To be employed? Get sweet voice first
By Jessie Tao (chinadaily.com.cn)
Updated: 2006-01-05 16:20

Another girl from a Shanghai-based university said, "I was actually turned down during a job fair due to my secondary appearance. They told me my speciality is not in line with their vacancy. As I turned around, however, I heard one of them saying, 'The girl doesn't look very nice!' "

Without any choice, she decided to have her teeth cleaned, nose augmented, and single-eyelid cut into double ones during the winter vacation in the hope of getting a good job this year.

A college student makes a phone call at a job fair in Nanjing, east China's Jiangsu province, December 25, 2005. Some 4.1 million university students are expected to finish their college studies and enter the job market in China in 2006, 700,000 more than that of 2005, Xinhua reported. [newsphoto]

There are also some female graduates with a not-so-hot specialty earnestly seeking to develop a love relationship with a male whose specialty sells well, via advertising themselves on the campus net.

"Science girls cannot compete with boys, even with a sound academic record and good appearances," said a female postgraduate named Lu Li with South China University of Technology.

According to Lu, females are sometimes asked questions like "Do you have a boyfriend?" or required to bring a male graduate of a particular major. It is no wonder that females are seeking promising male partners.

Wang Jie, a researcher with Tianjin Academy of Social Sciences, believes these extreme phenomena in job-hunting are accidental in a transiting society. "In a fast developing society, it is normal for companies to give priority to efficiency with due consideration to fairness. But as China is a country in transition, in the short term many appearance-disadvantaged graduates will suffer setbacks in competition," Wang was quoted as saying.

Society should show more care to such graduates, and give them equal chances of employment, Wang added.

As to the love advertisements, a teacher in charge of the Students' Affairs Office of Jinan University in Guangzhou, capital of South China's Guangdong Province, said that female graduates should rely on themselves in job-hunting, rather than pin the hope of employment on others.

Some experts believe government should play a part in solving problems relating equality and fairness in employment through regulation and policymaking, such as giving a reward to the companies employing female graduates. Meanwhile, colleges should also mind the relations between gender and some specialties in recruitment to avoid the limitations in future job hunting.