Master’s graduate drops salary

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A MASTER graduate student who has just returned from England is looking for a job in a major pany in Shenzhen for just 3,000 yuan (US 441) a month.

Wen Xiang, 24, who was awarded a masters degree in marketing at Manchester University last year, found that the only way he could find a job with a major pany in the economic recession was to lower his salary expectations, even 500 yuan less than he expected after receiving his bachelors degree.

Wen had wanted to work for a big pany, particularly a foreign enterprise like IBM. Any position will be fine now because I think I can learn more in international panies, he said.

Hes been to several interviews in the past few months with international panies such as Maersk, HSBC and Pricewaterhousecooper (PWC), but without success.

When Wen first attended interviews after finishing his bachelor studies in 2007, there were only about 50 students in the first-round of interviews at PWC, but this year there were more than 80 students.

The petition has bee more intense and I now just hope to get a good job as soon as possible, he said.

The citys labor bureau expected that more than 30 percent of jobseekers this year would be college students who will graduate in the summer and young unemployed people. The erage salary expectations would be around 2,500 yuan, a pay level which makes it difficult to manage basic living expenses in cities like Shenzhen, Beijing and Shanghai.

But they will find it very hard to get a job this year because of a lack of work experience, Chen Weibo, HR manager of a cultural media pany, said Thursday.

Many graduates at the Shenzhen General Talent Market last week said they had been rejected by many panies for a lack of work experience.

Also peting with us were many people who had been just laid off. It is impossible for us to beat them because they he so much more experience than we do, a graduate surnamed Luo from the Hunan Petrochemical Vocational Technology College said.