Chinese college students have graduated to find the job market vary from when they entered school and those so-called "hot courses" might fail to land them good jobs.

Graduates with different majors have very different experiences in the job market. But degrees in finance, economics and a few other fields often guarantee good jobs.

"I have applied to 15 companies online, and most of them show interest in hiring me," said Wang Ming, a postgraduate of Labor Economics at Southwest University of Finance and Economics in Chengdu, Sichuan Province.

He said that all the students of economics, finance and accounting in his university had received at least two job offers.

Students of mining and materials science which were not popular before, however, have observed more employment opportunities than before. The employment rate of graduates from the two courses was 100 percent at Guizhou University in southwestern Guizhou Province.

"Many companies would come straight to our school to find employees," said Wang Hua with the university's employment guide center.

On the contrary, some so-called "hot courses" including law, journalism and computer science which have received large groups of students, failed them in the job market.

Experts said high tuition fee of those courses led to blind enrollment expansion, which causes a surplus of supply in the job market.

To solve this problem, Guizhou University has decided to adjust its enrollment arrangement if the employment rate of a major drops below 70 percent.

"The law school recruited around 600 students in 2004, but we only took about 100 last year, raising employment rate from 70 percent to 90 percent,"said Wang Hua.

Another problem which makes it difficult for graduates to find jobs is the gap between school-learned-knowledge and requirements of real career.

In 2007, merely 60 percent of computer science graduates were employed. Meanwhile, job vacancies in IT industry exceeded one million.

IT companies complained about the large amount of money they spend on pre-career training of new employees. They hope universities adjust their courses to better prepare students for their future work.

In addition to academic background, employers are looking for college graduates with a good sense of responsibility. This merit is followed by a sense of team work, ambition, flexibility, eloquence, independence, confidence, pressure-bearing ability, communication skills and professional excellency on a list of merits which help college graduates land jobs, according to a survey conducted among human resource managers of 200 companies by Shandong Talent Resource Web site.

The competition in the country's job market has become more fierce with a growing number of college students.

Statistics show about 5.6 million students will graduate from higher education institutions in 2008, an increase of 640,000 over 2007, according to China Daily.

Last year, nearly 1.4 million college graduates, or one third of the total, failed to find jobs, the newspaper said.

(Xinhua News Agency January 12, 2008)