Foxconn on a hiring spree

Recruiting team has to interview thousands of applicants every day

Recruiters can sometimes be very picky because they have to spend time to weigh the pros and cons of potential candidates to find the perfect fits for the available positions. But recruiters for Foxconn, the company that handles the bulk of Apple Inc's manufacturing, had a different story to tell after the highly anticipated iPhone 6 was unveiled on Tuesday.

At a Foxconn recruitment center in Zhengzhou, the capital city of Henan province, eight recruiters shoulder the heavy task of interviewing thousands of job seekers every day as the consumer electronics manufacturer embarks on a hiring spree to produce the new shiny Apple phones.

A man surnamed Li told China Daily on Wednesday that he and his fellow recruiters at the center are expected to interview at least 2,000 candidates every day. The selected candidates will be subject to a thorough physical examination and put through a three-day training program before they start work at production lines.

The recruitment center opens between 8 am and 5:30 pm. Bus after bus moves job seekers directly from the train station in Zhengzhou to the recruitment center then to their assigned dormitories.

Jiao Jinmiao, director of the Henan provincial commerce department, said in mid-July that Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant was planning to recruit another 100,000 employees to meet the surging demand for the iPhone 6.

Liu Kun, a representative of Foxconn, said the company cannot comment on the production of any particular devices. "Recruitment at Foxconn is a long-term thing. We tend to hire experienced technicians but at the same time we also need a large number of new workers," he said.

A 20-year-old worker at Foxconn's Zhengzhou plant told China Daily that the production of the iPhone6 kicked off some time between June and July. The man surnamed Wang, who has worked in the Zhengzhou plant for about two years, said that Foxconn will likely hire more people this year than in 2013.