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SME jobs increasingly popular among Chinese graduates

Another shift on the graduate landscape this time comes in the form of a study conducted in China that investigated graduates’ evolving aspirations and expectations.

According to the report, the 2015 the China University Students' Employability Survey Report, as China’s economy changes the popularity for jobs in SMEs and emerging industries in top-tier cities grows.

The report aimed to evaluate and compare graduates in terms of motivation and career expectations, as well as intrinsic skills including general knowledge and behavioural metrics. You can find out more with EnterpriseInnovation.net or by clicking the previous hyperlink, but for the purpose of today we are going to focus on employment trends.

Overall analysis

The report found that when considering a job opening, Chinese graduates tended to place great importance on their long term career, noting that promotions, training and the opportunity to apply their talents were essential for their career growth. Interestingly, as we have seen elsewhere in the world with the millennial graduate generation, relationships with colleagues as well as fairness and equitability remained a top priority.

It seems that SMEs and emerging industries are their chosen career vessel. Perhaps due to the smaller teams, innovative environments and flexible working conditions usually associated with smaller enterprises.

This shift in is contrast with more experienced employees who focused more on personal achievements, promotion opportunities, recognition, support from superiors and salary and welfare.

The study noted that this difference highlighted graduates’ tendency to “idealise” their expectations for personal development and friendly working environments, rather than focusing on recognition and material rewards.

However this is a trend that is in accordance with what we are seeing across the board.  More and more young people are beginning to chase their dreams rather than a pay check and while it is a different mentality to what we have known before, it is not necessarily cause for alarm. If anything, it is a healthy, inclusive change.

Tier one cities

Elsewhere in the report, it found that while assessing jobs in tier one cities, graduates cared more about career development opportunities than job stability – perhaps again playing in to that continuous candidate trend that we spoke about recently.

In addition, the report found that relationships with colleagues and promotions remained the most important factors for job-seeking graduates, regardless of which city they were looking for work in.

Interestingly, recognition, job stability and leadership were the least important factors considered by graduates. Tier one cities provide plenty of job opportunities for graduates, which explains why stability was less favoured than development.

Significantly, respondents noted that employers who invested time and training in them were more likely to build loyalty. Graduates understand that they need to start at the bottom, which they are more than happy to do – they just want to know that there are opportunities to progress and training that can aid them. If not, as we have already seen, they will just look elsewhere.

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