The Epidemic has been going on for more than a year, and the clutches of the New Crown (CCP virus) have affected all walks of Life, and the job market for Chinese university students has also been hit, with 2020 being called the hardest employment season.
The Chinese Communist Party has issued “six stable and six secure” policies, stable employment, stable finance, stable foreign trade, stable foreign investment, stable investment, and stable expectations; secure employment for residents, secure basic livelihood, secure market players, secure Food and energy security, secure supply chain stability, and secure grassroots operation.
Among them, the first one that needs to be “stabilized and protected” is the employment issue, which shows the impact of the epidemic on China’s job market.
Zhang Yi, director of the Department of Population and Employment Statistics of China’s National Bureau of Statistics, said the number of college graduates in 2020 will reach 8.74 million, a record high, and the impact of the epidemic will put pressure on employment.
Where is the “hardest employment season ever”?
The total number of college graduates in China in 2020 is nearly 9 million, an increase of 56% compared to last year. However, due to the impact of the epidemic, companies’ recruitment demand for fresh graduates has dropped by 22% year-on-year. Under the influence of multiple factors, 2020 has become the most difficult employment season in history.
Mr. Shi, head of a university career guidance center in northern China, told the Voice of America that the hardest job season is due to the tight job market.
He said: “The first is the impact of the epidemic on the economy, the global economy, including China, is greatly affected, especially small and medium-sized enterprises. Small and medium-sized enterprises are the main aspect of employment for Chinese college students, and the demand for employment in small and medium-sized enterprises under the epidemic is not so strong, and there is a certain decline in employment plans relative to previous years, which brings great difficulties to graduates’ employment, that is, the reduction of jobs and decrease.”
Mr. Shi believes that the epidemic has forced a change in the traditional recruitment interview format, and this new and sudden approach has caught 2020 graduates off guard, which is another difficulty.
He said, “The second aspect is the change in the way and form of employment, because in the past, it was the face-to-face recruitment of companies to schools and special recruitment, but under the epidemic, especially under the ‘strict control’ of the epidemic in China, the way to find a job has changed a lot, from the original offline to online. This change in form is a rapid change in the short term, which makes it difficult for college students to find jobs.
In addition, the epidemic has led to a change in the choice of employment industry for Chinese college students, and industries that have been greatly affected by the epidemic have discouraged some freshmen who would have liked to devote themselves to them.
Mr. Shi said, “Under the impact of the epidemic, the economic situation, including the industrial structure and the development trend of the industry (changed), college students need to change their employment destination within a short period of Time, which is also a difficult point for college students.”
Employment data becomes a numbers game
From some domestic reports in China, it is often seen that “In the first three quarters of 2020 in China, the number of newly employed people in urban areas nationwide reached 8.98 million, completing 99.8% of the annual employment target task.”
“The authoritative statistics of 100 colleges and universities in China show that the average employment rate of colleges and universities has exceeded 95%, and some 985 and 211 colleges and independent colleges have tallied employment rates as high as 99%.”
“With an annual economic growth rate of only 2.3%, 11.86 million new jobs were achieved.”
“The CIER index (China Employment Market Optimism Index) for college graduates in the fourth quarter of 2020 rose both year-on-year and year-on-year. the employment optimism index for college graduates climbed month by month from April to November, reaching 2.40 in November.”
These bright employment figures are all over the internet, but in fact, it is the result of universities’ “brainless” piling up data and playing the numbers game.
At present, the definition of “employed” in Chinese universities is to sign a “third-party employment agreement”, and schools require most freshmen to sign a third-party agreement, which covers almost all situations that will occur after graduation. The so-called third party agreement covers almost all situations that will occur after graduation, such as employment, entrepreneurship, freelancing, signing short-term labor contracts, opening online stores and even game coaching, and all college graduates who meet these situations will be counted as employed by their alma mater.
In addition, universities will also categorize students who choose to study abroad or continue their studies after graduation as “employed”.
The Institute of Education and Economic Research at Peking University has been investigating the real employment rate since 2003, and in 2017 they revealed the real situation with data that 14.6% of graduates from Peking University failed to find a job in the same year.
In the first half of 2020, the employment rate of graduate students in the School of Journalism and Communication of South China University of Technology was 48.53%, while the employment rate of undergraduates was only 35.17%, and only 14.48% of graduates were officially contracted, as mentioned in such a project.
Universities use “high employment rate” as a golden signboard for enrollment, rightfully eating policy benefits and recruiting people, using the bubble data of record highs year after year as free advertising, making students, teachers, schools and governments fall into a drunken self-importance, which is really a sorrow of the education sector.
On the other hand, after the epidemic, the Chinese Communist Party promulgated the “six stability and six protection” policy, which requires the employment rate to meet the standard, and the implementation to the grassroots level has become a burden for enterprises.
“In order to “stabilize and protect” employment, some companies changed from social recruitment and internal rotation to school recruitment only, and required recruitment activities to be conducted mainly in Hubei Province, where the epidemic first appeared.
School recruiting group interviews become a nightmare for freshers
Some companies have already started to apply online for the spring 2021 recruitment, and will soon usher in this year’s spring recruitment campaign for freshers after the Chinese New Year.
