment team needs to have an in-depth understanding of the cross-border e-commerce industry and be able to accurately identify outstanding talents in the industry. This requires recruiters to have rich industry experience and keen insight in order to screen out the outstanding talents who are truly suitable for the company's development among the many job applicants.

2. Cross-border e-commerce companies should pay attention to candidates’ cross-cultural communication skills. Since cross-border e-commerce involves consumers from different countries and regions, employees with good cross-cultural communication skills can better understand and meet customer needs and improve customer satisfaction. During the recruitment process, candidates' cross-cultural communication skills can be assessed through interviews, case analyses, etc.

3. Cross-border e-commerce companies should also pay attention to candidates’ teamwork skills. In the field of cross-border e-commerce, close cooperation between various departments is crucial to the success of the company. Therefore, the recruitment team should focus on the candidate's teamwork and collaboration skills to ensure that new employees can quickly integrate into the team and contribute to the company's development.

4. Cross-border e-commerce companies should also focus on candidates’ learning ability and innovative spirit. The cross-border e-commerce industry is developing rapidly, and new technologies and market trends are constantly emerging. Employees with learning ability and innovative spirit can continuously adapt to industry changes and bring new development opportunities to the company. During the recruitment process, outstanding talents with these qualities can be selected by examining candidates' learning experiences and achievements, as well as evaluating their innovative thinking and problem-solving abilities.

In short, when recruiting talents, cross-border e-commerce companies should comprehensively consider candidates’ professional skills, cross-cultural communication skills, teamwork skills, learning abilities, and innovative spirit to ensure that they recruit outstanding talents who are truly suitable for the company’s development. .

How to solve the recruitment problems of foreign trade companies?

1. When designing a development plan, the company must establish a clear upward channel and profit sharing mechanism internally. If the company boss only cares about the company's development, ignores the feelings and interests of employees, and does not pay attention to the value of talents, then the corporate development plan designed will be very fragile.

2. Optimize the recruitment process and improve recruitment efficiency. Gone are the days when foreign trade companies posted recruitment information through online recruitment platforms and waited for talents to take the initiative to submit their resumes. When traditional internal recruitment methods cannot improve recruitment efficiency, you can consider appropriately introducing external recruitment partners, such as headhunting companies that specialize in recruitment in the foreign trade industry. Only by solving the problem of low recruitment efficiency can we achieve internal elimination at the end and ensure the smooth operation of the business and the healthy flow of the team.

3. Strengthening employee training and development is also an important way to solve recruitment problems. Foreign trade companies can regularly organize internal training, sharing sessions and other activities to improve employees' business capabilities and comprehensive quality, while providing employees with good promotion channels and development space to stimulate employees' work enthusiasm and creativity.

4. Establishing a reasonable salary and welfare system is also the key to attracting talents. Foreign trade companies should formulate competitive salary and welfare policies based on market conditions and their own strengths to ensure that employees receive reasonable returns for their efforts, thereby enhancing employees' sense of belonging and loyalty.