News and Opportunities
Success of inaugural Chinese graduate on-campus careers fairs in Australia
15 Oct 2013
Following the successful inaugural China Careers Fair held in Shanghai 2012, Austrade piloted three on-campus careers fairs for Chinese graduates in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane during 16–20 September 2013. The aim was to support the career development of Chinese students graduating from participating universities and to demonstrate the return on education investment through quality job outcomes. The initiative generated overwhelmingly positive responses from participating universities and companies, and had a strong social media impact.
The initiative was organised in conjunction with Zhaopin.com and consisted of two components:
- an online platform hosted by Zhaopin.com for students to register for the event, create a personal profile and apply for advertised jobs
- three campus fairs hosted by the University of New South Wales (UNSW) in Sydney, RMIT University in Melbourne and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) in Brisbane for graduating students to meet companies to discuss career opportunities.
The fairs were enthusiastically embraced by graduating students who turned up in full force to meet company representatives and attend the information sessions. Key outcomes included:
- 18 Australian universities joined the pilot initiative, sending staff from their career, alumni and international offices to attend the campus fairs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane
- 1526 students from participating universities pre-registered through the Zhaopin.com platform
- 1480 students attended the three campus fairs, 549 at Sydney, 598 at Melbourne and 333 at Brisbane. There were also attendees from non-participating universities, demonstrating that job opportunities do matter.
- Five Australian and Chinese organisations attended the Australian fairs: Zhaopin.com, NU SKIN, National Engineering Research Centre for Rubber and Tire, ANZ Bank and CPA Australia. The information sessions held by these organisations were fully subscribed by enthusiastic audiences. Zhaopin.com also represented Weichai Power, Oxylane (Decathlon) and Scope International (China) for onsite recruitment.
- Seven companies advertised 93 jobs on Zhaopin.com for the Australia Fair and 255 applications were submitted from pre-registered graduates.
- The on-campus Australian fairs were promoted extensively through Austrade’s official social media channels (Sina and Tencent Weibo – the Chinese Twitter equivalents). A staged social media campaign was delivered during the event promotion period from 19 August to 23 September 2013. A total of 25 original pre/post-event tweets and 29 live broadcast tweets were posted and two online prize reward promotion activities were held. The campaign also leveraged the social media platforms of 15 student organisations in Australia. These resulted in 96 re-tweets, 1300 new followers and a total viewing rate of 617 650.
The Australian careers fairs were a prelude to the offshore fair to be held in Guangzhou on 10 November and an ‘Understanding Talent Recruitment in China’ tour in Beijing and Guangzhou from 4–8 November.
The China Careers Fair initiative is an innovative approach by Austrade to promote Australian education by bringing alive the Future Unlimited message through a shift from ‘before’ to ‘after’ obtaining an education.
