One Employment Fair in China

I had a long chat with my dad in the afternoon as we always do weekly. In a conversation about job seeking, he told me about the employment situation in China now.

In a way, it’s supply over demand. But the main problem is that most university graduates are only looking for big companies or government jobs. It’s understandable. Like myself, I would prefer work in a big and reputed international company too. But this kind of dream jobs that everyone wants isn’t easy to get, particularly in China where the population is so huge. And on the other hand, there are factories and small medium companies found it hard to find some technical workers. So in some cases, companies would prefer to pay more to hire those who studies from a specialist technical course rather than graduates from normal or even high ranking universities. Because they work harder and are not as fussy as university graduates.

A certificate from special technical school is perceived as valuable as from a university. It’s the same everywhere in the world I guess. But in terms of employability, especially to a society like China which needs large number of special technical workers, if you know how to fix a car is more employable than a degree on computer science, or management. My dad pointed out that nowadays everyone wants to be a manager right after graduate. When he interviews newly graduates in his companies, most of them are either to fussy about the salary and think they should be paid more after 12 years education. But once they are hired, some of them don’t want to do over time, and some of them just don’t deserve that much salary. So my dad concluded that “I would rather hire someone got special skills and be able to work hard, rather than a fancy degree certificate but don’t have real ability”. It’s commonly said that university education in China is “difficult to entry but easy to graduate”, which is opposite to western education. I totally agree with that. Even my friends in a Chinese university agree so. Probably that’s one of the fundamental problems.

After all, labour work in China is different as in, for example, the UK. As far as I know, in England labour cost more than office workers. But in China it’s opposite. Maybe that’s one of the other reasons.

I went down to Post Office to post a letter back home. One the way back I saw this man doing some performance. Very impressive I have to say. I like this kind of street performance, they make the quiet English street more lively. Although I’m a poor student, but I still donated a little bit money whenever I stopped there for a few minutes.

(C) Richardhong.com // Packing

If I am going to move to another city then fare enough, I have to pack everything. But just for some “safety issues” over easter holiday, I have to move everything out of my room and move them back one month later, which is the most annoying thing in life.

I hate packing, really do! Especially when it has to be done for such a ridiculous reason. Moving accommodation is the time when me want to have a settled home most. It’s way more troublesome than you can imagine, especially for people like me move one place every year. I realised how much trouble it is when the first time I had to move house in England, so since then I tried to keep all my stuff as less as up to two suitcases, but it can never be achieved. I always have to throw things away. And when it comes to throwing, it’s always unnecessarily difficult! Every time I picked up something, a line appears in my mind: “What a waste, maybe I should keep it, it will be useful someday”. But it will never be used if I put them back, and I will never want to use them again if they were threw away. That’s why it’s unnecessarily difficult!

Things are packed into boxes. One month later they will be unpacked to where they were. And during this time my room is going to be empty. Why??!! Life for overseas students sometimes can be though for no reason. Oh, well, for safety reasons, as they put it!

I’m going to live in my friend’s place for Easter Holiday, but still in Durham. Nothing much is planed apart from dissertation, essays, work, and revision. But still looking forward to it, try to be positive!

(C) RichardHong.com // AJS execs 06-07, March 07

(C) RichardHong.com // AJS execs 06-07, March 06

Yes, time does fly! After being elected as the president of AJS one year ago, I officially retired last in the election for next year’s AJS execs.

The time working with other five execs for the society was a great experience for me. I have to say, it wasn’t easy! None of us had any experiences of working in a society, basically we just worked out our way. Also there is a cultural barrier for me to understand other five execs who are native British, sometimes I have to think why they think it that way. It was difficult, but meanwhile I learned a lot. The biggest gain for me would be the practices for leadership. Before, my understanding of a leader is simply to lead, command and delegate works. These are necessary, indeed! But working as a execs for a university society, “to represent” is more likely to the responsibility rather than “to lead”.

OK, perhaps I shouldn’t go any further on the management thing, otherwise it will get endless. I want to thank all the execs last year, as well as the members of AJS. I think we had a really good year, at least I did. And a compliment from a Teikyo teacher last night really give us a lot of honors. He quoted the comment from the bursar of Teikyo University, we were the best AJS execs in last 13 years.

Hope next year’s execs will do a better job than us. Looking forward to their first event next term.