Jobs for the Homies

Teh Homies. The Chinese. Our students.

Graduate jobs' growth is flat. This year more than before, graduates will accept jobs that require no degree. Consumer confidence is slumping. I'm making up these trends but if you want some professionally made up trends, then:

http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/strategy/what_could_happen_in_china_in_2015
http://hudson.cn/en-gb/latest-thinking/hudson-report-h22015

Reasons I wonder is I, who have done post-grad study, often tell students not to. I, who am a teacher, often say don't be one. I, who am employed, will sometimes urge others to quit (because their teaching job is clearly depressing them and might be their career if they don't get out). In all cases it seems like they could use their energies better elsewhere, but what do I know?

What the hell should a (Chinese) graduate do these days? (And by extension, what should we do if we want to be relevant as teachers?)

According to that McKinsey prognostication:

The way forward for most is finding employment in the private sector, services, or small and midsize enterprises, or becoming an individual entrepreneur—none of which average students have been prepared for by their education or their family. Growth in vocational schools is being boosted by many newly graduated students who realize they need to gain more work-relevant skills. Those students still in school will become more vocal in demanding change in what and how they are taught.

I'm going to introduce these ideas to my students. (Can't help it - the class is HRM.) When they're done looking aghast, which is what always happens when their own next 2-5 years are discussed, some might then have the gall to ask, "Okay fine Mr Dr Teacher, but what are these `work-relevant skills' you speak of?" And I'm not going to know. I might be able to tell them about "finding employment in the private sector, services, or small and midsize enterprises" because that sounds a lot like door-knocking. As in, draw up a vague resume and go knock on some doors. I have some experience of this and will be able to tell them, yes, it's very horrible. But slightly better than misery, so people do it. Or, people outside the PRC culture do it. I don't know that impersonal job searches fit in that well with the guanxi culture they all still believe in.

Meanwhile, I happened by chance across this today from Penelope Trunk:

There are only 3 types of interview questions. Here are your answers.

The Classic, The Brainteaser, and The Behavioural Question.

She says: "The only questions are asking what you want (the first questions) how you think (the second question) and how behave (the third). If you have good self-knowledge, the answers to all three of those questions make sense together. And that, really, is what makes you likable."


I wonder if this claim would work in China.

Foreign interviewer:  If you could be any animal, what would you be?

Chinese candidate:  A pig, because it's auspicious!

Foreign interviewer:  If you could be any animal, what would you be?

Chinese candidate:  A pig, because it's auspicious!

Back at ya.

Chinese interviewer: If you could be any animal, what would you be?

Foreign candidate:  ? and why?

A weirdo question like that is an amalgam of the Classic and the Brainteaser, and supposedly would show who you are and how you think. Brainteaser questions are a bit suspect though. Supposedly they used to be a big thing in Google interviews, but this may be urban myth. Actually relevant brainteasers presumably do occur in normal interviews - coders get coding questions, for instance, and so on. But a lot of the infamously dumb interview questions quite probably don't exist in real job interviews.

Long, long ago, leading a Biz Eng class at an outlet for a training chain that shall remain nameless (Web International), job interviews were the topic of the hour and we were supposed to discuss how to answer some of the dumber questions we all "know" are part of real life interviews. There happened however to be a HR manager in the class. I had to disregard his feedback or I'd have had to make up something else for the next ten minutes of class time, but what he said was, "We never ask this kind of questions." He said they were dumb and unhelpful.

Meanwhile, I showed the McKinsey projections to classes today. And because those projections are really gloomy, I also showed the Trunk claims, because they can be pitched as answers. Want a job in the "private sector" or in some small-to-medium sized enterprise you have no guanxi in? Find a company, research it, ace the interview. And use Trunk's simplification as a preparation.

I don't know if that's real. What am I, a go-getter with background? Pffft. I'm a teacher and this is all theory. Still, the students were riveted. I don't know how much they took in, but career stuff is stuff they want to know about. They gaze upon it with anxiety and hunger.

...but we are animals already......