Graduates of maritime-related university courses have become a hot commodities in Shanghai, home to the Chinese mainland's biggest port, as the city's booming shipping industry struggles to find qualified staff.

 

Shipping companies were chasing after students with marine-related majors at a recruitment fair earlier this month at the Shanghai Maritime University (SMU). Within just an hour and a half most of the students who'd attended had received job offers although many of them will not graduate for another six months.

 

Xie Yiwei, a marine engineering senior, said he had spent just a few minutes talking with the recruiter from Shanghai Jinjiang Shipping Corporation, and the next day he was notified that he had been hired. "Nearly all of my classmates who were looking for a job got offers," he said. "Finding a job doesn't seem to be hard for us." Once he graduates Xie will be responsible for repairing and maintaining ship engines.

 

Some companies are so hungry for talent that they started contacting students even before the recruitment fair.

 

"Some recruiters came to our dormitories to promote their companies and some kept handing out business cards to us even when we were having classes," said Gao Yang, another student at SMU. "Most of these recruiters want to attract students by publicizing the high wages they're offering," he added.

 

Gao, a navigation major, got a job as a marine pilot. He and his classmates have been learning how to navigate ships and most of them will go on to become navigators and future captains.

 

Seamen and other professionals in the shipping industry are in great demand. Both Xie and Gao should both receive a monthly salary of at least US$1,000 during their first year's internship. This is much more than the average Chinese college graduate can expect to earn on leaving college.

 

"The city has really speeded up the development of its shipping industry. But we haven't expanded our student base or the size of our faculty. The gap between supply and demand in shipping talent is widening," said Liu Yan, deputy director of the Student's Affair Office at the SMU. She added that the high cost of educating qualified shipping professionals would make it difficult for her school to expand.

 

Tang Yichi, a senior Human Resources manager at Shanghai Yuanyang Shipping Company, part of COSCO which is one of the country's leading shipping and logistics companies, said he'd noticed the demand for talent in the shipping sector.

 

"A lot of seamen and engineers leave their jobs because of the hardships associated with working on a ship and the number of new graduates with maritime majors is not enough to meet our growing demand," he told China Daily. "This labor shortage will probably continue for sometime. Shipping companies now have to compete to find qualified professionals. Competition has become especially intense among small-sized shipping businesses," he said.

 

(China Daily December 18, 2006)