China’s ‘blank paper’ graduates fear years of remote learning and no experience make them unemployable

Miriam Wickertsheim, a Shanghai-based recruiter for foreign companies, said that fresh graduates she spoke to recently – those who studied for their undergraduate degree from 2019 to 2023 – feel more unattractive to recruiters after basically earning their degrees online.

“Their interviewers said they only learned remotely, so there were fewer social activities and fewer opportunities to work face-to-face, to develop teamwork and social skills,” she said. “Employers said they would just wait for the next batch of graduates.”

She added that many small, private Chinese companies, which traditionally provide the first jobs for a lot of fresh graduates, suffered during the pandemic and are still trying to recover.

“Even if companies are putting up job openings, they are replacement positions instead of expansions. These are not positions that could be junior or graduate level,” Wickertsheim said.

“It takes quite a lot of time and resources for a company to take a fresh graduate and teach them to a point where they are adding economic value to the company.

“At the moment, when the business climate is challenging, a lot of companies are reluctant to make those kinds of investments, especially when young graduates often have a certain turnover (rate) and higher volatility.”

At the same time, a lot of young people now are holding degrees that are simply not in demand, said Wickertsheim, who has worked in China for more than 13 years.

“Graduates a decade ago studied engineering or finance or accounting because this is what their parents or teachers recommended to them, so they could for sure find a job.

“Now, a lot of people have been brought up in a growing economy, and they are more at liberty to study something they find interesting, so that might make it a little bit more challenging to find work.”

Meanwhile, China’s youth unemployment rate keeps breaking records and continues to spark heated discourse across the country.

With one out of every five members of the 16 to 24 demographic unable to find a job, the central government has vowed to address the worsening trend that comes at a time when a bumpy post-pandemic recovery has led to weak consumer demand and mixed investor sentiments.

On Jun 1, China’s Ministry of Education announced a nationwide 100-day campaign “to guide graduates to take the initiative to seek jobs, and help more college graduates find employment as soon as possible, before and after leaving school”.

For China’s undergraduates, their job hunt typically begins in the fall semester of their final year, when major companies and public institutions hold campus-recruitment drives and aim to fill most of the headcount for their junior roles.

The following spring-recruitment period, usually between March and May, fills any leftover quota and usually features fewer positions for pending graduates.

But even those who do manage to land a job – often with their university’s help – might not find themselves in the most advantageous position.

Mo Haonan, a construction engineering major in Hangzhou, landed himself an internship through a recruitment drive organised by his university. He said the school invites companies that are actively hiring to job fairs, in a bid to expedite the hiring process.

However, his employment was short-lived, as the 21-year-old was laid off by his company weeks after helping out on a project.

“They just treat us as cheap, dispensable labour. After finishing one project, they couldn’t get any more clients, so they just fired us without much compensation,” he said.

And now, he fears, it could appear to future interviewers and corporate recruiters that he was laid off because of poor performance, which he said is not true, but nonetheless makes him feel a degree of shame.

Still, there is somewhat of a silver lining for fresh graduates, according to Eddie Cheng, an executive recruiter for Chinese companies.

Underperforming or non-essential middle-management positions are usually the first to go during layoffs, while companies might open up more management-trainee positions, he said.

“Some companies actually fire middle or senior positions and hire fresh graduates because they are cheaper. They are more willing to pay less money to hire a fresh graduate and train them up (for a few years). The cost of hiring a general manager could be used to hire more than 30 fresh graduates,” he said.

Xu, with her degree in hand, says she is exhausted from the endless job hunt. Asked whether she would still have majored in the same degree if she could do it all over again, she said she was of two minds.

“On the one hand, choosing Chinese language and literature seems more conservative for me, because this major is versatile, and there are many job options related to this major available for the civil service exam. I am also interested in Chinese language and literature,” she said. “However, when it comes to finding a job, other majors can accomplish the same.”

For the foreseeable future, Xu said she believes that those without internship experience will continue to be the first to have their resumes eliminated early in the application process. And she noted that even her friends who have earned outstanding grades have yet to land a job.

“Companies are all rushing to cut jobs, how will they hire? Even if they do, they will employ those who can take on multiple roles. This batch of graduates was locked down in school for three years, where do we get our industry experience from?”

This article was first published on SCMP.