Recruiting in China

By RALPH JENNINGS

BEIJING (Kyodo) Japanese companies trawling for new hires at the second annual Beijing job fair have found few skilled applicants among the latest group of graduates.

Employers taking part in the Japan Chamber of Commerce and Industry in China's second annual weekend job fair on March 11 at Beijing Normal University said they found few good matches.

They want people with technical skills but many job-seekers were Japanese language specialists with little work experience.

"People who understand technology don't know Japanese, and the people who understand Japanese don't know technology," said a Chinese sales official at a Chinese branch of Matsushita Electric Industrial Co.

The job fair drew some 800 people -- fewer than the 1,000, hoped for -- from about 100 universities. A total of 33 companies participated, taking resumes and holding brief interviews with the job-hunters.

Companies collected an average of about 20 resumes each. Of those, three or four might have the qualifications for open jobs, recruiters said.

"The feeling isn't that good, because they don't meet our needs," said Wang Huan, an account manager with the Beijing branch of Hitachi Information Systems (Shanghai) Ltd.

She said she wanted mostly experienced workers, not the college students who came to hear about Hitachi's 15 job openings in Beijing.

The class of 2006 is a large one, due to a surge in university enrollments four years earlier, and now graduates are finding it more difficult than they expected to find good jobs. The People's Daily reported recently that 4.1 million university students will enter the job market this year, 700,000 more than in 2005.

Graduates expect to make roughly 3,000 yuan to 5,000 yuan ($ 373 to $ 621) per month, enough to give something back to parents who paid their tuition as a family investment.

The Japan Times: Tuesday,March 14, 2006