7 Best Job Boards in China and Websites for Hiring [2026]

You cannot register as an employer on any major Chinese platform without a Chinese business licence, and you cannot employ anyone in China without an entity behind that licence.

I have spent most of my career on the China side of cross-border business, and this is the point where foreign teams lose months. They pick a board, discover the sign-up needs a mainland phone number and a company registration document, and start again from the entity question they skipped.

LinkedIn is Not An Option Here

LinkedIn shut InCareer, its stripped-back Chinese jobs app, on 9 August 2023, having already closed its main Chinese social network. The company cited competition and the macroeconomic climate, and cut 716 roles.

The scale gap explains it. As the South China Morning Post reported at the time, InCareer had around 959,600 monthly active users against 51job’s 18.5 million and BOSS Zhipin’s 17.3 million.

LinkedIn still sells Talent, Marketing and Learning products to companies based in China that hire outside it. What no longer exists is a LinkedIn jobs product for hiring inside China. Plan around domestic platforms.

What You Need Before You Can Post

Three things, in this order: a registered Chinese entity, a business licence to verify the employer account, and a mainland mobile number to receive the SMS code that every sign-up flow sends.

A foreign company that wants to employ staff in China normally registers a wholly foreign-owned enterprise, a joint venture or a representative office. The representative office route carries a catch: an RO cannot employ Chinese nationals directly and has to take them through an authorised labour dispatch agency such as FESCO or CIIC.

The second surprise is access. Writing this guide from outside China, BOSS Zhipin, Liepin and Lagou all refused the connection or served a security challenge. That is not a bug in your browser. These platforms are built for domestic users, and an overseas IP address is treated as anomalous.

The third is language. Every employer interface below is Chinese only, apart from HiredChina. Browser translation gets you through a job posting form and will not get you through a chat with a candidate, which on the leading platform is the entire product.

The 7 Best Job Boards to Hire Employees in China

These seven were picked on reach and on whether each holds a segment the others do not. Every site was opened in August 2026 from outside China, and where a platform blocked that connection this guide says so rather than showing you a page it did not load.

1. BOSS Zhipin

BOSS Zhipin is the market leader and the one that changed how Chinese hiring works. Its operator Kanzhun reported average monthly active users of 60.9 million in the first quarter of 2026, up 5.7 percent year on year, and 7.1 million paid enterprise customers in the twelve months to 31 March 2026.

Key features:

• Direct chat between the hiring manager and the candidate, which is what 直聘 in the name means. There is no application form to wait on.
• Recruiter accounts tied to a named person at the company, not a faceless HR mailbox.
• Mobile-first, with most conversations happening in the app rather than on the web.
• Free posting tiers alongside paid promotion and candidate contact packages.
• Coverage across white collar, technical and blue collar roles, which few competitors manage at once.

How to use it: register the company, verify with the business licence, then have the actual hiring manager run the account rather than a recruiter. The platform rewards fast replies, and candidates judge you on response speed. Someone who reads and writes Chinese has to own this, because the product is a conversation.

What works well	What to watch
The largest active audience in China, and the fastest route from posting to conversation.	The site served a security challenge to our overseas connection on every attempt.
Chat removes the application black hole that candidates complain about elsewhere.	It demands daily attention. A slow account performs worse than no account.
Works across seniority levels and collar colours.	Chinese only, and effectively mobile only for the chat itself.

Reviews: Kanzhun is listed on Nasdaq as BZ and publishes quarterly user and customer numbers, which is a stronger signal than any app store average: 60.9 million monthly active users and 7.1 million paying enterprises are audited figures rather than marketing claims. The trade-off is that a foreign employer cannot easily inspect the product before committing.

2. Zhaopin

Zhaopin is one of the two long-running general boards, and the one with the widest category spread. Its job channels run from sales, finance and technology through to manufacturing, skilled trades, logistics and catering.

Key features:

• Category coverage across roughly thirty job families, including blue collar and manufacturing.
• Dedicated channels for returnee hiring and for overseas postings, useful if you want candidates with foreign experience.
• Campus recruitment and government-linked hiring programmes.
• Assessment tools and a candidate question and answer community.
• A resume database sold alongside job posting.

How to use it: employer sign-in lives on a separate domain and starts with a mainland mobile number and an SMS code, with no email option and no other country code offered. Get that number sorted before anything else, because it gates the whole account.

What works well	What to watch
Broadest category coverage of the general boards, from executives to production staff.	Enterprise login is locked to a +86 mobile number.
The returnee channel is the best route to candidates who have studied or worked abroad.	Ground lost to BOSS Zhipin on active users over the past few years.
Loaded normally from outside China, unlike the market leader.	Chinese only, with no English employer interface.

Reviews: Zhaopin does not publish user metrics the way its listed rivals do, and it has no independently rated app in the stores a Western employer can check. Judge it on the returnee and manufacturing channels, which are the two things it does that BOSS Zhipin does not do better.

3. 51job

51job, known in Chinese as Qiancheng Wuyou, is the other incumbent and the one with the deepest database. Its employer portal reports a talent pool of more than 280 million profiles, over 10 million registered enterprises, and coverage of 600 or more cities across 25 years of operation.

