The long hard road off campus

Hong Kong's graduating class of 2020 are throwing their hats into the city's coronavirus-battered job market, with little confidence they will find employment. The best bet, for some of them, seems to be the Bay Area. Gu Mengyan reports from Hong Kong.

The figures are daunting enough — Hong Kong's GDP growth forecast for 2020 is revised down to as low as minus 7 percent, the jobless rate hits a 15-year high of 5.9 percent, while the starting pay for graduates is on the way down — buckling to the brutal force of the coronavirus pandemic, which led to the worst global economic fallout since the 1930s.

Fresh graduates set to emerge from ivory towers and fight for a slot in Hong Kong's dwindling workforce would be in for a rude shock.

Luke Chu is about to complete his master's degree at a Hong Kong university, but has already been fretting about his chances of landing a job in the city, and his hopes are evaporating by the day.

The 28-year-old quit his rather plum job as a digital marketing specialist with a tech giant in Beijing, headed south to his "dream city" of Hong Kong in search of "another way of living" in southern China and became a student again last summer.

To his dismay, his five years' specialist work experience, apparently, doesn't seem to matter. Chu is still desperately waiting to be called up for an interview after having hurled dozens of job resumes into the city's coronavirus-battered labor market, joining a generation lost in the worldwide pandemic.

Chu is at his wit's end. "I thought my work experience would give me an edge over other fresh graduates, but it didn't. I'll try to lower my salary expectations or even make do with junior posts, probably in other sectors," said Chu, who had wanted a spot in Hong Kong's film or variety show industry.

Projections by the Joint Institution Job Information System (JIJIS) — a match-making platform for employers and university students run by Hong Kong's eight government-funded universities — speak volumes. The number of job openings for new graduates in the first four months slumped by 44 percent year-on-year to about 15,000 as COVID-19 took its toll on the livelihood of the city's dwellers.

Compounding the dire climate, at least 30,000 new local university leavers are scrambling for their very first job amid the sharpest economic downturn in decades that has forced employers to freeze recruitment, rescind offers, slash wages, enforce unpaid leaves or lay off employees.

The latest unemployment rate among the city's 20- to 24-year-olds reaches 13.4 percent, a number close to a record high even without counting this summer's graduates, according to data from the Hong Kong government.

Kate Sun, a social science graduate of the City University of Hong Kong, is another probable casualty. Eager to launch her career as a management trainee or graduate trainee in Hong Kong, she has submitted about 30 job applications in the city, as well as another 20 to companies in Shenzhen, since early February. She hasn't got anything positive so far, only to be turned down.

"The past few months should have been the best time to build up our network through interviews, career fairs and social gatherings. But we just got cooped up at home," groaned the 23-year-old, saying she has decided to try her luck with other jobs apart from trainee positions.

Victor Kwok Hoi-kit, a specialist on youth affairs at policy think tank Our Hong Kong Foundation, said trainee jobs, favored by fresh local graduates, are among the hardest hit by the pandemic. Multiple conglomerates have reportedly scaled back or put their trainee programs and hiring on the back burner for this year.

Enterprises tend to slow down their business plans in response to economic uncertainties, and they will prefer experienced candidates, said Kwok, warning that fresh graduates in the years to come may still be at the mercy of a slow recovery in the world economy.

"The way we live and the way corporations work are being changed, probably for good, by this pandemic. But there's still a growing need for information technology," he said.

The JIJIS said the IT sector remained the best bet with the most job vacancies in the first quarter, accounting for around 20 percent of the total job openings in Hong Kong.

Equally distressing for graduates is that face-to-face job recruitment lectures on the campus are now off the menu. These tailor-made programs are the most important channel for students to locate their preferred professions, and for employers to identify the talents they need, said Kwok.

Hong Kong's tertiary institutions have taken career fairs online to cushion the impact COVID-19 has had on students' future. The Polytechnic University of Hong Kong has invited employers from various sectors to give more than 30 online lectures, with another 20 lectures on career development, since March.

Kelvin Cheng, a manager at the PolyU's Office of Careers and Placement Services, said the institution has provided mock interviews and one-on-one consultations with senior career advisers.

Most job seekers China Daily talked to are of the view that offline campus recruitment is irreplaceable, while online workshops turn out to be less desirable due to a lack of engagement that helps build up personal connections.

In April, the government decided to provide 200 one-year contracts for temporary posts for fresh graduates, but the move was criticized by observers as "too little" and "lacking sincerity" at the time.

Kwok instead urged the government to subsidize internships and postgraduate studies that can equip graduates with either richer work experience or deeper knowledge, adding weight to their competitiveness against senior job hunters. "Before you can land a job, anything that brings new knowledge, experience and skill is worth a try. Doing internships or part-time jobs is useful and it fills in the resume," he advised graduates.

Kristine Wong, a final-year business student at a local university, took a U-turn during the pandemic. She had been thankful after being offered a trainee's job before the virus struck, until the hiring officer told her in late March the post had been revoked.

She was then forced to rejoin the race for other jobs, but still lagged far behind her peers. "If I still fail to get a job by the end of June, I'll apply for summer internships and prepare to go for a higher degree overseas."

The government on Wednesday said it has drastically ramped up its support for fresh graduates by creating 2,750 trainee or intern posts for architecture, city planning and engineering graduates, 1,300 positions related to banking and financial technology, 700 jobs in the civil service and another 700 related to the green economy.