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Good jobs hard to find for undergrads 

cctv.com 07-19-2005 12:51


We now go to our special Labor Report Series, and today, we take a look at Chinese undergraduates seeking jobs. The final 12 months of life on campus appear to be the toughest for most as they prepare to leave the cosy confines of acedemia and try to crack into a highly compeitive job market.

This is one of the spring job fairs. It is being held in Beijing's workers' stadium. There is a huge number of job hunters, most of them are undergraduates, each holds several resumes in their hands. They give them to the companies they are interested in, but are often turned down.

A graduate Xiao Lei said: "Finding a good job is difficult to some extent, since we have just graduated from school without any work experience. Many companies require experienced staff members and are not willing to spend time training employees or offering any opportunity. Different undergraduates have different aims. Some want to get high salaries while others hope to exert their own values. It depends on you. I believe if I try hard, I will find a good job."


The fact that it's not easy for unexperienced people to get a job bothers many undergraduates. He Xuan is one of them. She is busy preparing for her final exams to get her graduation diploma while at the same time seeking a satisfactory job. She feels quite unsettled and really exhausted. Finally, she decided to turn to Buddha for help.

The Temple of Reclining Buddha is always very busy, since its Chinese name sounds quite similar to the English word "offers". Therefore, many people come here to ask for offers.

This is the case with many visitors. They say that actually they've never followed Buddhism, but facing pressure to find a job, they'll have a try.

On the one hand, the students say it's unfair to turn down those who haven't got any working experience, since everyone should have the opportunity to get started, and it's impossible for a college student to leave school and gain social experience. However, on the other hand, the companies have their own concerns.


William Wang, Supervisor of Agency Dvpt. Center of China Life Insurance Co., said: "As a sales and marketing company, we have certain requirement for employees. Mostly, undergraduates are not accepted. It's not because they are not good enough, but because they lack social experience. Having just graduated from university, they always have very high expectations of the future. Once failed, which is common in doing sales and marketing, they will get too frustrated to move on. This is very bad for their self-development. Therefore, we don't think our positions are right for undergraduates."

Fortunately, this only happens in some positions in some companies. Many other companies do offer jobs to new graduates, like the telecommunication industry. Experts predict that the number of undergraduates will reach 3.38 million, an increase of about 20 percent compared to last year. It seems that the expanded college enrollment since 1999 is an explanation for the employment difficulties. However, despite the fact that by some measures, there are enough vacancies, the most important factor seems to be that most graduates aim only for high positions with high salaries in the big cities.

Zheng Chengjun, Director of Student Affairs Dept. of Beijing Language & Culture University, said: "Many students say that it's hard to find a job. Actually, it should be that it's hard to find a good job in the big cities like Beijing and Shanghai. If they would broaden their view and would like to go where they are needed, like the western part of China, finding a job is easy."


The Chinese government stopped the practice of assigning jobs to college graduates almost 10 years ago. Before then, graduates didn't have to worry about being unemployed. But now, they have to adjust their attitudes toward job-hunting and face up to new challenges by themselves. This is the toughest part when seeking a job. And many students like He Xuan are still wandering and trying to decide.

Editor:Wang  Source:CCTV.com


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