Countermeasures for Universities on the Dislocation between The Job-finding of Fresh College Graduates of And the Employment of Units

In recent years, conflicts over the employment of college graduates are becoming more and more evident. For one hand, many college graduates cannot find appropriate jobs, whilst for another, many units fail to recruit college graduates who are qualified. This paper, on the basis of making deep analysis on the reasons that cause the dislocation of supply and demand, put forwards for universities the corresponding countermeasures.


The current situation of the employment of units and job-finding of college graduates
The higher education of China started to enlarge enrollment in 1999.The number of college students gradually increases.In the three years from 1999 to 2002, the first group of the undergraduates enrolled during the enlarged enrollment did not enter into labor market.Therefore, the employment of college graduates was not serious.The hardship of the employment of college graduates did not draw wide attention from the society that time.It is until 2003 when the first group of college graduates of the enlarged enrollment entered into labor market that the hardship of the employment of college graduates became a common social phenomenon.The following is the statistics data of the employment of college graduates in the past few years published by the Ministry of Education.(Please refer to Table 1) From Table 1, we can see that from 2002 to 2007, the influence of the enlarged enrollment on the number of college gradates enlarges year by year.In average, the number increased within one year reached 500,000.The increase rate reached 46.2%in 2003, the highest one.The number of college graduates employed also increases year by year under the influence of base number increase.However, the amplitude is evidently lower than the increase of the college graduates, resulting in the increase of the number of college graduates unemployed.In recent years, the proportion of college graduates unemployed exceeds 20% to a great extent.It can be seen that the hardship of the employment of college graduates has become a significant issue.The employment situation brought by popular education is not so optimistic.
For another aspect, according to the statistics, over 40% of employment units cannot find college graduates that meet their demands.The employment units opine that part of college graduates lack genuine ability and knowledge and some graduates reach for what is beyond their grasp, just care about welfare and salary, and lack real capacity.Therefore, many employment units would rather lack employees than to employ those who are not qualified.

The analysis on the questionnaires
In order to do research on the branch points between college graduates and employment units, we investigated some enterprises and college students of Shandong province in the form of questionnaires.(Please refer to Figure 1) The investigation was carried out through internet questionnaires and personal interviews.This investigation covers 113 college graduates from over 10 universities of Shandong province and over 50 enterprises of 10 industries, of which 24 are private enterprises, accounting for 45.3%, 9 are state owned enterprise, accounting for 17.0%, 15 are foreign enterprises (including joint equity enterprises), accounting for 28.3%, and 5 are Taiwan and other enterprises, accounting for 9.4%.4 enterprises are with more than 5000 employees, accounting for 7.5%; 11 enterprises are with 500 to 5000 employees, accounting for 20.8%; 17 are with 100 to 500 employees, accounting for 32.1%; and 21 enterprises are with less than 100 employees, accounting for 39.6%.Among the enterprises investigated, private enterprises take up high proportion, the reasons for which are that the choice is made according to the investigation hardship and that it cannot be denied that the demand of private enterprises on college graduates is the highest.

The demand of employment units
With the coming of economy and knowledge era, the competition of talents is more and more fierce.The employment units lay higher and higher expectation on talents.The society raises higher requirements on the makings and capacities of college students.Employment units pay more attention on the qualities of the graduates, on the professional skills, working attitudes, and work experience and occupation moralities of college graduates, on the practical capacities of graduates.While at present, the makings and capacities of college graduates lag far behind the requirements laid by the employment units.
(Please refer to Figure 2)It is easy to see from graph 2 that the education background of college graduates has already exceeded the demands of employment units; however, the weakness of their professional skills fails them to qualify the demands of employment units and they cannot create benefits for enterprises in short term; the working attitude and occupation morality of college graduates are not satisfying either.The investigation shows that employment units lay rather high requirements on the professional skills, working attitude and occupation morality of college gradates, whiles college graduates can only reach 40% to 60% of the demands of employment units in the above mentioned three aspects.For work experience, college graduates score around zero and is far and far behind the requirements of employment units.Of course, many employment units still care about the development potential of fresh college graduates and think that part of college graduates are of high makings and promising future.

