Opinion | The sad reality behind 1 million resumes sent to a Chinese company

At a time when Chinese authorities have announced a 5.5 per cent urban unemployment rate and more than 12 million fresh graduates are expected to enter the job market, a state-owned enterprise has got on everyone’s nerves for bragging how many people are hoping to join it.

In a now-deleted WeChat post, China National Nuclear Corporation announced this month that “We received 1,196,273 resumes”, with a star-eyed emoji. It said its recruiters went to 14 top universities in 10 cities, attracted more than 3,100 students at job fairs and received more than a million resumes for 1,730 openings.

It immediately faced heavy backlash online. People accused the company of boasting when China was in an economic slowdown and many couldn’t find jobs. On the following day, the company deleted that post and wrote a new one, explaining that it was recruiting a total of 8,000 people to 1,730 types of positions and that everyone could apply for 20 posts, hence the large numbers. It said it would “take every resume seriously”.

This didn’t calm public anger. Even with 8,000 job openings, that is still a fierce level of competition. One comment on Weibo said, “The pain of job-hunting graduates should not be used by an enterprise as capital to show off … What is behind this number? It’s one million graduates who cannot find jobs … this data can appear in your year-end departmental report, or the document you submit to your superiors to claim credit, but never in a WeChat public account post mostly targeting jobseekers.”

One million resumes to a state-owned company are a sign that young people are choosing stability. They want a company that has government support, is unlikely to undertake mass lay-offs and offers better benefits than a private company. In the same way, more young people are choosing to work in the government. In December, almost 2.6 million people took the civil service entry test, competing for 39,700 jobs.