Chinese students in US coming home for jobs

China Daily

Chelsea Hu, who will graduate in December with a master's degree in communication management from the University of Southern California, seems unusually relaxed while most of her classmates are scrambling to find jobs in the United States.

"I have decided to return to China, where I will be more competitive for a senior-title job," she said.

"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," Hu said.

The 26-year-old passed four rounds of telephone interviews to land an internship this summer in the Beijing office of an American video-on-demand provider. Hu, who earned her bachelor's degree in television editing and directing from Peking University, left for the Chinese capital last week.

Before coming to the US, she worked for a year in a Beijing public relations firm. Work experience combined with her US degree would make Hu a top candidate for many jobs in her home country, as employers seek out talented Chinese who were educated abroad to help them navigate the global marketplace.

Hu is among a growing number of graduates who are heading home to China and its enticing job market as hiring in the US lags. Statistics show that over the past year, unemployment among US college graduates younger than 25 has averaged 8.5 percent. That's better than the 9.5 percent recorded in 2011 but much higher than the 5.4 percent seen in the year preceding the recession that began at the end of 2007.