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By Cheng Si | China Daily >>>>By acting as ‘middlemen’ between employers and people looking for work, they supply invaluable information and support. Cheng Si reports from Hangzhou.
In mid-July, Zheng Rui had a job consultation at a stand of the recruitment platform Xunzhiji in Hangzhou, Zhejiang province.
The 22-year-old was looking for a temporary job in the city during his summer vacation from college.
“My ideal short-term job for the holiday would be as a restaurant server, which would be a good opportunity for me to meet people. I expect the monthly salary to be 4,000 to 5,000 yuan ($550 to $686),” said the third-year undergraduate at a university in Hangzhou.
He was one of the hundreds of job seekers that Xu Xueping meets every month as head of the Xunzhiji job consultancy stand at a shopping mall in Hangzhou’s Xiasha district.
“We are like a middleman between job seekers and employers. Most of the employers registered with our platform are stores or restaurants at the malls in which our stands are located. We help match job seekers with vacancies, and have a high level of efficiency and accuracy as we are familiar with the employers and their requirements for such openings,” she said.
Xu said her team members listen to the job seekers’ requirements and then provide basic information about vacant positions, such as working hours and payment. They also accompany job seekers to interviews to help raise the acceptance rate. “These companionship services can also boost the job seekers’ trust in us and make them treat us as a friend,” she said.
As a member of the Zhejiang Human Resources Consulting Association, a nongovernmental industry association in the province, Xunzhiji has in recent years taken on the responsibility of channeling job openings to college students and others in need of work, while providing them with free assistance.
Promoting employment
“We don’t charge job seekers a fee — we offer them assistance with career planning, job information, employment training and companionship during interviews. We offer paid services to employers and take commissions from the companies,” said Chen Hongfei, Xunzhiji’s founder and CEO.
Having been involved in the human resources industry for more than a decade, Chen said he has seen many job seekers, especially college students, subjected to unfair treatment or chicanery due to a lack of information and their scant experience of society.
“I have seen many students being deceived by unscrupulous recruitment agencies, who retained their ID cards or even coaxed them into joining pyramid selling (schemes). These experiences and the possible resultant psychological harm may give young people a bad impression of the job market. Jobs can greatly affect a person’s life, especially in the first three years after entering the employment market,” he said.
Chen said Xunzhiji joined the provincial HR association a couple of years ago, when the company was founded in Shanghai and Hangzhou. “At the time, it was like a talent scout for us new startups. Now, we can get more sound industry information and knowledge from the association. Also, we can better connect job seekers and employers with the help provided by the association to further promote the employment of young people,” he added
Making connections
Yuan Zhongwei, chairman of the Zhejiang Human Resources Consulting Association, said his organization connects the government, businesses and the public to ensure that information about jobs is accessible to everyone, especially university students.
He said the association offers job seekers free lectures about employment law, which are held at the association’s offices and can be booked online.
“We hold the lectures every Thursday and always include some practical examples. We hope that young people will gain some basic knowledge about the labor laws to protect themselves before entering the job market,” he said.
In recent years, social organizations and industry associations have played an important role in promoting employment, especially by helping young people and college students land jobs.
These groups face a tough employment environment due to the growing number of graduates — roughly 11.60 million this year — and the unbalanced supply and demand in the job market.
According to data from the Ministry of Civil Affairs, China had 892,316 registered social organizations by the end of last year, comprising 371,000 social societies, 512,000 social services organizations and 9,316 foundations.
About 90 percent of the organizations are managed by street or community offices, and they engage in charitable works such as community environment management, public security, nursing services and cultural entertainment.
Also, the number of registered industry associations nationwide has topped 110,000 and they have about 7.5 million member companies, the ministry said.
Chen Xiaoyong, deputy director of the ministry’s Social Organization Management Bureau, told a recent conference that such bodies have close relations with the public, so they can offer services and provide guidance to young people with regard to employment and entrepreneurship.
These organizations and associations can also offer jobs and internships to college students, and encourage their member companies to offer work openings.
“By the end of last year, the 892,000-plus registered social organizations had offered over 11 million permanent jobs and attracted many flexible workers to charitable and voluntary programs,” Chen Xiaoyong added.
Exploratory steps
Social organizations and industrial associations have also taken exploratory steps to help young people get their thoughts on careers into shape and have made great efforts to raise the employment rate among the younger generation.
In 2019, the Hangzhou Entrepreneurship Promotion Association, a charitable organization in the provincial capital, initiated the “Elite Eagles” program.
Every year through the program, the association invites about 100 company leaders and senior executives — the Elite Eagles — to act as counselors for college students and provide guidance and advice on careers.
Students admitted to the program also get a yearlong internship at related companies.
Yang Pan, a senior executive with Enjoy Town — a consultancy and operations company in Hangzhou that focuses on community services — who is also a visiting counselor with the program, said young people usually have unclear career targets and “excessive” expectations of their future jobs.
“Our role as counselors is to help the students gain a realistic view of themselves and their career plans, and also to help them gain more practical and comprehensive knowledge of their target industry,” he said.
“Though we can’t keep all the students at our company after they finish their internships, we stay in touch with them and offer them advice, like friends.”
Zhang Jialin, the association’s secretary-general, said the program attracts thousands of students from over 200 universities nationwide each year, and about 500 are admitted to the program for one-year internships and guidance at the association’s member companies.
Two-way street
“It’s a two-way street between the students and the companies. The program gives the students a good opportunity to broaden their viewpoint and improve their abilities, and is also a talent pool for the development of the province,” she said.
The Furniture Industry Association in Zhejiang’s Ningbo city has taken the lead in promoting close cooperation between companies and colleges to launch various joint education programs aimed at producing skilled students and boosting their employment rate.
“Since 2018, we have collaborated with the Zhejiang Business Technology Institute and organized six ‘order-based’ classes so far. Order-based means we tell the school what kind of student we’d like to hire in line with companies’ needs,” said Zhang Liangwu, the association’s executive chairman. He is also president of Baihe Shenghua Construction Tech, a company headquartered in the city, whose business includes building decorations, home design and smart energy projects.
“We devise the curriculum and training program with the school and send our highly skilled workers and engineers to give lectures to students involved in the order-based classes. In their third year, the students complete all their theoretical studies at school before receiving on-site education and training at our offices and factories. After that, they graduate,” he added.
According to Zhang Liangwu, Baihe Shenghua and the school have jointly trained more than 120 students since 2018, and about 50 of them have accepted full-time jobs at the company after graduation.
Chai Shan, the association’s deputy secretary-general, said industry associations and social organizations usually have a more holistic view of the industry’s operations, which helps them better know what kind of talented individuals and job seekers the companies or societies really need.
“The associations can also help students and job seekers to screen job openings to make sure that the vacancies are being offered by companies or societies that are operating legally, thus protecting the job seekers from ‘traps’,” he said.
Contact the writer at chengsi@chinadaily.com.cn