Tan Jiahao delivered a total of 20 companies.
With several first prizes in national intelligent manufacturing skills competitions and 5 national utility model patents, he has been qualified for interviews with 15 companies and received 10 employment notices.
In the end, he chose a well-known company in Wuxi that focuses on the research and development and application of industrial automation products.
Tan Jiahao is a fresh graduate of the School of Electrical Engineering, Nanjing University of Technology, majoring in automation technology and application, and one of the first undergraduate graduates of vocational education in my country.
According to data released by the Ministry of Education, there are currently 32 undergraduate-level vocational schools in my country, with 129,300 vocational undergraduate students, including a four-year starting point for secondary vocational schools, a two-year starting point for junior colleges, and a four-year starting point for ordinary high schools. source of life.
Nanjing Polytechnic University is the first public vocational undergraduate school in my country, with a total of 903 undergraduates graduating in the first session.
As the first batch of undergraduate graduates of vocational education in our country, they are about to walk out of the shelter of the campus along the path of "higher vocational college - vocational undergraduate".
Some people hone themselves in competitions and projects, some choose to stay after struggling between their hometown and the big city, and some are persistently trying to find a place in the system.
In this "hardest employment season in history", although they are also facing a severe employment situation, it seems that it is not difficult for vocational graduates with a pragmatic attitude, practical training experience and solid skills to get an offer of employment.
But for them, finding a job is not the end.
"Find a job where you can practice your skills"
The delivery companies are carefully selected.
In September 2021, just after the new semester started, Tan Jiahao started to make a resume. This is the last year of his two-year undergraduate program.
He first retrieved the top 100 companies in the automation industry, then screened out positions in automation, R&D and production, and checked the job requirements one by one.
Tan Jiahao sorted out his learning and practical experience in training projects, competitions and innovation and entrepreneurship projects, and made three targeted resumes.
Compared with the year he graduated from the junior college, he moved the job search nearly 9 months earlier.
About two weeks after the delivery, Tan Jiahao received the first interview invitation. This is a listed company on the Science and Technology Innovation Board, and the position is on-site technical support.
Nervousness is accompanied by excitement, "interviewing for the first time as an undergraduate graduate".
Before the interview, he deliberately reviewed the company's financial report, patent grants, and ongoing projects, and revised the "self-introduction" used in preparation for the interview several times.
He did not choose to submit his resume overseas, it was like climbing different floors of a spiral staircase. Tan Jiahao felt that he should choose the right floor for the moment.
Tan Jiahao said frankly that he did not dare to apply for R&D positions. He understood that "his level is not as high as that of a graduate student", and he may not be able to undertake research work.
Similar to Tan Jiahao, Chen Anli also intends to use "precise delivery" to ensure "hit rate".
In Nanjing in January, the weather is still a little cold. Chen Anli, a major in electronic information engineering, has just finished the comprehensive training project last semester - intelligent electronic system design and production.
During the three-week period, Chen Anli started from drawing the circuit diagram of the control board, completed tasks such as welding circuit, Bluetooth communication programming and burning, and finally made the car model that looks like a brick move.
"Passed the acceptance", she breathed a sigh of relief.
As soon as the training program and subject examinations ended, Chen Anli and her classmates immediately began to submit their resumes.
At this time, the autumn recruitment of other ordinary undergraduate schools has come to an end, "We are equivalent to a step too late."
Before the winter vacation, when she participated in the school's offline double-selection meeting, she saw that some classmates would submit to all companies, or did not specify the position they were applying for when submitting, and only informed them when the interviewer asked.
"How many resumes a recruiter has to read a day, sometimes they won't read it if they don't write a job title, so they must write it."
Chen Anli felt the difficult employment situation in the graduation season in 2022 from news reports.
With the news of layoffs by Internet companies and the confusion of fresh graduates finding jobs, and the unsatisfactory employment situation of classmates in food, tourism and other majors around her, she made up her mind, "I must find a job that can exercise my skills."
The impact of repeated epidemics is not only online interviews, but also the inability to arrive for internships soon.
Chen Anli, who lives in Suzhou, was unable to return to school, so she reluctantly lost two internships in Nanjing, which made her a little anxious.
Engineering work emphasizes technology. "If you are proficient in operation, it is the safest to keep it in practice." If you can't stay and look for it again, many positions are already full.
However, the advantage of online interviews is that the cost is lower. In each interview and communication, Chen Anli has locked in two career directions that she wants to pursue, one is analog layout design, and the other is product design.
He Qing, a fresh graduate of Xi'an Automobile Vocational University, did not decide what he wanted to do in the future.
