“Big factories,” “after-tax,” “annual package,” “immediate employment,” “professional direction,” these phrases echoed through the venue.
On November 15th, Shanghai was shrouded in a drizzle, and there was a slight mist in the indoor tennis court of Shanghai Second Industrial University, where the launch ceremony of the “Autumn Campus Recruitment Month” series of activities for 2025 graduates and the special recruitment fair for new-quality productivity were held. On site, students clutching resumes and corporate flyers hustled about, while employees from various companies, armed with brochures, intercepted students halfway. The autumn recruitment had been ongoing for over a month, with students seeking good jobs and companies looking for top talent, making it a fierce battle.
November 15th, Shanghai Second Industrial University, the scene of a job fair for college graduates. All photos in this article are by Cai Ji, a reporter from The Paper.
At the job fair that day, over 500 employers were present, offering a total of 1,958 positions and 18,000 job openings. Among them, there were 132 central and state-owned enterprises, 79 listed companies, 175 key high-tech units, and 68 Fortune 500 companies.
How scarce are high-quality positions? What opportunities are there for returning overseas students? After the Ministry of Education issued a document requiring the strict implementation of the “three prohibitions” in campus recruitment, are there still companies explicitly requiring candidates from 985 or 211 universities? This reporter conducted an investigation.
Some positions are “one in a hundred”
According to the Shanghai Municipal Education Commission, the number of college graduates in Shanghai for the 2025 academic year is estimated to be 246,000, an increase of 1,000 from the 2024 academic year. Among them, there are 87,000 graduate students, roughly the same as in 2024; 111,000 undergraduates, an increase of 4,000 from 2024; and 48,000 junior college and vocational students, a decrease of 3,000.
Xiao Zhou and Xiao Guo are graduate students from Shanghai Ocean University, specializing in Electronic Information. They came to Shanghai Second Industrial University from Lingang that day. Xiao Guo told the reporter that since he started job hunting in October, he had submitted nearly 200 resumes and taken numerous written tests and assessments. Many companies had not contacted him after the written tests, and he had only entered the interview stage for about ten positions. Xiao Zhou, on the other hand, is interning at a company that hopes he will work in Wuhan after graduation, which he is not keen on, so he is actively seeking a job in Shanghai.
“Some positions only recruit a few people, but there are thousands of applicants. The competition is still very intense,” Xiao Zhou reminded the reporter to look at the official website application situation for liberal arts positions in companies like China Petroleum and Sinopec. On November 15th, when the reporter searched on the Sinopec campus recruitment page, they found that the competition was fierce. For example, the “Integrated Management Position” at Zhongyuan Petroleum Engineering Co., Ltd. had 10 openings but 1,657 applicants. In Shanghai, the Shanghai Petrochemical Integrated Management Reserve Position, with a work location in Jinshan, had 2 openings and 486 applicants.
November 15th, the application situation for some highly competitive campus recruitment positions at Sinopec.
The limited number of high-quality positions also means higher thresholds for job seekers.
“Companies won’t explicitly state it, but from our job search and communication, it’s quite common for good companies to have strict requirements for academic background, whether it’s a master’s degree or the first degree obtained,” Xiao Zhou and Xiao Guo mentioned a certain automobile company. “When we were undergraduates, ‘non-211, non-985’ students could also get in, but now the basic requirement is ‘double 211,’ meaning both undergraduate and master’s degrees need to be from 211 universities. And when it comes to salary, whether it’s from a C9 university or an F-category major (biased towards engineering majors), the salary levels are different.”
They are confident that they will find jobs. The two students said that someone in their class had secured a sales position as a fallback, but they were hesitant. The HR from that company keeps calling to confirm, “But everyone wants to strive for a better opportunity.”
Overseas returnees may face an “information gap” in job searching
Da Hai and Xiao Wen, who returned from studying abroad this year, have had a longer and more anxious job search. Both studied abroad for their bachelor’s and master’s degrees. Da Hai specializes in graphic design and digital effects and started looking for a job in August. Xiao Wen, specializing in interior design, has been searching for a job since the spring recruitment in April and May, “but the offers received were not good.”
On that day, Xiao Wen submitted 5 resumes, 2 of which were “given out after sitting down and talking.” Da Hai admitted that as a Hangzhou native living in Shanghai, she would report an expected salary of 8,000-10,000 yuan before tax to HR, “It’s too low to live on, but if it’s too high, they might not hire me. I actually report a lower figure.”
The two girls admitted that they initially faced a significant information gap when it came to job searching in China. They didn’t know when job fairs were held or how to apply on company websites. They relied on job-seeking apps, which led them to miss many targeted recruitment information for fresh graduates.
“It seems like classmates who studied up to undergraduate in China are particularly good at finding jobs.” They are puzzled about how to turn their overseas study experience, which is biased towards humanities and arts, into an advantage in the job market, apart from jobs in foreign trade or those involving overseas business. “Overseas backgrounds are not favored. I wonder if people are worried that we’re not grounded?”
November 15th, Shanghai Second Industrial University, the scene of a job fair for college graduates.
Da Hai’s mother is often anxious about her daughter not finding a job. When she sees “teachers” on short videos teaching job search skills for overseas returnees and recommending jobs, she believes them and often wants to spend tens of thousands of yuan to ask these “teachers” for help. However, Da Hai always refuses, “I want to enter a company on my own merits. My mother previously heard about a company from one of these ‘teachers.’ Today, I saw that company at the fair. I submitted my resume and had a good chat. I really hope to get in. It would save money and also prove my abilities.” Da Hai said frankly that, in her opinion, some of these so-called teachers are profiting from parents’ anxiety by exploiting the information gap. “Our student life is over, and this is a hurdle we must overcome to enter society.”
There were anxious parents on site, and Aunt Zhang was one of them. “When it comes to job searching, the key is the ‘search’,” Aunt Zhang’s white paper listed the booth numbers of 12 companies, which she had selected by looking at the directory of booths at the entrance. In her view, offline job fairs are more efficient than online applications. “My son also came, but I want to help him screen the options.”
Aunt Zhang said that her son is a senior student at an ordinary undergraduate university in Songjiang District. The job fairs at his school are of lower quality and fewer in number. Even when good companies come, they only offer less desirable positions. Her son started looking for a job after National Day this year. He has applied online and attended over ten offline job fairs, submitting two to three hundred resumes in total. “He seems reluctant to continue searching and wants to stay at the internship unit near our home. But I think that’s not right. You don’t know if they will definitely hire you. And there might be better opportunities,” Aunt Zhang looked worried as her son finished a round of visits and called her to leave together.
“Limited to 985 and 211” still occurs
Conversations continued on site, with detailed content. Students directly asked about salary levels, while companies, based on questioning students’ majors, also asked about the topics of their graduation projects. A recruitment staff member from a private environmental protection company in Pudong, Shanghai, told the reporter that graduation projects are a good test of a student’s comprehensive research abilities. If some topics are also of interest to the company, better cooperation may be achieved in the future, so this is a very direct and effective question. She also mentioned that among the resumes received that day, most were from graduate students, and undergraduates were relatively rare.
However, for companies, finding more suitable students is not an easy task. A recruitment staff member from a social organization told the reporter that for smaller-scale institutions and companies, they also want and have an obligation to use the autumn recruitment platform to seek talent. They hope students can start working immediately or work a few days a week, but many students indeed cannot start working ahead of time.
It is worth noting that the reporter saw on site that some companies