Many students are struggling to find a career path and direction, especially for Chinese returnees with little knowledge about local job market. To help this group of students, Lockin China mentor, Queena Zhou, was invited by Career Service and Development to have a career sharing session on 20 March.
48 SBC students from different degree programmes attended the workshop. The session began with a presentation about the trend of Chinese returnees, the opportunities and challenges they encountered in domestic labour market, and the procedure of graduate campus recruitment in China. In later part of the session, students had a role play for a leaderless group discussion, an assessment tool widely used by companies.
The past decade witnessed a tremendous growth for Chinese students studying abroad and majority of them chose to work in the host country after they graduated. However, this trend has reversed since 2015. This year the number of Chinese returnees, for the first time, outstripped the number of Chinese students going overseas. This phenomenon can be attributed to a few factors, with the top reason being fast economic development and plentiful career opportunities. But many Chinese returnees did not know how to present their advantages in a way that help them to standout in graduate job market.
After sharing the statistics and qualities that recruiters look for, Queena continued to talk about graduate recruitment, including the time to start the search, channels to look for information, and the process for campus recruitment. Tips for online application and a step-by-step timeline were given for students to follow.
In the last part of the workshop, the speaker compared structured and non-structured interview, and what can be done to get well prepared. A sample assessment used in a leaderless group discussion was given. Student volunteers were asked to give their solutions based on the reading material, discuss among themselves, and appoint someone to present their conclusion. Queena, on the other hand, observed how students interacted and reacted in the group, and gave her feedback and critique in the end.
Many students stayed to ask questions after the event, as many of them were interested to know more about things they should do in order to prepare for their future career.
All in all, it was a meaningful event for many students as they got to enjoy this learning experience. SBC would like to extend our appreciation for Lockin China, for bringing this workshop to SBC students.
