The US job market sends more Chinese study abroad students home

China Daily has profiled a couple of Chinese study abroad students in the US and their struggles with the tough US job market. Chelsea Hu, who is graduating with a master’s degree in communication management from the University of Southern California, was one of those students. She told China Daily:

“I have decided to return China, where I will be more competitive for a senior-title job. I’m concerned more about finding something I am interested in rather than taking an entry-level job just for the purpose of staying in the US… The posts available for international students are very limited at job fairs.”

It should be mentioned that Hu earned a bachelor’s degree in television editing and directing from Peking University plus she had worked for a year in a Beijing public relations firm. She also passed four rounds of telephone interviews to land a summer internship in the Beijing office of an American video-on-demand provider. So for her, returning to China is probably a smart move.

Meanwhile, 2011 graduate Yang Jie, who has a master of business administration degree from New York’s Fordham University, has spent a year job-hunting in the US with more than 100 application letters leading to just a few phone interviews and no offers. He is planning to fly back to China to research the potential for a study-abroad website to serve Chinese applicants.

Finally, Zhang Yanni, a graduate of the University of Rochester in New York State, has been luckier than most other Chinese study abroad students in the US because she has started a digital-marketing job for an American IT company in Southern California. So far, she is the first and only Chinese student out of 13 in her class to get a job as the job market for Chinese study abroad students with a technology background is apparently still good.

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