More than 90 percent of students graduating from university this year plan to look for jobs, but they are likely to be paid much lower starting wages than they expect, a survey by online job bank yes123 found.
The poll found that 96.6 percent of respondents plan to seek employment upon graduation — the highest percentage since 2008 — the company told a news conference in Taipei yesterday.
Of the would-be job seekers, 70.2 percent want to work in Taiwanese companies, while 46.3 percent prefer foreign firms, according to the poll, which allowed multiple answers.
Those who plan to seek employment in government or state-run businesses accounted for 32.8 percent, while 26.7 percent plan to start their own businesses, the poll found.
The respondents expected an average starting salary of NT$29,832, while employers offer an average of NT$26,619 for a new graduate with a bachelor’s degree, and NT$28,625 for master’s and doctoral degrees, yes123 spokesperson Bingo Yang (楊宗斌) said.
The poll found a gap of between NT$1,500 and NT$6,400 between first-time jobseekers’ expectations about starting salaries and the actual wages, he said.
A student surnamed Yu (宇) from National Taiwan University’s Graduate Institute of Photonics and Optoelectronics said he will go to Belgium to pursue a second master’s degree because he thinks having two master’s degrees would be more helpful when seeking a job than having a doctoral degree.
An NTU graduate, surnamed Lin (林), said she will pursue a master’s degree in chemical engineering and try to find employment in the biomedicine sector later on.
Lin said that after learning that average starting salaries are below NT$30,000, she feels she should focus on gaining more experience in the early years of employment.
Starting wages are not that important, she said.
Sixty-seven percent of first-time job seekers submit resumes before graduation or discharge from military service and 33 percent of them spend one to two months looking for jobs before receiving job offers, the company said.
Twenty-six percent of respondents said they need two to three months to find work, spending an average 66 days looking for a job, the company said.
On average, job seekers receive one invitation for an interview for every 17.8 resumes submitted, it said, adding that one job offer is received for an average of 9.2 call-back interviews.
This means that job seekers will need to submit an average of 164 resumes to receive one job offer, the company said.
The company surveyed 1,386 graduating students from May 17 to Wednesday.
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