Key features:

• A resume database of more than 280 million profiles, the largest claimed in this list.
• Matching driven by a large language model, applied across industries rather than to technology roles alone.
• Coverage of 600 or more cities, with an AI-generated map of where hiring demand is concentrated.
• Products aimed separately at large groups and at small and medium businesses.
• Coverage of white collar, blue collar and specialist technical hiring in one account.

How to use it: the employer product is a separate site at ehire.51job.com. Sign-in is by WeChat QR scan or SMS, which again assumes a mainland account. Buy database access rather than relying on job posting alone, since the database is what 51job is actually strong at.

What works well	What to watch
The deepest resume database available, and the widest city coverage.	Database size counts registrations, not active jobseekers.
Serious strength outside the first-tier cities, where the newer platforms are thinner.	Sign-in leans on WeChat, which most foreign teams do not have set up for business use.
Loaded normally from outside China.	Chinese only, and the interface shows its age next to BOSS Zhipin.

Reviews: 51job was the monthly active user leader as recently as 2023, at 18.5 million against BOSS Zhipin’s 17.3 million, and has since been overtaken by a wide margin. Read its own database figures as claims rather than audited numbers, and weigh them against the fact that its lead in active usage has gone.

4. Liepin

Liepin is the mid to senior specialist, operated by Hong Kong listed Tongdao Liepin Group. For the 2025 full year it reported 1.474 million verified enterprise customers, up 3.2 percent, and 72,000 paying enterprise customers, up 5.3 percent.

Key features:

• A candidate base weighted to managers, specialists and experienced professionals rather than graduates.
• A headhunter network working alongside the self-service platform.
• Executive search and assessment products sold on top of job posting.
• Salary and talent market reports covering senior hiring.
• A paying customer base of 72,000 enterprises, small by Chinese standards and deliberately so.

How to use it: Liepin sells to employers through a sales conversation more than through self-service, which suits the roles it handles. Expect to be routed to an account manager, and expect the same business licence verification as everywhere else.

What works well	What to watch
The right platform for a China country manager or a senior engineering lead.	The site would not load for us from outside China across three attempts.
Listed in Hong Kong, so its customer numbers are reported rather than asserted.	Only 72,000 paying enterprises, so the network is narrower than the general boards.
The headhunter layer covers roles a job ad will not fill.	Priced as a senior hiring product, not as a job board.

Reviews: the useful public signal is the financial disclosure rather than user ratings. Verified enterprise customers grew 3.2 percent in 2025 while paying customers grew 5.3 percent, which says the senior end of Chinese hiring stabilised that year after a weak run. We could not open the site to assess the product itself.

5. Maimai

Maimai is the closest thing China has to a professional network, and it is the nearest replacement for what LinkedIn used to do here. It combines a real-name professional feed, a recruitment module and an anonymous workplace forum.

Key features:

• Real-name profiles with verified employment history, which is what makes sourcing possible.
• A recruitment management module for employers alongside the social product.
• Referral hiring, built on the premise that the best roles never reach a job board.
• An anonymous workplace forum where candidates discuss employers candidly, which cuts both ways for you.
• Direct contact with decision makers, used for business development as much as for hiring.

How to use it: treat it as a sourcing and employer branding tool rather than a place to post vacancies. Search for people doing the job at comparable companies and approach them. Then read what employees say about your own company in the anonymous forum before you start, because your candidates will.

What works well	What to watch
The only credible way to source passive senior candidates in China.	Not a volume tool. Expect a handful of good conversations, not a pipeline.
Real-name verification makes profiles more reliable than a resume database.	The anonymous forum can carry damaging discussion of your company.
Loaded normally from outside China.	Chinese only, and outreach in English will mostly be ignored.

Reviews: Maimai does not publish audited user figures and has no store rating a foreign employer can check, so treat any headline user number you see quoted elsewhere with caution. What is verifiable is the product shape: a real-name network plus a recruitment module plus an anonymous forum, which no other platform in this list combines.

6. 58.com

58.com, or 58 Tongcheng, is a classifieds platform where recruitment sits beside property, used cars and second-hand goods. That sounds like a weakness and is the reason it works for the roles it serves.

Key features:

• City-by-city listings, so a role is advertised to the district rather than the country.
• Full-time, part-time and daily-paid work in the same channel.
• Depth in service, retail, logistics, driving and manufacturing roles.
• Free listing tiers with paid promotion, aimed at small businesses rather than corporates.
• A separate recruitment brand, Yingcai Zhipin, running inside the wider platform.

How to use it: switch to the correct city first, since the whole platform is organised by location and a national posting means little here. Use it for roles where the commute decides whether someone applies, and ignore it for anything professional.

What works well	What to watch
The strongest reach into local, blue collar and part-time hiring.	No use at all for professional, technical or management roles.
City-level targeting fits multi-site and retail operations.	Listing quality is uneven, as on any classifieds platform.
Free tiers make it cheap to test a location.	Recruitment is one vertical among many, not the company’s focus.

