Are young graduates too picky about jobs?

(Ecns.cn) -- Chinese college graduates once considered a household registration, or hukou, the deciding factor for employment. That's no longer the case, reports the Workers' Daily, as more grads hunger for jobs that pay well and also appeal to their interests.

Li Tiantian, a post-graduate from Tsinghua University's Academy of Arts & Design, has given up a paid counseling job to be an intern at a ceramics gallery in Beijing's well-known 798 Art Zone. Though her parents disagree with that decision, Li has insisted on trading in stability now to pursue employment that suits her interests.

Zhu Yunwen, who attends the Beijing Foreign Studies University, agrees: "Compared with a hukou, I would prefer a high salary, because lack of a hukou won't affect my life greatly for the time being."

Zhu adds that she doesn't want to be "led by the nose" just because of a hukou, and hopes to find a job she can enjoy. "Only with a high salary will I be able to buy an apartment and a car," she says.

According to a survey of nearly 20,000 employees by Zhaopin.com, a leading human resources provider, 29.93 percent of those polled succeeded in job-hopping between September and October in 2012, while 47.96 percent were planning to change jobs.

Young people are more impulsive about quitting, the survey shows: 98.08 percent of those who had changed jobs (or planned to) since last July were born during the 1990s. Their complaints focused primarily on low salaries and insufficient potential for career development.

"Young graduates are not rushing to pursue stability or benefits or hukou offers any more," according to the manager of an employment agency. "If they don't see a bright future at a company, they will immediately blacklist it and move on."

Liu Yangyang, an International Politics major at the Beijing Language and Culture University, will graduate next year. After several rounds of interviews, she received an offer from the Credit Card Center of China Minsheng Bank, yet she has chosen to ignore it because the job offers little space for career development.

"Although the pay is high, I could still be earning the same salary in five years," Liu says.

An increasing number of graduates are also refusing jobs that require mandatory overtime, including posts at accounting powerhouses that were once attractive to students of finance and economics, writes the Workers' Daily.

"Accounting firms such as Deloitte pay very high salaries, but what's the point of having the money if you don't have time to spend it?" says Xu Mixiao, who majored in finance.

Xu interned at Deloitte while she was a senior in college, but brushed off an offer of full-time employment and instead became a lecturer at Woodpecker Education Group. "It was too stressful at Deloitte. I had almost no personal life," she says.

Young graduates "want to enjoy life without spending too much of it bent over in submission," explains an analyst at Taihe Consulting.

Yet others, like Feng, who works at the Career Center of the Beijing Language and Culture University, advise caution: "Post-90s graduates have higher standards because of the social development that has occurred in China, but they should not be too picky at first."