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Civil service remains first choice for uni graduates

Shanghai Daily, June 24, 2014

• With its perceived image of job security and decent pay, the civil service remains the preferred career option for university-leavers, the Shanghai Statistics Bureau said yesterday.

  In a survey conducted last month of 2,173 graduates and postgraduates from 11 Shanghai universities, 34 percent said their first choice was a government position.

  But as graduation day for the city's students approaches, just 14 percent said they had actually landed such a job.

  In broader terms, 55 percent of respondents said they had either found a job, been accepted for a graduate program or had made plans to launch their own business.

  Of the people who said they had landed a job, 35 percent said it was with a local private sector firm, 28 percent with a state-owned company and 20 percent with a foreign-invested organization.

  On the factors affecting job selection, almost 77 percent of respondents said salary and benefits were their primary concern. Most said they were hoping for a starting salary of 5,300 yuan (US$850), though their actual average pay is likely to be nearer 4,400 yuan, little changed from last year.

  Among those who said they had already found a job, there were more men than women, the survey said.

  According to university officials, this is likely due to discrimination among employers, which traditionally prefer to recruit men.

  The study also claimed that science and engineering graduates are typically the most likely to be offered jobs, due to the high demand for people with technical skills.

  As a result, many universities have increased the number of places available on such courses and reduced the number of places offered to humanities majors.

  Similarly, 69 percent of those who followed science and engineering courses said they had either secured a job, planned to purse further studies or start their own business. The corresponding figure for humanities graduates was just 54 percent.

  While 55 percent of all respondents said they had a clear picture of their immediate future, the figure for students that hail from Shanghai was just 50 percent.

  Likewise, 11 percent of the Shanghai natives polled said they were unprepared for job hunting, compared with an average of 9 percent for all respondents. Meanwhile, a massive 97 percent of the city's natives said they wanted to remain in the city on completion of their studies.

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