Many freshmen have already started preparing for this, and there are countless interview tips and strategies on recruitment forums, but freshmen’s fear of school recruitment has not diminished at all.
Some of you said, “It’s hard to get past the online application, pass the written test, and get to the group interview, but I didn’t expect to start the ‘nightmare mode’ with one click.”
The group interview has the title of “exterminator” in the recruitment of fresh students, which is a metaphor for the death of one applicant by snapping one finger.
Xiaoyuan, a British student who participated in the 2020 fall recruiting group interview, recalled the experience with emotion, having participated in three group interviews with real estate companies and consulting firms last year.
He said, “The more impressive memory is that 10 people need to be divided into AB groups for case discussion, then two groups have to debate each other, and after the end of the two groups are put together in another case work, this is the longest group interview I have ever attended, from 8:00 am to the evening single interview session has been dragged until 12:00 pm.”
The definition of a group interview is a leaderless group discussion, which freshers have named “group interview”, “one of the top ten contemporary versions of torture”, “a large social phobia autism scene”, “a fight of the gods”, etc. “The difficulty lies in the fact that you have to form a team with other unfamiliar interviewees to solve the problem, which is a great test of individual and teamwork skills.
The difficulty of the group interview lies in the fact that it requires 6 to 10 people to cooperate, and you have no idea what kind of people your teammates will be before each interview,” Yuan said. “
He said group interviews can be unpredictable, such as when the topic is very much to your liking, but at the same time another interviewer in the same group is also very good at it, there will be a problem with the power of speech grabbing. It is also possible that if you are not good at the topic, others will not give you the opportunity to express your opinion.
The group interview field is rapidly changing, the topic is not difficult, difficult in the interviewer has the ability to improvise.
Mr. Shi also said that the difficulty of the group interview is that the interviewers can never be adequately prepared, and the changeability of the interview will make them expose their strengths and weaknesses, and there is nowhere to hide.
He said, “This form of assessment makes it difficult for students to be fully prepared in advance, he can only expose their strengths and weaknesses in front of the interviewer, which is then easy for the interviewer to grasp, which skills and strengths I can use him.”
Internet industry is still “true” endorsement
In the past three months, the death of two consecutive Pindo employees has triggered social discussions on the “996” high-intensity work arrangement and “wolfish” corporate Culture and living environment.
But this did not stop a steady stream of fresh graduates from handing in their names. Mr. Zhang, a senior software engineer at Alibaba, believes that the three most important factors that attract talent to big Internet companies are high salary, big platform and strong risk resistance.
He said: “The first, salary, needless to say. Second, the whole platform is relatively large, especially into the head of the manufacturer, you will be exposed to a wider range of things, it uses the depth of technology will be a little more. Third, is the ability to resist risk. I feel that the epidemic has a smaller impact on companies like Ali, mainly because Ali’s entire business is very diversified.”
Mr. Zhang said, “996” does exist, but now which serious company is not busy, the company gives higher than the market rate of pay, busy is also supposed to.
In addition, he mentioned that the new crown epidemic on Alibaba’s flying pig impact is very big, because the flying pig is a travel and travel services platform, but the epidemic and promote the development of Taobao such online shopping takeaway, so diversification is the main reason to make Ali risk-resistant ability to become stronger.
And in the wealth forum of a “post-95 obsessed with the Internet big factory look like a great post-60 worship of state-owned enterprises” article below, many netizens said that young people’s faith in the Internet big factory may still be a refraction of the value of money first.
The expedient way to avoid the limelight
According to statistics, the number of employed college students is expected to reach a new high of 9.09 million in 2021. Once in China, getting into college was the supreme glory, and the Gold content of a university undergraduate degree was very high, but with the expansion of universities and the lowering of entry thresholds, undergraduates have become cheap.
The rapid depreciation of undergraduate diplomas and the difficulties in employment have made some college students choose to continue their studies.
The authorities have also introduced policies in this regard to encourage undergraduates to continue their studies by going to graduate school. According to statistics, 3.41 million people will take the examinations in 2020, and more than 1.11 million students will be enrolled and admitted, an expansion of nearly 190,000 students relative to 2019, an increase of nearly 11%, a very rare expansion.
China’s Ministry of Education also said that the expansion will continue in 2021, but the expansion is all specialized master’s degrees, which currently account for more than 60% of the total enrollment.
Wang, a former Jingdong employee, chose to resign from his job in 2019 to study abroad for graduate school. He has been working in Jingdong for 2 years and believes he needs to improve his advantage in the brutal competition for jobs. He said, “My undergraduate college ranking is not very high, which may be more or less ‘discriminatory’ when I transfer or jump to other big factories, so I think upgrading my education can make that knocking brick when I apply for a job a little more powerful.”
Wang, who expects to complete his master’s degree this summer and is preparing for fall hiring in 2021, is once again facing employment issues and is concerned about the impact the epidemic will have on the job market.
He said, “The epidemic will reduce the number of people required for some positions; after all, the epidemic has had a big impact on the effectiveness and income of some companies, and some positions will not be expanded.”
The other side of his concern is that some companies will choose to give priority to recruiting domestic students because they are responding to the government’s call, which will affect the employment rate of overseas students returning to their Home countries.
Recent Comments