Jobseekers at Saturday's recruitment fair.

NEARLY 100,000 college graduates rushed to seek a job at an annual fair at the Shenzhen Convention and Exhibition Center on Saturday, according to the organizer.

The fair, organized by the city's labor employment services center and talent communication services center, had about 20,000 vacancies in more than 10 fields such as telecommunications, finance, culture and catering, the same as previous years, Yu Jia, an official at the labor employment services center, said Saturday.

"There is not a big selection of students because most graduates are from universities in the Pearl River Delta area. The number of students from top universities in other provinces has been decreasing year by year. This may be due to the high living costs in Shenzhen," said Liu Shufang, a human resources officer for the Bank of China.

"Shenzhen has fewer advantages for recruits than many other cities. It offers salaries similar to many less developed cities, such as Wuhan in Hubei Province and Chengdu in Sichuan Province, but housing rents and living costs in Shenzhen are much higher,"Liu said.

More than 300 companies, including Foxconn, BYD, Tencent and the Bank of China, attended the fair. The average salary for most position was about 2,000 yuan (US$293) to 3,000 yuan, about 500 yuan more than last year, Yu said.

"High-tech companies have the biggest demand for graduates this year. For example, the Foxconn Technology Group had more than 50 positions for over 1,000 graduates, including mechanical manufacturing, computers, accounting, management and marketing,"said Yu.

Compared with last year, companies had increased the number of positions reserved for talent, offering a total of 1,000 positions for officers and trainees.

However, more companies, particularly banks, hospitals, pharmaceutical companies and universities, wanted to recruit graduates with at least master's degrees.

Meanwhile, more than 150 projects for business startups were presented at the fair, giving graduates who want to start business a chance to negotiate with companies. These were in the fields of clothing, food, medication, entertainment, jewelry, education and IT, said Yu.

However, there were far fewer graduates seeking consultations than those seeking employment.

One graduate was simply not impressed.

"Although most projects were easy to access with low investment, they had very low profit margins and were in low-skilled areas, so it was not a very attractive position. Our first choice is to work for a big company and gain experience. Starting a business like these would be the last thing we would do after failing to get a job," said Qiu Yonglin, a graduate from Guangdong University of Foreign Studies.