Looking for work becoming a career in itself

Many Chinese firms encounter recruitment problems because of the mismatch of human resource supply and demand, experts said.

Large State-owned companies and public institutions are the fresh graduates' favorites, while small private ones are often ignored.

Li Fengyun, a postgraduate student at Beijing Foreign Studies University, is still waiting for a job offer from a primary school in Haidian district, although she already went through orientation at a listed educational service provider in Beijing.

The 26-year-old sent out more than 100 resumes in the past five months, targeting public schools and institutions.

"I want an easy life with more time to study," she said, because she still plans to apply for a doctoral program in the future.

Salary is not too important to Li. Her only requirement is housing. "It will cost too much to rent an apartment in Beijing and I prefer jobs providing dorm space," she added.

A report by Zhaopin.com, one of China's largest providers of human resource services, found that college graduates prefer big cities such as Beijing, Shanghai and Guangzhou.

But staying in the big cities is an involuntary choice, some graduates said.

"Both my family and I want me to go back to my hometown, but I would have to work in a totally different industry from my major," said Wang Ting, a fresh graduate majoring in advertisement design at a college in Beijing.

Wang said there is no real advertisement company in her hometown, a small city in Henan province, but such companies are everywhere in Beijing.

Actually, the structural contradiction is a real problem for China's human resource market, Zhaopin.com said in its report.

China's professional job market is still booming, and 75 percent of Chinese employers are recruiting or replacing staff at senior levels, Antal International, a United Kingdom-based recruitment and headhunting company, said in its latest global snapshot survey.

Antal International said automotive industry, retail and luxury goods and healthcare specialists are highly sought after in China.

Sales and marketing as well as research and development specialists are also in demand, according to its survey.

"Sales and marketing remains strongly in demand within companies as they focus on acquiring market share in tier-two, three and four cities in China," said James Darlington, Antal's head of Asia.

Yang Ziman contributed to this story.