Last week I met a Dutch businessman in the bar atop the Shrangila Hotel in Shanghai, on the Pudong side. He has been an importer of products used in the hospitality business in China for at least six years. He told me when we met he had just finished interviewing seven women for the position of office assistant for the new office he was setting up in Shanghai. “Five of them did not wear underwear,” he said, shaking his head in disbelief.

Of course, I was a bit surprised, too. “Are you sure?” I asked, and took a gulp of wine.

“Yes,” he said, “they made it quite plain to me they were ready for action.”

“How is that possible? What recruiters did you use?”

He wouldn’t tell me the names of the recruiters, just assured me “they were international recruiting agencies.”

“I told them exactly what I needed; only two of the seven were even close to being interested in an interview,” he said. Three of them asked me if I wanted to go out together later for dinner.”

“Well, how did they look?” I just had to ask. “Any of them good looking?

“Two of them were smashing,” he smiled, and took a swig from his beer bottle. He continued, “But I didn’t dare ask any of them out. Too much trouble, you ask me.” He shook his head in wonder – as much in disbelief of the forwardness of the women as of the gumption of the recruitment agencies.

The best a colleague and I could figure was that some recruitment firms in Shanghai have rogue employees that run Escort Services on the side, to put it politely. The moonlighting staffer can always plead that the candidates that appeared for interview were the best available at the time – at least, according to their cv’s – should the interviewer complain about the quality of the candidates. The candidates’ “agent” gets a cut of any proceeds that might come out of a “hire” for the evening.

Now that’s what I call Enterprise.