The year's first recruitment fair in Hohhot was coming to a
close at 5:00 PM on Thursday. The CV-waving crowd was gone,
companies were leaving and sanitation workers were tearing posters
off the walls.
Ji Rentai was still trying to strike up a conservation with the
manager of a Beijing-based technology firm, but his sixth attempt
to fix an interview that day failed again.
"They said I don't have the experience, but that's unfair," said
the e-commerce major who graduated from a local IT institute last
summer. "They are expecting too much from new graduates."
Ji chose e-commerce out of his love for computers, but the
underdeveloped Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region offers far fewer
jobs in the sector compared with the increasing number of new
graduates in recent years.
A year after he began to seriously look for a job, Ji is still
unemployed. He joined a local network company last September, but
the job lasted for only four months. "The boss said they didn't
need so many people."
Despite his frustrating experience, Ji is unwilling to become a
salesman, a job that is more available in the regional capital
Hohhot. "I prefer a technical job."
China's job market is slim this year with 4.95 million new
graduates from nationwide colleges and universities, 820,000 more
than last year, the Ministry of Education said.
In Beijing, the number of university graduates will reach an
all-time high of nearly 200,000, while only about 87,000 graduate
jobs are expected to be on offer, according to Beijing Personnel
Bureau.
The white-hot competition has forced many students to buy
expensive clothing and even receive plastic surgery in order to
stand out in the large crowd of job seekers.
A college graduate in the southwestern Chongqing Municipality
reportedly spent 20,000 yuan (US$2,565) in her year-long quest for
a job between 2005 and 2006, according to the detailed accounts
kept for her by her mother, an accountant.
The girl, named Jingzi, attended extracurricular English,
computer and accounting courses, sat for an English proficiency
test and got a driving license, which she hoped would bring more
job opportunities.
She traveled to five provinces last year to attend their
recruitment tests for public servants, with each trip costing more
than 2,000 yuan.
Jingzi was lucky: upon her graduation last summer she found a
white-collar job in Chongqing that paid 2,000 yuan a month, while
many of her peers had spent just as much but of no avail.
About 30 percent, or 1.2 million, of last year's 4.13 million
college graduates did not find a job upon graduation, according to
the Ministry of Labor and Social Security.
This surplus of laborers have somehow allowed the employers to
be more picky in hiring people.
Wang Lin, a senior finance student in Beijing, was shocked to
find one of his job interviews was in a restaurant. "I had applied
for a job in the company's sales department, and after a 10-member
panel bombarded me with questions, I was told to mimic a sales
executive treating my potential 'customers' to dinner."
In China, many business deals are stricken at the dinner table.
"The company was trying to test if I could drink liquor and
tactfully talk the 'customers' into reaching a deal with me," said
Wang.
The recruitment officer called the next day to tell him he
failed in the test. "He didn't say why, but I guess it was because
I didn't do well enough at the dinner table -- I wasn't prepared
for that and I never learned to drink."
The glut of graduates have also caused some employers to
underuse well-educated people, said Zheng Gongcheng, a Renmin
University professor and a deputy to the National People's
Congress.
"Some Chinese banks, for example, hire master degree holders to
work as tellers," he said. "It's a waste of human resources and
disrupts the order of the job market -- where can they put people
with lower degrees then?"
China's draft law on employment promotion, which has been
examined by the lawmakers and is to be enacted this year, should
spell out punishment for such discrimination, said Zheng.
The draft law prohibits discrimination against job seekers
despite their ethnicity, race, gender, religious belief, age or
physical disability. It also requires governments above county
level to establish early warning systems to prevent and control
large-scale unemployment.
Meanwhile, experts say schools should adapt their courses to the
job market demands and help students with more convincing career
plans instead of just cramming for exams.
Xue Ying, president of Beijing IMAP Education Research
Institute, said career planning should start in senior high school,
before a student decides his area of study at college.
"We found at least 40 percent of university students are unhappy
with their majors, and 65 percent said they'd switch majors if they
were allowed."
Under the current education system, 280 majors are for science
students choose and 160 ones for arts students. Once they have been
admitted, it's extremely difficult for them to switch majors unless
they retake the college entrance exam.
"It's important to help students recognize their own
professional aptitude at an earlier age so they can fully exploit
their talents," said Xue, whose institute offers professional
aptitude tests to people of all ages and gives professional
recruitment advice to graduates.
(Xinhua News Agency March 17, 2007)
|