Rural e-commerce faces a talent shortage: even a monthly salary of over 10,000 yuan can't attract workers

Qingyuan City in the mountainous region of northern Guangdong recently held its first O2O Youth E-commerce Festival, with a focus on rural e-commerce. At the venue, reporters saw that of the 63 local agricultural e-commerce companies exhibiting, many had put up huge recruitment advertisements in addition to promoting their products. These rural e-commerce companies offer no small amount in wages and benefits, with positions such as e-commerce operations manager paying a monthly salary of over 10,000 yuan.

Although giants such as Alibaba and JD.com have been racing to stake out territory in rural areas of eastern, western and northern Guangdong, and many returning white-collar workers, university graduates and agriculture-related enterprises have also begun to "go online" to start new ventures, rural e-commerce development in eastern, western and northern Guangdong is encountering the dilemma of a severe shortage of talent, and some companies still cannot recruit suitable talent even by spending heavily.

Current situation

High salaries offered, but no one comes

E-commerce companies are worried

This year's No. 1 Central Document proposed, "support e-commerce, logistics, commerce and trade, finance and other enterprises in participating in the construction of agriculture-related e-commerce platforms. Carry out comprehensive demonstrations of e-commerce entering rural areas." This is the third consecutive year that the No. 1 Central Document has mentioned promoting rural e-commerce development. Recently, 19 departments including the Ministry of Commerce and the Ministry of Transport jointly issued a document proposing to further promote rural e-commerce development.

The e-commerce industry is an intelligence-intensive industry and requires a large number of highly qualified practical talent who understand technology. Whether they are newly started e-commerce businesses or e-commerce businesses that have already reached scale, all are lamenting how hard it is to find e-commerce talent, and for relatively high-end e-commerce talent, major companies are fighting even harder to recruit them.

At the Qingyuan Rural E-commerce Industrial Park, reporters met a rural e-commerce boss who had previously worked in the Pearl River Delta and returned home this year to start a business. He told reporters that when going back home to do rural e-commerce, logistics costs are high, which he had anticipated before starting the business, but being unable to find suitable e-commerce operations talent caught him somewhat off guard.

In order to attract e-commerce talent, he did not hesitate to spend heavily. "The pay level I offer is competitive even in the Pearl River Delta region. For an e-commerce operations manager, I offer a monthly salary of 12,000 yuan, plus company shares." He said the average housing price in Qingyuan's urban area is less than 5,000 yuan per sq m, so this income is absolutely high-level locally. But several months passed, and he still had not recruited suitable talent.

Qingyuan Rural E-commerce Industrial Park currently houses 36 enterprises. Ms. Cheng, deputy general manager of the industrial park, told reporters that when enterprises in the park talked with her, they all said that although logistics is a bit expensive, the biggest headache is still the scarcity of talent. "What is most lacking is graphic designers and operations staff. Our industrial park hired 4 graphic designers to be shared by enterprises in the park, which on the one hand solves an urgent need and on the other hand can also reduce enterprise costs."

At the first O2O Youth E-commerce Festival, reporters saw that at the entrance there was a joint recruitment board for local rural e-commerce enterprises, offering no small amount in wages and benefits. For example, one enterprise recruiting an e-commerce manager required more than 2 years of work experience, with a monthly salary of 6,000-8,000 yuan; graphic designers with more than one year of experience had a monthly salary of around 5,000 yuan.

Behind the scenes

Young people go out to work

Rural areas lack talent

Although a computer, a network cable and a mouse are enough to open an online store, opening a store is easy but operating it is hard. Zhou Chenxiang, a university graduate from Liannan in Qingyuan who returned home to start a business, told reporters that she promotes and sells black tea produced by her own family through a Weidian store, but there are too many things to consider. "Rural e-commerce urgently needs interdisciplinary talent who understand online mall sales and need capabilities in product packaging, product marketing, operations promotion, graphic design, communication, after-sales service and so on."

But in eastern, western and northern Guangdong, in many villages large numbers of young and middle-aged adults go out to work, leaving only elderly people and children at home depending on each other, with no way to start using computers, and talent is severely lacking. "In some places, a village does not even have one person who can operate a computer, so how can e-commerce be done?" Zhou Chenxiang told reporters that the black tea previously produced in their village was all sold to tea traders, and they had no idea at all that it could be packaged and sold through the internet.

According to the "Micro Report on County E-commerce Talent Research" jointly released by AliResearch and Taobao Business School, in the next two years county-level online merchants nationwide will need 2 million e-commerce talents, with the three most lacking categories being promotion, graphic design and data analysis.

E-commerce expert and professor Li Qi of Xi'an Jiaotong University told reporters, "At present, the number of students in our e-commerce major reaches more than 400,000, but compared with the huge market demand, there are still too few talents who understand e-commerce, can do e-commerce, and can do e-commerce well, and supply falls short of demand."

"Compared with traditional e-commerce, rural e-commerce, and compared with developed regions, less developed regions, suffer from a much more serious shortage of e-commerce talent." Li Qi said that the shortage of rural e-commerce talent does not occur only in Guangdong; all parts of the country encounter similar problems. "In the short term, this situation cannot be changed."

Measures

Carry out e-commerce training

Cultivate backbone talent

E-commerce platforms such as Alibaba, JD.com and Suning are going to the countryside and into villages, recruiting agents with credibility and online shopping ability and experience, and developing online shopping among villagers. But rural residents not only want to buy rich and varied goods; they more urgently hope to sell agricultural products. Now, various places are using "Internet Plus" to encourage rural e-commerce entrepreneurship, and agriculture-related enterprises are increasingly "going online."

At the first Qingyuan O2O Youth E-commerce Festival, the booth of the Qingyuan Youth E-commerce Service Center was crowded with people. Visiting rural young people scanned QR codes one after another to participate in the center's free e-commerce training courses held once a week.

"Every course session is very popular, and many people sign up. In just a few months, we have trained more than 5,000 person-times of e-commerce youth." The relevant person in charge told reporters that the center mainly trains in basic e-commerce knowledge, product planning and publishing, online store operations practice, online store promotion, visits to e-commerce enterprises and so on, and the courses are deeply loved by trainees after being launched.

It is understood that in the face of the rapid development of e-commerce and the large talent gap, Guangdong has actively launched a rural e-commerce training project, and many places have introduced e-commerce talent training plans. For example, on September 8 this year, Huazhou City in Maoming launched the "Golden Seed" rural e-commerce talent training project, planning to use about 3 years to focus on cultivating 100 rural e-commerce stars, 1,000 rural e-commerce backbone talents, and train 10,000 rural e-commerce talents. The Provincial Department of Human Resources and Social Security has also issued a document proposing to advance the implementation of the "Three Supports and One Assistance" plan and guide talent to serve at the rural grassroots level.

Regarding the shortage of rural e-commerce talent, especially high-end talent, Li Qi believes that the most important thing for the government is to create a good soft environment and provide a high-quality entrepreneurial environment. "Among the main actors in rural e-commerce entrepreneurship, young people are the most active entrepreneurial group. We can focus on returning university graduates, university student village officials, rural young people who lead others to prosperity, returning entrepreneurial youth and some self-employed households, and actively cultivate a group of leaders in rural e-commerce entrepreneurship."