Is there a more compelling place to advance your career than China? Paradoxically, if you’re from China, the answer is yes, but for nearly everyone else China is one of the best places to cut your teeth.

India, Brazil and Eastern Europe are among the destinations that would also impress a global-minded recruiter or hiring manager. But China has unique advantages for “westerners” to consider such as the world’s fastest growing economy, and an acute shortage of experienced managers, especially those who can work with English-speaking customers.

“The war for talent in China is bigger than the dot-com days of 1999,” in the U.S., says Shanghai-based Frank Mulligan, an expatriate Irishman, blogger, and recruiter with Accetis International. The war, as Mulligan puts it, is driving up salaries and staff attrition. “The salary increases are nine to ten percent a year. But the real increases are much higher. The average turnover is in eighteen months. But if you change jobs the average increase [in pay] is thirty percent. ”

Those numbers tend to make job seekers listen closely. But of course that’s just the beginning of the story.

To better evaluate the nuances of the job market in China these are some of the more striking facts and trends highlighted by talent-sourcing experts. These data points and insights were culled from a series of presentations this week at a US-China HR Conference, run by XMei International.

• In China, says Mulligan, there’s no secrecy on salary – everybody knows what everybody makes. This adds some complications for managers who wish to selectively reward one employee but not his or her peers, too.
• This point is a bit difficult to appreciate from afar, but one of the cultural challenges of mixing western managers with Chinese teams is that the former tend to work sequentially while Asian employees prefer synchronous work styles, observes Mulligan. “In synchronic time, flexibility is the key. Options are kept open as long as possible.” This dichotomy is a challenge in recruiting or retaining talented employees.
• “Chinese people prefer instant communications,” says Mulligan. “For the hiring process you can skip to SMS and do much better [than e-mail or other forms of communication].”
• In China, locally-developed talent is called (affectionately) “red-necks.” Chinese who return after studying or working overseas are called “sea-turtles.” The sea-turtles are higher paid and more highly coveted than red-necks. Ray Zhang, a recruiter at Pepsico in China (a proud red-neck), says one third of the sea-turtles work for multinational companies. Sea-turtles are considered more flexible and culturally adaptive than red-necks.
• In a typical year China graduates three to four million students. In 2007, a demographic anomaly, six million students will enter the workforce. But of these, only thirty percent carry a bachelor degree or above, reports Pepsico’s Zhang. A management consultancy recently suggested that perhaps only 10% of Chinese graduates are ready to work for western companies.

As China continues its amazing growth and continues to open up more industries such as banking, it’s becoming easier for recruiters to coax western executives to test the waters. “Everybody wants to have it on their CV – three years in China,” says Mulligan. Perhaps, but not everyone will have the courage to try.