I don’t often write reviews, as a matter of fact this is the first time I have ever done so. However, as they asked me so nicely, here is a review of a new China job Web site.

NewChinaCareer.com is a recently established Web site dedicated to the English-language job market in China, Hong-Kong and the Asia Pacific region. The Internet is already pretty saturated with Web pages that focus on jobs in Asia. Long-time online job boards like www.Monster.com have Asia-specific pages and newer China-specific job boards such as www.ChinaSplash.com all make competition pretty fierce for a new site to emerge and succeed, but let’s see how they add up.

Visual Appearance:

My first visual impression of NewChinaCareer.com was that their homepage was well designed with a nice color scheme, well laid out with information easy to find and navigate. So in my opinion it’s aesthetically pleasing which helps it stand out. That’s the main issue I have with ChinaSplash’s homepage. I find the white background and cramped faint text distracting. So this is a good start for NewChinaCareer.com – it’s kind to my eyes.

Ease of use:

The best feature I found was that it’s free to post your CV and it’s also free to post a job.

Creating an account, editing my search profile, and posting my CV on NewChinaCareer.com is very simple (took me under 10 min.) and it’s pretty through and detailed.

I think they should add more languages to the list that people can speak. One language on the list I didn’t know, and I couldn’t find it in the dictionary, is “Hongarian”. Assuming it’s a spelling mistake of “Hungarian”, they might want to fix that ASAP.

They have two sections for languages

1: Languages that you speak fluently.

2: Languages in which you have adequate proficiency.

I think they should expand this to where you can rate your proficiency from “advanced” to “simple conversational”. Because what is adequate? To some people adequate means nearing fluency and to others it means enough to survive with.

Navigating around the Web page was easy. Because most commonly selected items are on the main page, you don’t have to waste time search around for them. I think the two tables on the homepage which show the number of vacancies in each Industry / Position type and by Region very useful. But when you click on a region such as Shanghai with 2,371 job postings the next page shows the job postings listed chronologically. This is fine except that there is no way to further narrow it down into Industries or Position types from within the region to help in your job search. So you encounter 196 pages worth of jobs for Shanghai which is time consuming if you’re searching for a certain job in specific job in the region. And it’s the same when browsing through the industry listings. If they could add a function which allows you to narrow down your browsing results it would be great.

Using the search jobs function was very simple and useful because you’re able to search by occupation and location and a number of other choices at the same time; producing results specifically for your criteria.

NewChinaCareer.com also offers e-mail notifications of new jobs matching your search profile criteria, which will undoubtedly help save time searching for a new job by removing the need to check the page everyday for new listings.

Overall opinion:

My overall opinion of NewChinaCareer.com is positive. I like the way it is laid out and its ease of use. There are only a couple of minor issues, such as the browsing though region, which wouldn’t affect most users, as they are more likely to use the search function or the search profiles sent to their e-mail. I will come back to NewChinaCareer.com occasionally to search for new job opportunities in China unless they happen to offer me a job at NewChinaCareer.com *hint hint*

Posted in China General, Reviews, Work 1 Comment »

Well after several long months waiting i finally had a meeting with my schools boss to re-negotiate my contact and sort out all the bullshit. and i’m fairly pleased with the result being my workday is now much shorter i go to work at 8:30 which isn’t bad and then i get off for lunch around 11:40 i’m due back at school at 2:10 for my next class then i finish work at 3:30. i’m happy with the 2 1/2 hours free at lunchtime i might try get a part-time job for 2 hours then. i figure 2 hours everyday for 150yuan per hour could get me an extra 6-7000yuan every month. and to add to that with my re-negotiated contract i get an extra 700 a month for putting up with all the bullshit that they had put me through the last 5 months

needless to say both me and sammi where happy last night so i gotta celebrate with an indulgence trip to the import food shops and bought some real food

Posted in Work, My life No Comments »

I got a phonecall this morning from my school asking me why i wasn’t at work yet, my answer its saturday the school should be closed on a saturday. but that was not good enough for the school because they said because of the national holiday we need to work the weekend before because its not October 1st yet. i figure they also want me to return to work on the 8th which is next sunday because the holiday is over after 7 days and God forbid they let us have 8 days holiday. i guess i should probably just play it stupid and forget to come until they phone me

well i guess that all makes sense, NOT!. what i don’t understand is why schools have continue on the weekend but most companies don’t. it should be the other way around, or we could make it even better and have both cancelled for the weekend

i figure working extra days to make up for the days we get off must be some sort of fucked up  joke in the chinese communist calender thats dictates whatever you can do.

anyway i’m just glad the holiday is coming i sure can use it

have a nice holiday everyone

Posted in Bitching, Work, My life No Comments »