An Overview to University Recruiting Market in China

7.95 million university students graduate in 2017 in China. The number was 7.65 million in 2016. If counting the unemployed population from 2016, in total there’re 15 million university students who’re searching for jobs in 2017 graduation season.

How do Chinese university students search for job opportunities? Are they using LinkedIn or do they prefer offline networking event? westOeast team spent time researching the popular university recruiting sites among the graduate students.

In general, this market is fragmented with multiple recruiting channels and formats. There’re general job boards like Zhaopin.com “ZPIN”(NYSE) and 51job.com “JOBS”(NASDAQ). There are also “LinkedIn” liked social hiring sites such as “Maimai.cn” and “Chitu” (App).

In terms of channels, these following 12 categories could well summarize how Students in China search for jobs. We provide a few examples under each point for you to get some ideas.

• General hiring site
  • https://www.liepin.com
  • https://www.dajie.com/
  • https://www.lagou.com/
• Students only
  • http://yingjiesheng.com/com – This web 1.0 liked site, however, is very active with its forum function. You can find company specific forums, and interview tests examples. By far it’s the No.1 community where graduates in China gather to find jobs.
  • http://www.xiaoyuanzhao.com/ Xiaoyuanzhao – Campus Hire
  • https://www.shixiseng.com/ Internship only
  • http://www.internbird.com/ internship only
• University campus BBS – you need to get student login
  • http://bbs.fudan.edu.cn
  • http://bbs.pku.edu.cn
  • newsmth.net
• University Job site
  • http://www.career.fudan.edu.cn/
  • tsinghua.edu.cn
• Friends/employee referral
• Classified ads
  • http://bj.58.com/job.shtml
• Local based hiring board
  • bjrbj.gov.cn
  • bjrc.com
• Offline hiring event
  • campus based
  • location based – hosted by local HR market
  • company based – often co-hosted with schools
• Government portal site, public service site :
  • Ministry – Human Resources and Social Security of the PRC
  • ncss.org.cn
  • chinajob.gov.cn
• Recruiting mentoring/consulting site
  • https://www.synetchina.com/ SynetChina
  • http://www.careerfrog.com.cn/ CareerFrog
  • http://www.zhixiaolab.com.cn/ Student Career Consulting
  • Courseware, linda.com like site
    • http://www.teatree.cn/Default.aspx Teatree – courseware in design, photography, film and tv editing
• Social media – all these websites listed above will have their WeChat or Weibo account
•  Apps
  • Maimai
  • Chitu (the dual brand of LinkedIn, a more localized and younger version)
  • Dajie
  • BOSSzhipin (zhipin.com)

In addition to these, there are sites/recruiting Channels based in North America. Often time, these sites gathered students by industry/subject.

• DreamBigCareer: http://www.dreambigcareer.com/focus on Consulting, Fortune500, Investment Banking, The Big Four accounting firms
• CareerTu: https://careertu.com/ – focus on digital marketing in the States
• http://www.1point3acres.com/bbs/ – focus on referral, Tech companies in Silicon Valley

Sites catering to Chinese students studying overseas

• http://www.vodlecareer.com/ Vodle Career Consulting
• http://www.aceoffer.cn/  

Let us know if you’re interested in offering related services to Chinese students. westOeast team are happy to help.