She majored in vehicle engineering, and her parents suggested that she return to her hometown of Ningxia to work, so she delivered jobs such as car sales and beauty sales, and wondered if she could go home and start a business.
In April of this year, she saw a BYD company recruitment information posted in the class group. When she applied for the college entrance examination in the third year of high school, she chose vehicle engineering. "The idea of designing and manufacturing has emerged again."
As for salary, He Qing is very open.
In Xi'an, some of her classmates will ask for a basic salary of 7,000 yuan, "that's really hard to find."
In the year she graduated from the college, she also tried to find a job, and the basic salary at that time was only 1,500 yuan.
A "2022 Employment Report for Chinese College Students" released in June this year shows that the average monthly income of undergraduate and vocational graduates in 2021 is 5,833 yuan and 4,505 yuan, respectively.
The power of "transfer"
Anxiety about academic qualifications starts from the admission of junior colleges. Correspondingly, the number of applicants for admission to colleges and universities is increasing year by year.
According to data from the "2022 Employment Report for Chinese College Students", the proportion of fresh graduates in higher vocational colleges has doubled in 2020. 19.3%.
According to research, in terms of employment, the higher the education level, the better the progress of the contract.
Due to the prejudice against college students on the Internet, coupled with the incomprehension of her family, Chen Anli, who went to a junior college, decided that she must be upgraded in the future.
From the perspective of employment reality, Chen Anli found that many of the recruitment needs of engineering are undergraduates and above.
If academic qualifications are not as prominent as 985 and 211 colleges, technology becomes an advantage.
The undergraduate degree determines that she has crossed the threshold of the interview, but whether she can stay or not depends on the skills.
"If you are partial to science, education is the lower limit, and technology is the upper limit."
He Qing chose the car modification technology major of the junior college with the idea of "designing cars". After entering the school, she found that "what I learned is how to repair cars, which is not related to design".
She expressed her confusion to the teacher, and the teacher told her that she had to learn to cultivate before she could go to higher places such as manufacturing and design.
There is a 2.45-kilometer car track on the campus of Xi'an Automobile Vocational University. On track days, various racing cars will appear.
Although he can't go up and drive in person, He Qing will observe carefully to see where the engine, wheels, suspension, etc. have been modified, and then he will be more energetic when disassembling and assembling the engine in the training class, and he will be on social platforms when he has time Watch instructional videos.
"Don't just be a car mechanic." During the two years of his vocational undergraduate studies, He Qing's career orientation changed.
From the engine structure and transmission structure learned during the junior college to the engine principle and automobile vibration during the undergraduate period, from learning technology to analyzing principles and deriving formulas, He Qing's biggest feeling is that his cognition has improved, "It's not that you learned it. Just do it, but keep learning in the process of doing it in the future.”
Like He Qing, the pursuit of technology led Tan Jiahao to take the "transfer" exam.
Three years ago, Tan Jiahao, who was still a junior college student, participated in the Jiangsu Provincial Higher Vocational College Skills Competition, which was almost the most disappointing period for him.
In the competition project of intelligent transformation and integration technology of manufacturing unit, 3 students are required to complete the process from project construction, program programming, to debugging the machine.
Within 4 hours, it is also necessary to use industrial robots, CNC machine tools, three-dimensional warehouses, intelligent sensors, etc. as terminals, use industrial networks, and integrate cloud data services to achieve remote monitoring and complete the "terminal-network-cloud" integration.
Although he and his teammates practiced a lot of mock problems in preparation for the competition, when it came to the competition, there was still not enough time.
Nearly 20 participating teams, only one team completed within the stipulated time.
During the post-match review, Tan Jiahao learned that in the face of production with a large number of programs, it is possible to use the SCL language to win, and this programming language is not taught in the school.
He asked a familiar engineer from a Siemens equipment manufacturer to ask for a foreign language material, and spent a month crunching it bit by bit.
Grief and helplessness
"Are you an undergraduate?" Tan Jiahao heard such a question during the interview.
Because the name of the school that offers vocational undergraduate majors carries "vocational technology" or is similar to the name of other local vocational colleges, Tan Jiahao's classmates were also directly asked, "Is it a secondary school?" View the academic certificate of Xuexin.com.
As the first batch of vocational undergraduate graduates in my country, to some extent, they also undertake the task of explaining "what is vocational undergraduate degree" to some employers.
Either aggrieved or helpless, Tan Jiahao can only explain to the other party that the school is an undergraduate who has just been promoted this year.
In this regard, Tan Jiahao also expressed his understanding.
He feels that sometimes companies prefer vocational undergraduates or students who have advanced to colleges.
