China’s graduates long for a job at Alibaba and Huawei
Popularity of working for the mainland's technology giants, not foreign multinationals, continues to grow
E-commerce powerhouse Alibaba Group Holding and Huawei Technologies, the world’s largest telecommunications equipment supplier, have topped this year’s rankings of the most coveted employers for mainland China’s university students, according to a new survey.
About 80,000 students from 110 mainland universities participated in the annual online poll, which Sweden-based employer-branding company Universum has conducted in the country since 2006 to track the career aspirations of the domestic market’s future talent pool.
“One of the key trends that we can’t afford to ignore in recent years is the growing popularity of domestic technology giants,” said William Wu, Universum’s country manager for the mainland. “Their international counterparts no longer have a competitive advantage in attracting young Chinese talent.”
Alibaba, operator of the biggest online retail and business-to-business e-commerce platforms on the mainland, has repeated as the “most ideal” employer in the student survey’s business category.
The New York-listed company, which owns the South China Morning Post, was ranked second in 2015 and sixth in 2014.
For the fourth consecutive year, privately held Huawei was ranked the top choice for employer in the survey’s engineering category.
The Shenzhen-based company moved a spot up to take second place in the business category behind Alibaba.