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▲People attend a job fair in Beijing, China, on 19 August 2023. (Jade Gao/AFP)In April last year, Gan Ziping returned to China after earning a degree in business administration from Meiji University in Japan. He told reporters in October that he had yet to find a job even though he had sent out hundreds of copies of his resume.
“I don’t even have an interview now,” Gan said in an interview. Many of his peers are also unemployed, he said.On average, about a million Chinese studying overseas are expected to return home every year. In 2021 alone, a record 1.05 million overseas students returned to China, according to the Ministry of Education.But for these overseas graduates, the hunt for a job these years could be tougher than in past years. With a record 11.6 million new domestic college graduates, soaring youth unemployment, and companies scaling back hiring post-pandemic, the odds are stacked against young job hopefuls.
This has meant that overseas hires usually have to contend with lower-than-expected salaries. In the countries where they studied, Chinese graduates are also finding it hard to secure a job. Fierce competition at home
Gao Yang, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business from Oregon State University and a master’s degree from the University of Warwick’s business school, had set his sights on landing a well-paid job at one of China’s biggest tech firms after graduation.But despite his credentials, Gao ended up joining a Beijing-based provider of overseas education services as a management trainee instead.What surprised Gao during his six-month job search was that all his peers who had been through group interviews with him had graduated from China’s top nine universities and received overseas education — even if it was just a one-year master’s study.Chinese college students are increasingly inclined to continue their education after graduation — some of them doing so to delay entering the sluggish job market. In Beijing alone, there were about 285,000 fresh college graduates last year, with the number of master’s degree holders exceeding that of bachelor’s degree holders for the first time, media reported in March, citing official estimates.Meanwhile, employers have raised the bar for hiring fresh graduates with overseas degrees as their number continues to rise. According to a 2023 white paper released by tutoring giant New Oriental Education & Technology Group Inc., more than half of the employers surveyed have required Chinese job applicants with overseas study backgrounds to have a master’s degree or even a doctorate.
Yet, a mismatch between supply and demand in the domestic job market remains.Overeseas, the UK for example, has raised the salary threshold for skilled worker visa applicants from £26,200 (US$33,350) to £38,700. The increase will make things even tougher, as employers need to fork out more for foreign hires.To begin with, international students have to find employers willing to sponsor them for work visas. That in itself is a requirement that many British companies do not want to deal with, said Yang Han, a 2023 master’s degree graduate at the London School of Economics and Political Science.Yang explained that such sponsorships are costly and cumbersome, therefore, job seekers who need visa sponsoring are sometimes rejected without any hesitation.Unless international students have irreplaceable advantages, Yang said, “There are plenty of British locals who can’t find a job, so why do they need you, a foreigner?”In the US, similarly, some employers have explicitly said they will only hire locals and green card holders, or have withdrawn offers of employment to international students, according to graduates of US universities Caixin spoke to.It is important to think: “Why are you irreplaceable? What can you bring to the company as an international employee?”— Rohit Sharma, Senior Vice-President, Global Workskills, US Educational Testing ServiceLi Min, who has a master’s degree in financial engineering from Columbia University, luckily landed a job with JP Morgan Chase, one of the country’s largest banks. She told reporters JP Morgan supported her in obtaining a work visa because it “needed me to write code. Locals don’t really want to write code.”Back in China, some employers have prejudices against international students, such as believing that those not from top-ranked schools went abroad because they didn’t study well at home, or that they are “not easy to manage, don’t want to join the ‘rat race’ and have too many ideas,” they said.
*The opinions expressed in the article are solely those of the author.* Follow Us
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