SOEs expand recruitment to shore up employment

State builders prioritize cultivation of talent to boost high-quality development

Amid the nation's push for infrastructure development, State builders are expanding the recruitment of graduates to inject more impetus into their projects nationwide, shouldering a big role in easing the pressures weighing on employment this year.

At the construction site of the Xinchenghe area renovation project in Ningbo's Cixi in Zhejiang province, a simple but special tea ceremony commenced amid cheers from a crowd of construction workers.

"Masters, please enjoy the tea," said Dai Yuan, who graduated from Zhejiang Sci-Tech University, bowing together with seven newcomers to a group of senior technicians, while holding tea cups in their hands.

The small ceremony was the first "significant mission" for Dai after he joined the Zhejiang unit of China Railway 24th Bureau Group Corp Ltd (CR24). Since Wednesday, the team of eight newcomers, under the guidance of their respective "master", has put its hands on real concrete structures and "blueprints of buildings for real lives", instead of "sitting and looking at a screen all the time".

"Unlike dynamic demonstrations using software, this time I can finally watch live how buildings 'grow' step-by-step and day-by-day with my own eyes," Dai said.

"It is such a valuable opportunity to work and start a new life in every sense. I will get accustomed to my new position on the site as soon as possible."

CR24's Zhejiang unit expanded its recruitment plan and has employed over 80 new workers so far this year. The new employees assembled in Nanchang, Jiangxi province, and joined an eight-day group training in Nanchang before being assigned to projects nationwide.

"The company intensified its efforts to focus more on the individual development of the newly graduated talent," said Zhuang Like, deputy general manager of CR24's Zhejiang unit.

On a construction site of the Wenling-Yuhuan High-speed Railway — a local project in Taizhou, Zhejiang province that will connect all the counties and districts in the city after completion — CR24 organized a measuring competition for its bids on the project to encourage innovative thoughts on construction.

The company said such competitions are an old tradition and have proven to be an efficient way to not only find better talent working in their assigned positions in the company, but also spur the projects' progress, which is beneficial in its pursuit of high-quality development.

Apart from CR24, which is a unit of China Railway Construction Corp, many State-owned enterprises announced larger-scale employment this year amid increasing pressure weighing on the employment market this year.

For example, China Energy Engineering Group Co Ltd, a centrally administered SOE, plans to provide more than 1,400 positions for college graduates this year. The expected number of the company's total recruits stands at 7,500, an increase of 20 percent over the number of hires in 2022 and a company record.

Last week, a special campaign was launched by a national college student employment service platform operated by the Ministry of Education, offering opportunities to college graduates that have not yet found jobs.

Many major SOEs, such as China National Nuclear Corp and China State Construction Engineering Corp, participated in the campaign, offering posts in sectors such as telecommunications, internet and housing construction.

The campaign will last until Aug 30 and is expected to offer more than 200,000 posts, the ministry said.

Together with six other government departments, the State-owned Assets Supervision and Administration Commission, a regulatory body for SOEs under the State Council, China's Cabinet, launched a national campaign to shore up employment, offering 775,000 positions this year.

"This year, SASAC will encourage SOEs to not only expand effective investment and enlarge their talent pools, but also boost the overall employment market through their driving force along industrial chains," Li Jun, head of the social responsibility bureau at SASAC, said at a news conference in Beijing in April.

The nation maintained stable operations of the domestic job market in the first half, with the unemployment rate remaining in a reasonable range, said the Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security on Friday.

Latest figures cited from the ministry show that 6.78 million people have landed jobs in urban areas in the past six months, which is 57 percent of the year's target. The surveyed unemployment rate in June fell to 5.2 percent, a decline of 0.3 percent year-on-year.