Financial companies in China have recruited more information technology professionals in the first half of the year due to booming Internet financial services, online recruiter highpin.com said in a report yesterday.

Recruitment in the financial sector nearly doubled in the first six months from the same period last year, led by some of China’s largest cities including Shanghai, Beijing, and Guangzhou, said the website, an affiliate of recruitment portal zhaopin.com.

The five most competitive positions in the financial sector include mobile application developers and senior software engineers.

Each opening for a mobile application developer attracted 81 applicants and each software engineer position drew 75 applicants on average, according to the report.

But accountancy and backroom jobs involving settling of credit invoices and export and import documents were also highly sought-after, with the number of applications exceeding 100 for each opening.

The report found that overseas candidates with one to five years’ financial experience commanded an average monthly pay that’s 4,000 yuan (US$650) higher than for locally-trained candidates.

Separately, fewer employees in China expect their employers to give a bonus for the Mid-Autumn Festival as companies have slashed incentive plans amid the government’s call for frugality, another survey found yesterday.

Only 23.5 percent of employees think they will get a bonus from their companies this year, a fall from 38.7 percent who received some bonus last year, China’s largest online recruitment portal 51job.com said in a survey yesterday. The survey covered 1,415 employees and 253 employers.

Meanwhile only 15.6 percent of employers said they plan to offer cash or gift cards to employees as a festival bonus, a sharp decline from 36.2 percent last year.

“Companies’ decision to cancel Mid-Autumn gifts is a result of the government’s campaign against unnecessary spending,” said Jennifer Feng, chief researcher of 51job.com.

She added that as employees nowadays are not keen to get mooncakes as a holiday gift while giving cash is not quite a tradition of the festival, many employers simply decided to cut such practices when companies have to face tight budgets.

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