It was around 10:00 a.m. when Li Yan, 23, opened her laptop and showed up to an online job interview wearing a nice blouse paired with pajama pants.
"Job hunters used to elbow their way in to deliver resumes at various job fairs around this time. But now, we are in a special period. We have to stay at home and resort to the internet," said Li, a student from Jilin University in northeast China.
She is among a total of 8.74 million students who are expected to graduate from college this year, 400,000 more than last year.
To curb the spread of the novel coronavirus, China has postponed the opening of the spring semesters of schools and universities across the country.
The Ministry of Education has suspended nationwide offline recruiting activities, which may bring mass gatherings, and is improving online recruiting services, such as online interviewing and contract signing.
Chinese local governments, universities and enterprises have taken action.
Beijing is expected to hold 82 online public recruiting events by the end of February. The Southwest Petroleum University in Sichuan Province will organize an online job fair on Wednesday, which has attracted more than 2,400 job-hunting students and over 230 enterprises.
According to a report by leading job recruitment platform Zhaopin.com, around 68.2 percent of enterprises hope the platform could provide accurate resume matching service, while 55 percent of firms want video interview service.
Tech companies such as Tencent, Alibaba and OPPO have all put their school recruiting activities online to reduce gatherings and cross infections.
Zhang Yuan, a human resources staff from the Northeast Securities, said online interviews could relieve the tension of job hunters and allow them to perform well.
"Recruitment fairs are giving way to online enrollment and interviews. We have to change our interviewing habits to help contain the coronavirus outbreak, but our standards of recruitment remain unchanged," Zhang said.
Some college students share their online interview experience on social networking platforms, while some others promote online interview skills, such as how to dress up at home.
"The door to jobs remains open online despite the closing of traditional job fairs. I hope the epidemic outbreak can end soon, and I can find a good job," Li said.
