Meituan Photo: CFP

Internet companies, one of the most attracting employer types for college graduates, have kicked off a new round of spring recruitment despite their recent efforts to cut costs, sending a positive signal for the job market.

Song, a graduate from the University of Queensland in Australia and majoring in accounting, has felt the chill at the start of the year. She's got none offer so far after sending 20 job applications. 

"I am closely watching if internet firms will release more opportunities during their spring recruitment campaign," she told the Global Times, although she has learnt that staff in those firms experience drastic layoffs last year. 

Chinese food delivery giant Meituan launched its spring campus hiring on Monday, which will last until the end of May. More than 4,000 posts are opened for fresh college students, covering technology, product and business analysis, and the working locations include dozens of cities such as Beijing, Shanghai, Guangzhou and Shenzhen in South China's Guangdong Province.

Separately, Chinese smartphone vendor Xiaomi started its campus hiring on February 20, providing jobs involving hardware and software research and development, operations and supply chain.

Apart from those big name companies that are playing an active role in solving the employment problem, multiple places across the country including North China's Hebei Province, East China's Jiangsu Province and Northwest China's Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region have all held job fairs to attract talent.

This year is likely to see a record number of 11.58 million students graduate by June, data from the Ministry of Education showed.

"Internet firms always need new blood to help update their business, so they could not miss the opportunity of campus recruitment in both spring and fall," Liu Dingding, a Beijing-based tech industry observer told the Global Times, adding that it is not contradictory with the ongoing layoff in some big internet companies.

Last year, there were waves of layoffs across internet giants both in China and the US. And the trend is believed to continue into 2023 for a period, expert said.

A stream of US companies have recently announced layoffs. The job cuts at the start of the year were mostly been concentrated in the tech industry, with Facebook parent Meta Platforms Inc, Google parent Alphabet Inc and Microsoft Corp trimming their workforces, the Wall Street Journal reported.

Domestically, Chinese tech giant Tencent has reportedly adjusted its plan on the extended reality (XR) business due to the gloomy economic outlook. The layoff round involved about 300 employees.

The Global Times also learnt that ByteDance, the parent of short-video platform TikTok, has recently slashed jobs in its office in Chengdu, capital of Southwest China's Sichuan Province.

"Those companies will continue to make adjustment of their workforces to cut costs in operations, to pull back from unprofitable businesses," Liu said.

"But as the economy gains more momentum in recovery after the country optimized its COVID-19 prevention measures and rolled out more supportive policies, it is expected that the tight job market will be eased later this year," he noted.