Society

Irregular hiring means questioned

By Chen Xin (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-04-08 07:58

BEIJING - To get certain posts in publicly supported organization in Le'an county, in East China's Jiangxi province, job seekers must accompany recruiters on excursions that could entail karaoke, dancing or other types of diversion.

The requirement is imposed on those who are looking to work for the county government's reception and service center and tourism development office.

In July 2010, recruiters from the county used such an excursion as a job interview and they looked favorably on applicants who performed well while dancing and singing.

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Later that year, an office affiliated with the finance bureau of Pingnan county, in East China's Fujian province, said in a recruitment notice that anyone who wants to apply for a job must be a woman who is younger than 25 and have a bachelor's degree from a foreign university.

The only qualified applicant turned out to be the daughter of a local official. And she was not required to take a test before being hired.

Those cases were among the five incidences of irregular recruitment exposed in a recent circular released jointly by the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security.

All five of the recruitments have been canceled and the officials involved have been reprimanded or dismissed, according to the circular.

Such irregular recruitments have damaged authorities' credibility and harmed society, the circular said, adding that the cases have revealed serious flaws in the recruitment methods of many publicly supported organizations.

"Some officials abuse their power for private gain," it said. "And some recruitments are not subject to strict supervision."

To ensure transparency and fairness in the recruitment undertaken by publicly supported institutions, the Organization Department of the Communist Party of China Central Committee and the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security have ordered personnel authorities across the country to strictly abide by an announcement released in December 2010.

The announcement mandates that all job openings at publicly supported institutions, except in certain posts, be advertised to the public and that recruitment practices be improved.

Information pertinent to open jobs, such as the qualifications sought in applicants, descriptions of the method for submitting applications and descriptions of the hiring process, should be posted on local personnel authorities' official websites, and the information should not be changed after it is released to the public, according to the announcement.

Other information about the application process, such as whether it will entail qualification tests, written examinations and interviews, as well as the results of such tests, should be released timely and in an accurate form. Officials guilty of irregular recruitment will be subject to severe punishments, it added.

Related departments should also deal promptly with reports of misconduct in job recruitments.

The announcement also asked local personnel authorities to strengthen their oversight of publicly supported institutions' recruitment practices and to ensure that remedies are applied promptly if misconduct is discovered.

All public institutions should adopt a transparent and fair recruitment system by 2012, it said.

In one of the other three cases of irregular recruitment cited in the circular, the answers to questions on a written exam were leaked to an official's daughter, who had applied for a position at a publicly supported institution in Hainan province. In the second, officials with the health bureau of Wugang, Hunan province, arranged for their relatives to have jobs with an institution affiliated with their employer. In the third, an employment management center in Jiangsu province failed to release a recruitment notice to the public before hiring the children of local officials.