More than 120,000 job seekers attended a two-day job fair that closed yesterday at the third exhibition hall of Taipei World Trade Center, organizers of the event said.
Called the largest such event in the last 10 years, the fair brought together 150 businesses from the high-tech, financial and service sectors -- such as AU Optronics Corp (
"We plan to hire more than 300 new people this year," said Richie Chan (
PHOTO: SEAN CHAO, TAIPEI TIMES
"Salespeople are what we need most, but not many graduates want to do this job," Chan said.
"People in Taiwan hold a negative impression of salespeople. Actually, the job is relatively easy for a rookie to adapt to and it's not that hard to get a promotion," Chan said.
Good prospects
Things look good for young job seekers this year, as the government has established a target of 5.41 percent for the nation's economic growth this year, up from 3.24 percent last year.
"I want to get a job first and obtain some experience before going back to school for study," a graduate surnamed Huang said.
"I think with job experience, I will have insight about what to study," Huang said.
The number of job opportunities for new graduates has increased 60 percent this year over a year earlier, according to Rocky Young (
"The basic salary for this year's graduates is up 3 percent over last year's, and companies are pretty optimistic about their employees' getting a raise," Young said.
But not all students want to join the job market after graduation.
"I believe having a master's degree will improve my capabilities and knowledge and ensure a promising career," said Ed Chung (
"It will never be too late to pick up work experience after graduation, so I am not that eager to gain it right now," Chung said when asked if work experience matters.
Dilemma
For college graduates, the improving job market poses something of a dilemma: whether to pursue advanced study to become more competitive or whether to ride the wave of growing employment.
Take two national universities, NTU and National Cheng Kung University (NCKU). Less than half of their graduating seniors last year chose to go to work right away. The percentage of NTU graduates on the job market last year was 44.86 percent, while NCKU's percentage was 38 percent.
According to Young, there are about 15 holders of master's degrees among every 100 graduates battling for jobs.
`Strawberry generation'
"Seriously, job candidates who only have bachelor's degrees don't stand out," Young said.
"Moreover, many companies don't have any confidence in the quality of a bachelor's degree nowadays."
A job consultant at Career Consulting suggested that members of today's so-called "Strawberry Generation" are very insensitive to the job market and don't truly understand their own abilities.
"In most cases, what they learn in school is not really relevant to what they will do in a company," said David Li (
A job seeker surnamed Chang said she hoped to land a job at the fair. "I want to transfer to another field from what I am doing [working as an accountant at a mercantile company], but I don't yet know what I want to do," Chang said.
Companies' human resource department find this phenomenon often -- new graduates who quit their jobs or transfer to others that are not related to what they learned in school.
According to Chan of Citibank, the reason that the job turnover rate is high is that many new graduates don't understand their jobs well when they begin work. "They are not mature enough to handle pressure," he said.
"It's most practical to know your personality well so that you'll have a comprehensive idea of the jobs that you can do," Li said.
Aptitude tests
"Turning to aptitude tests may be of use," Li said.
Kevin Chang (
"A diploma may mean something at the time when you start at a company, but it is nothing once you're in the door," Chang said.
DECOUPLING? In a sign of deeper US-China technology decoupling, Apple has held initial talks about using Baidu’s generative AI technology in its iPhones, the Wall Street Journal said China has introduced guidelines to phase out US microprocessors from Intel Corp and Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) from government PCs and servers, the Financial Times reported yesterday. The procurement guidance also seeks to sideline Microsoft Corp’s Windows operating system and foreign-made database software in favor of domestic options, the report said. Chinese officials have begun following the guidelines, which were unveiled in December last year, the report said. They order government agencies above the township level to include criteria requiring “safe and reliable” processors and operating systems when making purchases, the newspaper said. The US has been aiming to boost domestic semiconductor
Nvidia Corp earned its US$2.2 trillion market cap by producing artificial intelligence (AI) chips that have become the lifeblood powering the new era of generative AI developers from start-ups to Microsoft Corp, OpenAI and Google parent Alphabet Inc. Almost as important to its hardware is the company’s nearly 20 years’ worth of computer code, which helps make competition with the company nearly impossible. More than 4 million global developers rely on Nvidia’s CUDA software platform to build AI and other apps. Now a coalition of tech companies that includes Qualcomm Inc, Google and Intel Corp plans to loosen Nvidia’s chokehold by going
ENERGY IMPACT: The electricity rate hike is expected to add about NT$4 billion to TSMC’s electricity bill a year and cut its annual earnings per share by about NT$0.154 Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Co (TSMC, 台積電) has left its long-term gross margin target unchanged despite the government deciding on Friday to raise electricity rates. One of the heaviest power consuming manufacturers in Taiwan, TSMC said it always respects the government’s energy policy and would continue to operate its fabs by making efforts in energy conservation. The chipmaker said it has left a long-term goal of more than 53 percent in gross margin unchanged. The Ministry of Economic Affairs concluded a power rate evaluation meeting on Friday, announcing electricity tariffs would go up by 11 percent on average to about NT$3.4518 per kilowatt-hour (kWh)
OPENING ADDRESS: The CEO is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing and artificial intelligence at the trade show’s opening on June 3, TAITRA said Advanced Micro Devices Inc (AMD) chairperson and chief executive officer Lisa Su (蘇姿丰) is to deliver the opening keynote speech at Computex Taipei this year, the event’s organizer said in a statement yesterday. Su is to give a speech on the future of high-performance computing (HPC) in the artificial intelligence (AI) era to open Computex, one of the world’s largest computer and technology trade events, at 9:30am on June 3, the Taiwan External Trade Development Council (TAITRA) said. Su is to explore how AMD and the company’s strategic technology partners are pushing the limits of AI and HPC, from data centers to