Reviews: 58.com is a classifieds business rather than a recruitment specialist, so hiring-specific metrics are not broken out anywhere public. The honest assessment is structural: for a warehouse role in one district of one city it is the obvious choice, and for anything above that it is not.

7. HiredChina

HiredChina solves a narrow problem the six platforms above ignore: hiring foreign nationals who are already in China or want to move there. It is the only board in this list with an English interface on both sides.

Key features:

• A searchable candidate pool filtered by nationality, position and location.
• Profiles showing work history, education and degree level, aimed at work permit eligibility.
• An English interface throughout, with a language switch for Chinese.
• A policy section covering the rules on foreign employment in China.
• Events and employer branding aimed at the foreign community.

How to use it: register, then work from the talent search rather than from job postings, since the pool is small enough to browse. Check work permit eligibility before you interview: degree level and years of experience decide whether a foreign hire is permitted at all, and neither is negotiable later.

What works well	What to watch
The only English-language option here, which makes it usable without a Chinese speaker.	A tiny pool next to the domestic platforms.
Built around the foreign work permit rules rather than ignoring them.	Wrong tool entirely for hiring Chinese nationals.
Candidate profiles are detailed enough to screen from directly.	You still need the entity and the work permit quota to employ anyone.

Reviews: HiredChina is small enough that no independent rating exists, and its own site carries no audited metrics. Assess it by browsing the talent pool before you pay for anything, which the site lets you do. If the profiles you need are not there, no subscription will conjure them.

Comparison At a Glance

Board	Best for	Interface	Reached from outside China
BOSS Zhipin	Most roles, at every level	Chinese, chat-first	No, security challenge
Zhaopin	General hiring, returnees, manufacturing	Chinese	Yes
51job	Database search and lower-tier cities	Chinese	Yes
Liepin	Senior and executive hiring	Chinese	No, would not load
Maimai	Sourcing passive senior candidates	Chinese	Yes
58.com	Local, blue collar and part-time roles	Chinese	Yes
HiredChina	Hiring foreign nationals in China	English	Yes

The access column reflects repeated attempts from a European connection in August 2026 and will differ on a Chinese network, where all seven work normally. It is listed because it tells you something real: you will be running these accounts from inside China or not at all.

What a Job Board Will Not Do for You

In China the board is the last step, not the first. Ahead of it sits the entity, and behind it sits a payroll obligation known as five insurances and one fund: pension, medical, unemployment, work injury and maternity insurance, plus the housing provident fund.

Contribution rates and bases are set city by city rather than nationally, so a Shanghai hire and a Chengdu hire cost different multiples of the same salary. Any rate quoted in a guide like this would be wrong somewhere, so price the specific city before you make the offer.

Our China payroll, benefits and tax guide covers the contribution structure and the filing calendar. If you have no entity, an employer of record in China becomes the legal employer while your team directs the work, and our comparison of EOR providers in China covers who handles it well.

Job board, agency, or hiring partner

Post on a board when you already have a Chinese entity, a Chinese-speaking manager to run the account, and a role common enough to attract applications. BOSS Zhipin alone covers most of that ground.

Use an agency when the role is senior, when you need someone to run the Chinese-language conversation on your behalf, or when you have no entity and no appetite to build one. Our guide to platforms for hiring software engineers in China covers the vetted marketplace route, which is a different product from a job board.

Before committing either way, it is worth testing the premise. Our assessment of whether Chinese engineering talent is a deep pool or overhyped and our China developer rate card give the quality and cost picture, and hiring developers in China covers how we do it.

Frequently Asked Questions

Can I use LinkedIn to hire in China?

No. LinkedIn closed InCareer, its Chinese jobs app, on 9 August 2023, having already shut its Chinese social network. It still sells talent and learning products to China-based companies hiring outside the country, but there is no LinkedIn jobs product for hiring inside China.

What is the best job board in China?

BOSS Zhipin, for most roles. Its operator reported 60.9 million average monthly active users in the first quarter of 2026 and 7.1 million paying enterprise customers. Liepin is better for senior hiring, 58.com for local blue collar roles, and HiredChina for foreign nationals.

Can a foreign company post a job in China without an entity?

Not on the major platforms. Employer accounts are verified against a Chinese business licence, and sign-up requires a mainland mobile number. Employing someone requires a registered entity or a dispatch arrangement, and a representative office cannot hire Chinese nationals directly at all.

Do I need to speak Chinese to hire in China?

Someone on your side does. Every employer interface here except HiredChina is Chinese only, and on BOSS Zhipin the product is a live chat with candidates. Browser translation handles a posting form and does not handle a negotiation.

How long does hiring take in China?

Four to eight weeks from posting to signed offer once the account is live. The entity and verification work ahead of that is the long pole: registering a WFOE takes months, which is why most first-time employers start with a dispatch arrangement or an employer of record.

If the entity is the blocker, we can employ staff in China on your behalf and shortlist pre-vetted candidates across APAC within 24 hours. Tell us what you are hiring for and we will come back with names.