The horror position just arrived on your plate. Production Manager in a Third Tier city in China, one that is known for bad weather, heavy pollution and a lack of basic amenities.

Oh, and it’s 2000 km from civilization, the nearest city, which even then requires another plane ride to get to somewhere that you can actually buy wine, coffee or decent reading material.

Yes, it’s an exaggeration but its not such an exaggeration in China, and even includes certain un-named Second Tier cities with a bad reputation and absolutely nothing for anyone to do. This is especially true for your existing high-maintenance, high-potential engineering talent, who will flatly refuse to go there.

But all is not lost. There are ways to solve even this difficult conundrum.

1. Reverse lookup potential candidates in the internet recruitment portals and seek out those who list that area as their ‘Hukou’ (residence pass). You won’t find many that want to go back home but you are guaranteed many more than if you focus on people located near the city in question. The key issue will probably be family.

2. Check out cities that people go to start their careers in China. Shenzhen is the best example as nobody is actually from Shenzhen. But it could also include Shanghai, Dalian and other successful, fast-expanding places. These will have huge numbers of people not actually from that city, and among them will be a proportion that want to go back home.

3. Go to the location and find out what’s wrong with it, and what’s right. Sure, there may be little to do there but the flip side of that is that there is a slower pace of life on offer. Professionals suffering from the high pace of life in Shanghai or Guangzhou may welcome the chance to slow down, especially if they came from a similar environment in the first place.

It is worth noting at this point that the candidate flow in China is generally up from Third Tier city to Second Tier city to First Tier city and rarely does it happen that people in First Tier cities go to Second or Third Tier cities. There are the exceptions who will go down to be with aged parents or because their family want them to find a ‘nice local girl’ but the flow is normally ‘up’.

4. Compensate for the location. This could be in the form of a transportation allowance that allows the manager to fly back to a main city every month. Or it could be a job offer contract that specifically links the role to another position later on. This makes the position into a stepping stone, thereby adding that necessary something extra that might make it sufficiently attractive to a potential candidate to actually sign the job offer.

5. Lower your standards for the position and support heavily from your HQ in China. This would not mean accepting people with lower ethical or work standards but it does mean accepting less experience or less direct exposure to the technology involved. Seek out candidates who would benefit enormously from the opportunity presented in the location and who would be motivated to take a job there, if they could be sure they didn’t have to do it alone. Candidates who are at Supervisor level in a big plant may fit here as they would appreciate the chance to be Manager, even it is a smaller plant. The level of competition in the major cities may have left them a little in the doldrums but their background might make them a strong fit.

6. Start early and inform operations that the process will take longer than expected. This is often the case for new plants, which are moving more and more to the West of China, and in these special cases you are in a position to dictate terms. Slow and steady wins this race.

7. If there is a university or a technical school in the area, and there often is not, then link up with them. They will have an alumni list, some of whom will want to come back home for reasons cited above. Professors in these schools are usually only too delighted to have reason to contact their old students. Especially if it brings them back home.

8. Set up a hiring team for that particular location or factory even if you would not normally set one up, and staff it with locals. Recruiters from your corporate HQ will have neither the time nor the inclination to hire for locations like these. Often only a local person will be able to get across what the area is all about and what future employees are likely to experience on the job.

9. If your new greenfield site is sufficiently large, and thereby potentially influential, you should consider working with the local government. Often the problem with these outlying regions is solvable by them.

They have the power to build new infrastructure and encourage the setup of service providers. At best you can encourage them to build international schools or medical centres, but even their evident commitment to the project may encourage candidates to believe this is the right position for them.

10. If none the above options are available to you, accept defeat now. No one is that lucky.