Demand for career mentors rises in China

Advisory firms eager to help job seekers cope with changes, prepare for transformation

Though the global job market is witnessing a lull of sorts, there is one category of jobs that has been seeing a boom - jobs related to careers and job-market advisory services.

Career mentoring is listed by several job-market information websites as one of the most promising sectors in the years to come. Never has the demand for career development-related service been so acute, said Gao Qihang, a career mentor who has recently opened a boutique advisory, called Insight and Performance Improvement (Huazanshidai), in Beijing.

Gao said that his company is going to focus on midcareer and executive-level career helps - from team relations to work/life balance.

Helping women clients avoid career setbacks, if not job losses, after their maternity leave or restart their career after a few years away for child care is also one of the company's fields of expertise, he said.

"But it is an industry based on intensive personal expertise," Gao said. "And you don't get much of that from schools, whatever academic degree you hold. It requires not only interdisciplinary knowledge but also broad understanding of society and quite a level of person-to-person communication skills."

In order to prepare himself for his little service, now with some 300 clients, Gao said he kept reading 80 to 100 theoretical books every year for the past 14 years. The most useful books he found were those about law, psychology and behavior, he said.

China's newly established career advisories rose from 76 in 2015 to 130 in 2016 and to 166 in 2017, according to available data. Industry specialists estimate that there are some 400 such services now in all Chinese mainland cities.

But it seems that the rapid growth in services can hardly meet demands from an economy that is in the middle of unprecedented changes.

Many of the most highly paid jobs two to three years from now will be those that were never heard of by the parents of today's university students, though parents habitually handhold their children in terms of future job choices, Gao said.

New jobs are going to be growing faster than ever as China continues to deflect the fallout from rising trade tensions with the United States.

"More and more parents would not be able to comprehend what their children are doing to do in terms of jobs," Gao said. "Just as many people would not have thought they would be doing the things they do."

That's why, society needs people to help it get ready for the changes, and for the new life styles that are coming along with them, he said.

Even Gao has not thought how his boutique firm is going to grow - such as how he is going to develop a large firm by transforming his personal mentor style into standard services.

Most of China's career advisories are small, including some of the oldest and most-well-known ones.

One of the oldest career mentor advisory firms is the Shanghai-based Sunward Career Management Consulting Group. It was established in 2002. Much of its branding effort is based on a small team of international experts.

Another Shanghai-based advisory, Career Frog, was founded in 2004 and is growing on venture capital funding, targeting job seekers who have returned to China after studying at overseas colleges.

In China, according to the organization called China Career Development Mentor Association, career mentor candidates will have to finish around 150 hours of professional study and training to take the test conducted by the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security. They will receive the license if they successfully pass the test. 

These job advisers can offer useful help to young job seekers and make on-campus job consulting more effective, although much more experience and expertise are needed, Gao said, to help midcareer clients.

Chinese job market data show that in recent years, up to half of the university graduates would leave their first jobs within one year, and 75 percent would leave in two years.

Many college graduates are unable to come up with a workable plan independently. Apart from help from school and tips from friends, paid career advisory services are nowadays common on university campuses in large cities.

University graduates are only part of the 12 million first-time job seekers in China, along with an additional 6 million people seeking re-employment.

Charges for advisory service varies a great deal from case to case, ranging from 1,000 yuan ($141.7) to 8,000 yuan, and even more than 10,000 yuan per person. Corporate executives may pay 15,000 yuan to 28,000 yuan for a private career adviser, according to online information.