City focuses on finding jobs for graduates

Helping local college graduates find jobs is an important part of Shanghai’s latest 26 measures to promote employment.

The city will explore more jobs in government departments, state-owned enterprises, grassroots programs and communities for graduates.

It will also encourage the Lingang New Area, the Yangtze River Delta Ecology and Greenery Integration Demonstration Zone and other industrial zones to provide jobs targeting graduates.

The city will also offer subsidies for graduates from Hubei Province and for employers that hire local residents who graduated from local colleges but failed to find jobs within two years.

The Shanghai Education Commission said it has cooperated with other government departments to guide colleges and human resources and social security authorities in districts to organize online job fairs and fairs exclusively for graduates. In previous months, they have organized events offering 5,800 jobs in local schools and kindergartens and 2,000 jobs in the culture and sport industries.

Since March, the city has organized more than 10 online job fairs for local college graduates with about 23,000 enterprises offering over 230,000 jobs. It has also joined the Ministry of Education’s online recruitment platform where graduates can search for jobs around the clock.

It has launched a platform for students to go through the employment process from submitting resumes to signing contracts by scanning employers’ QR codes.

Some government departments have also offered jobs. For example, the Shanghai Civil Affairs Bureau offered 1,000 community jobs and the Shanghai Administration of Civil Service has also decided to give priority to graduates.

Local colleges have expanded their admission plans for postgraduate programs by 15 percent, including 3,250 places in masters programs. Meanwhile, 2,032 places have been added to the admission plans by programs for junior college students to continue studies and seek bachelor’s degrees. Some universities have also launched programs to enable students to pursue a second bachelor’s degree and offer posts such as research assistants.

Programs for graduates to work at villages and other grassroots units have also doubled their recruitment scales.

State-owned enterprises are also required to offer 50 percent of their new jobs to graduates. By now, the city’s commission of economy and informatization, state-owned assets supervision and administration commission and commerce commission have organized more than 3,000 enterprises to offer 65,000 jobs.

Chen Dong, chief economist of the city’s state-owned assets supervision and administration commission, said that by the end of May the enterprises under its supervision had made 14,656 offers, up 7 percent from last year. Among them, 52 percent have signed employment contracts while the others’ interviews and internships have been affected by the pandemic.

Chen said 80 percent of the enterprises listed larger recruitment plans than last year. For example, Shanghai Pudong Development Bank offered more than 1,200 jobs in Shanghai but is expected to hire more as over 2,000 had passed interviews.

Ni Minjing, deputy director of the education commission, said more efforts will be made to explore new jobs for graduates and help those from families seriously affected by the pandemic. But he also suggested students and parents to be rational with remaining confident in the current situation.

“There are a lot of jobs in Shanghai, but please hold reasonable expectations and cherish the opportunities made available due to our joint efforts,” he said. “I also hope you can update your concepts on grassroots jobs, which are actually more helpful for you to learn about society and achieve personal development.”