In his government work report to the National People's Congress on March 5, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao listed "to develop international service outsourcing" as one of the seven ways to keep a steady growth of foreign trade.

Employers in this sector have felt an obvious talent shortage, which may hinder the development.

Hu Bo said a British vocational training institution asked the Internet Engine to redesign its Web site last year. The project manager presented the client with a thorough plan after month-long research, but the client was not satisfied.

"What they expected to see in the plan was detailed design, for example, where the company's logo should be put on the homepage, while our Chinese manager's way of thinking was too abstract for them," he said.

Hu almost lost the client before he finally managed to find another manager who had been working in the Silicon Valley for several years to take over the project.

"Of course, I have to pay much more to him," Hu said.

At the end of last year, he planned to hire more people to develop the overseas market, which demanded "foreign language fluency, basic IT skills and experience or knowledge of marketing."

"It turned out finding such kind of 'compound' talents was nearly a mission impossible," Hu said.

McKinsey, the New York based consultancy, said in a report in January that China posted rapid growth in the business but lagged behind India, whose market value was nine times that of China.

The talent shortage, especially a lack of management and developers with relevant experience, may become the key factor, among others, to hinder the expansion of the country's offshore outsourcing industry.

Zhang Zhongyang, vice president of the Wuxi iSoftStone Corporation, a subsidiary company of one of China's top 50 service outsourcing companies, shared the same view.

The company, based in Wuxi City of east China's Jiangsu Province, deals with bank business process outsourcing (BPO) and IT outsourcing (ITO). Its major clients were in Japan and the Republic of Korea.

That's why an operator's position may require mid-level Japanese or Korean, which means the employee can read manuals and other documents in Japanese or Korean, and two or three computer software development tools, for example, Java.

It's almost impossible for the fresh college graduates to be qualified, Zhang said.

"So we will pick those who have a good studying attitude and ability," Zhang said.