Multinational firms lose luster among Chinese students: survey

Multinational companies no longer enjoy recruitment advantages in China as domestic IT and Internet companies increasingly gain favor among Chinese students, according to data released Thursday by international consultancy Universum in Shanghai.

The Stockholm, Sweden-headquartered Universum received assessments of 233 employers from 79,346 students majoring in business, engineering, science, social sciences and humanities, law and medicine.

In the survey, 18 percent of Chinese students said they were willing to work for a multinational, a decrease from 25 percent in 2016 and 28 percent in 2015. The proportions were even lower among science and engineering majors—only 16 percent of engineering students and 14 percent of science students wanted to join a multinational after graduation. The students said multinationals were less stable than their domestic counterparts.

This year, the top five most attractive employers for business majors were Alibaba, Huawei, Bank of China, Ernst & Young, and PricewaterhouseCoopers, while the top five most favored by engineering students were Huawei, Tencent, Alibaba, Baidu and Microsoft.

Alibaba and Huawei were also attractive to other majors. Alibaba was the second most attractive employer among science students and the top among students of social sciences and humanities. Huawei took the first spot among science students, and was the second most popular among business students and majors in social sciences and humanities. Tencent also ranked high among various majors.

Chinese Internet companies were well known for competitive compensations that came with highly stressful workloads. But the survey found Chinese students attributed these companies' attractiveness to their entrepreneurial spirit, creative working environment, team work and corporate social responsibility. The students valued "a sound support for future career development" when it came to choosing an employer.

Wu Gang, the vice-president of Universum's Asia-Pacific region, said that "In recent years, through our surveys and research, we've found an obvious change. That is, China's indigenous IT and Internet companies are becoming increasingly popular, while the competitive advantages multinationals used to enjoy are no longer that noticeable."