The views of fresh college graduates
Through investigation, it is found that around 75% of fresh college graduates hope to work in big cities and many would like to stay where their universities locate because in the past four years, they become familiar with the city and have friends in the city.Many fresh college graduates think that gender discrimination occurs in employment units, especially some chemical industry units or posts that require employees to go on business trip or go abroad.As for work experience, fresh college graduates hold that many employment units are too rigor.The work experience of college graduates is limited to part time job experience, which mostly do not qualify the demands of the companies.They are of the opinion that companies should place the potential of employees at the most important place.
The questionnaires show that more than 70% students believe that the employment situation in the following years will be more severe.Only around 10% students believe that the present employment situation is good.Almost all this 10% students have done part time jobs in the past four years and are good at personal communication.Among students who have found jobs, 18% find jobs through employment websites, 16% through newspapers, 2% through magazines, 20% though job fairs, 18% through the introduction of acquaintance and 26% though campus recruitment.(Please refer to Figure 3).The result shows that campus recruitment accounts for a large proportion in the job-hunting of students.The platform of employment websites and job fairs could not be looked down upon in helping students to find jobs.The introduction of acquaintance becomes a way that is adopted by many students, whilst professional magazines are the main way for the publication of information for strong professional posts.

The gab between the expected incomes of college graduates and that offered by the employment units
This investigation shows the gab between the expected incomes of college graduates (the first jobs) and that offered by the employment units as follows: (Please refer to Table 2) Table 2 shows that the expected incomes of college graduates mainly center on RMB1500-3000, while above 60% of employment units think that reasonable salary offered for college graduates is just above RMB1000.Of course, about 20% of employment units think that the salary offered for college graduates is below RMB1000.Just about 7% of employment units would like to offer college graduates above RMB2000 as salary.Why this kind of gab occurs?This gab is closely connected to the study costs of college students and the employment costs of employment units.

The branch point over work experience
The employment units believe that those with work experience will be quick at adapting to the work environment and do not need training.On the other hand, fresh college graduates need time to be trained and to adapt to the work environment.Besides, the job-hopping possibility of fresh college graduates is great and the loyalty of college fresh graduates to the work is rather low.Fresh college graduates think that the work experience could be cultivated and will not require much time.They believe that it is not beneficial for employment units to lay too strict requirements on work experience, which will be detrimental to the selection of excellent persons with ability and the innovation of work.

Analysis on the reasons for the dislocation of the employment of units and the job-finding of fresh college graduates
The situation of the employment of college graduates is extremely severe, the reasons for which are various.With the constant development of the popularization of higher education of China, the number of college graduates constantly increases, from 1,450,000 of year 2002 to 4,950,000 of year 2007.Based on the constant increase, some one holds that the rapid increase of the number of college students is the fundamental cause for the hardship of the employment of college graduates.However, the proportion of Chinese who have received higher education is far lower than those of the western developed industrial countries.What is more, at present, the total number of college students is not of saturation and the supply of college students does not exceed the demands.The reason is that the types and qualities of college graduates cannot meet the demands of the society.In this connection, the increase of college students is not the fundamental cause for the hardship of the employment of college students.With regards to the hardship of college students, this paper mainly carries out analysis and discussion from the following two aspects:

The causes from employment units
3.1.1The "high-class consumption" of the employment units Many high technology companies, enterprises with new projects and large-sized multinational companies develop very fast.Therefore, they lay higher and higher requirements on specialty, level and work experience of employees.However, when recruiting, many enterprises require employees to have work experience and to be of education level of employees beyond undergraduates.Therefore, they close the door for many graduates.The essential cause is that under the market economy, employment units pursue the maximum benefits.The maximum benefit is realized through the minimum investment which brings along the maximum benefits.For one hand, the number of college graduates who are applying for jobs exceeds that of the posts the employment units could provide.For another, the existence of unemployed college graduates is good for the demand of enterprises on high making talents and provides chances for employment units to lower salaries and to raise the production force of college graduates at work.Hence, the "high-class consumption of talents" cannot be avoided.

The shunt and reform of enterprises reduces the post demands
With the deepening of reform and the shunt of enterprises, to increase benefits by reducing employee numbers is still a necessary road for the development of many enterprises.In order to speed up the shunt of economy system and the transformation of the economy increase mode, many enterprises reduce employee number so as to increase benefits.Meanwhile, they need talents with work experience.Hence, their demands on the fresh college graduates decrease.Because of the implementation of the new labor contract law at the beginning of 2008, many enterprises, out of consideration of costs, tend to use less employees and to employ those with high makings, which hardens the situation of the employment of fresh college graduates.

The common high expectation on employment
Although the employment situation is rather severe, many graduates still lay high expectation on job-finding.Many college students still favor to work at big cities and coastal developed areas.They pursue hot occupations and expect high incomes and good welfare, such as stable units, governments' organs, large-sized multinational enterprises, joint equity enterprises, and state owned enterprises.On the other hand, they do not care about industries with general incomes, middle and small sized enterprises which are in urgent need of talents, and areas of poor economy developments.The misappropriate performance of college graduates pricks up the hardship of college graduates to certain extent.

The comprehensive makings of college graduates cannot meet the demands of employment units
In the labor market, generally, employment units will take the comprehensive makings of graduates as the main reference to decide whether to employ such graduates.The employment units put forward higher requirements on the devotion spirit, occupation morality and teamwork spirit of college graduates.Some employment units keep a close eye on those graduates who have good comprehensive makings, are good at practicing and have special strong points.However, at present, many students lack personal feature and are poor at practicing, wrong at employment attitude, are weak in innovation awareness, and are poor at width and depth of specialty knowledge; especially, some lack good communication ability, cooperation capacity and hardworking spirit.Some students back out when knowing that the work requires employee to work at workshop.The result is that college graduates lack competition force and attraction force in labor market.

Lacking the analysis capacity on self-merits and employment information
Many graduates do not fix their development direction and design their professional life on the basis of careful analysis of their merits and defects.They do not know what jobs are suitable for them.At the same time, although they can obtain employment information through internet, friends relatives, and magazines, they lack analysis capacity on information.They lack understanding on that which place might have jobs suitable for them, the work environment, development future, salaries and welfare of the units they apply for.They do not know how to make choice and do not know how to obtain this job among so many competitors either.

To reasonably set up specialties according to social demands
One of the important functions of higher education is to serve the society, which is shown though timely meeting the society's demands on talents of various levels and types.Facing the worldwide fierce talent competition, the economic globalization, the demands of market economy on talents of multi-levels, multi-functions and multi-specialties, universities should conduct reforms on teaching concept and specialty setting-up and should take social demand as a main standard to determine and evaluate the teaching effect.The discrepancies between specialty settings-up and social demands are once the weakness of universities.After several adjustments, this situation is changed.However, in the process of adjustment, the "following trend" phenomenon occurred.For some hot specialties, many universities started to open courses without further consideration, which resulted in the irrational specialty structures and the unbalancing of supply and demand and influenced the employment of graduates.Universities should, according to the demands of social and economical development, timely adjust specialty structure and course setting-up, constantly optimize the knowledge structure, capacity structure, making structure of students, adjust enrollment number and the standards of talent cultivation, and enhance discipline and specialty feature so as to fully enhance the cultivation quality.
Guilin Tourism School sets a good example for us.In order to meet the demands of the market on high-level and application talents, Guilin Tourism School emphasizes the construction of tourism management and hotel management, gives prominence to the distinct specialties, such as tourism craftworks and tourism art performance, develops 19 new specialties, such as tourism resource development and application, so as to make the specialty setting-up comply with the market demands.In the job fairs of 2005, the graduates from Guilin Tourism School became "hot cargo".The employment units provide 3200 job posts for 1906 graduates.Since 1999, the one time employment rate of Guilin Tourism School exceeds 90% in 5 years.In 2004, the employment rate reaches 98.56%.

To set the talents cultivation modes of the new times
The employment competition nature of college students is the competition of the comprehensive makings of college students, whilst the degrees of the comprehensive makings of college students is to great extent under the influence of cultivation mode and teaching quality of universities and colleges.With regards to the unbalancing of the knowledge capacity structure of graduates that commonly exist in talent cultivation and the big gap between comprehensive makings and social demands, universities should in due time adjust the talent cultivation mode, and should change from emphasis on " the cultivation of theoretical talents" to the "cultivation of talents of solid knowledge foundation, wide knowledge scale, strong capacity, high makings, multiple type, applicable type, innovation type and international type, and shall stress the timely nature, front nature, application nature and international nature of the teaching contents so as to raise teaching quality.Universities shall emphasize to cultivate the sustainable development capacity of college students, the study capacity, decision-making capacity, innovation capacity, organization and coordinating capacity, communication and adaptation capacity, leadership capacity and express capacity of college students; shall open practice courses, standardize summer vacation social practice (as annual practice), and realize the "real practice" of graduation thesis paper so as to enhance the connection of students with society and enterprises and to improve the "real practice" capacity of college students; shall at the same time, pay attention to the healthy psychological makings and the cultivation of occupation makings of college students, including strong will power, grand responsibility sense, good occupation morality as well as the personality of daring to compete, to innovate and to cooperate; what is more important, at present with the globalization of economy, the students should have global consciousness and be in possession of relevant capacity of international communication, copetition and cooperation in order to face various challenges from the work and life in the future.

To enhance the guidance on the employment of graduates
Guidance on the employment is an indispensable general job for schools to help graduates to smoothly find jobs.At present, generally speaking, the guidance on the employment of schools still lack systematical, standard, and pertinent property.Because students cannot get more comprehensive and detailed help from schools, students can only find their ways in practices.They have to obtain information themselves and adjust targets and moods, which will cause students to embark on the wrong roads, and waster time and energy.Hence, officials of schools must pay high attention on the guidance on the employment of gradates and lead to construct scientific employment guidance operation system that complies with the employment market system, help graduates to set up correct employment concept, explain employment policies to graduates, analyze employment situation, forecast employment foreground, give directions on job-finding skills and should do well the following jobs: The first is to enhance the information service work of graduates.A key element for whether all graduates can find jobs is whether graduates can find sufficient demand information.For one hand, schools should reinforce their relation with enterprises and actively introduce the specialty features and making characteristics of their graduates; for another, the schools should enhance the construction of information network, open widely information channels and realize resources share.Through employment consultation and guidance given by expert teachers, employment information platform on the website of schools, and graduation information electronic board set up in eye catching site of schools, the schools can help to provide graduates with employment information.
The second is to strengthen the ideology education of college students and to help students to actively change their employment concepts.At present, the self-choice of employment is not equivalent to free choice.The choice of employment of graduates must be carried out within the scale as stipulated by relevant state employment policies.Therefore, universities should, for one hand, continue to strengthen the ideology education on the employment, job choice, and starting business of college students, help them to clarify their understandings, to set up correct world view, life view, value view, job choice view and occupation morality view, and to construct reasonable value tropism, advocate the hardworking spirit, help them to combine personal wishes with the state needs and employment reality, direct them to consciously abide by social demands and to actively change their employment concepts and to choose to be employed through multi-channels; for another hand, universities should help to persuade college students to lower employment expectation, to discard traditional employment concepts, to set up the concept of "be employed and then choose jobs" so as to change the commonly existing phenomenon in the process of job-finding, "prefer the east to the west" and "prefer the high salary to the lower salary".
The third is to enhance education on business-starting to encourage students to start careers themselves.Universities should pay emphasize on the cultivation of the business-starting awareness, career-starting capacity and career-starting personality of students, encourage students to innovate and to achieve success at the posts where they could exert their capacities and specialties and to take career-starting as one of occupation choices.College graduates can not only create employment opportunities for themselves, but also provide the society with more employment chances.This is a new way for the full employment of graduates, which will, to great extent, be beneficial for resolving the hardship of the employment of college students.

Figure 2 .
Figure 2. The Gap between the Makings and Capacities of College Graduates and Those Required by Employment Units

Table 1 .
The Statistics Data of the Employment of College Students in the Past a Few Years : calculated according the statistics papers published by the Ministry of Education in corresponding years.The number of college graduates employed and the number of college graduates unemployed are calculated according to the employment rate of September. source

Table 2 .
The Gab between the Expected Incomes of College Graduates and That Offered by the Employment Units