In his view, traditional undergraduate education focuses on the cultivation of theoretical knowledge, and they have practical training experience or projects of school-enterprise cooperation, so they can quickly start work, reduce training cycles, and provide benefits for enterprises.
Some classmates said bluntly, "After the school changed its name and added occupation and technology, it looked very low-level."
The information in the resume entry system of the recruitment company is not updated in time, which is a problem encountered by Tan Jiahao's classmates.
When he applied for a position in a state-owned enterprise, in the registration system, the level of their school was still a junior college, subject to the level of education, so he could not complete the registration.
The professional name change also had some knock-on effects.
In March 2021, the Ministry of Education issued the "Catalogue of Vocational Education Majors (2021)", which integrates the design of secondary vocational education, higher vocational education junior colleges, and higher vocational education undergraduate majors at different levels, and distinguishes them from ordinary undergraduate majors.
In December last year, after Wang Peng, a vocational undergraduate graduate, carefully prepared for the civil service exam for half a year, the message "document review failed" was displayed in the registration system.
Wang Peng's major was automation when he entered the school, and later the school adjusted the professional name to automation technology and application.
In higher vocational education undergraduates, the code for automation is 2603, and the code for automation technology and application is 26030.
In the catalogue of undergraduate majors in general colleges and universities, the code for automation is 0808, and the code for automation is 080801.
Different professional names have different codes.
In the professional classification catalogue of the civil service examination, Wang Peng did not retrieve "automation technology and application".
Then he changed his application to another city. This position recruited many automation majors. The recruiting unit confirmed the name of the major with Wang Peng over the phone. After learning that it was a full-time vocational undergraduate, it was approved.
The same situation reappeared in the registration of the career examination.
In March this year, Wang Peng applied for a position in a hydropower station. The first information review showed that "the review has not passed, please verify whether the major is automation technology and application, and please explain if there are special circumstances."
He made a telephone consultation, and the other party asked him for a class schedule, but it was still not approved.
He Qing is also worried about the change of professional name.
In April of this year, the school released a document from the education department, and her major was changed from "vehicle engineering" to "automotive engineering technology", which was also on the subsequent graduation certificate and degree certificate.
But when she interviewed BYD, she couldn't find this major, so she still filled in vehicle engineering, "I don't know if it will affect it."
Xing Hui, director of the Vocational Education Research Center of the National Academy of Education Administration, believes that secondary and higher vocational education has developed rapidly after the reform and opening up, but there is still a misunderstanding in the society's understanding of vocational education, that is, vocational education is "the end of academic qualifications", not a path to Higher education level.
On April 20, 2022, the 34th meeting of the Standing Committee of the 13th National People's Congress passed the Vocational Education Law of the People's Republic of China with a high vote. affim.
"To touch things with both hands"
In April this year, through three rounds of online interviews, Chen Anli passed the internship interview of a 3D parts design engineer in a technology company.
In the first month of the internship, the teacher who was responsible for teaching her developed a detailed training process.
Under different calculation rules, how to reasonably and effectively place a large number of components of different types on the circuit board in the drawing software is a problem she has to think about every day.
"In the dark, learn new operations and exercises, the master will check, point out mistakes, correct them, and practice again."
During the internship, following the instructor, she started the work of component packaging within a month, and can independently undertake the design orders from manufacturers.
During lunch one day, the personnel told her that she could become a regular in the month she got her graduation certificate.
At the end of June, Chen Anli will go to the company to go through the formal entry procedures.
Thanks to the accumulation of practice in the five years of this junior college, this spring, He Qing received the BYD company's reserve cadre recruitment notice, the direction is structural design, and is responsible for the design and drawing of the lamp mold, "Now I have a vocational undergraduate degree, I can There is this opportunity."
During her internship in the first few months, she found that the structural design position requires special proficiency in drawing software. Taking advantage of her spare time before graduation, she listened to online classes in the dormitory and drew pictures at the same time.
When it comes to successful employment experience, Tan Jiahao believes that it is to use his own experience to tell the interviewer, "Why choose me instead of others, and what value I can bring to the company."
Tan Jiahao still remembers the tangle of rejecting the offer of an equipment engineer from a Taiwan-funded enterprise.
The company was very close to his home, and he would pass by every day when he went to school in middle and high school.
The company is preparing to set up a new division.
After three rounds of interviews, the corporate vice president met with Tan Jiahao.
Tan Jiahao was a little apprehensive due to the huge expectations. In addition, this position would be limited to a fixed industry. After weighing various factors, he wrote a long email to give up.
Almost every time he encounters a new machine, Tan Jiahao will be amazed that "it turns out that this can be done, and the production can be guaranteed to be fast and good."
In his view, only theoretical knowledge is not enough. Only by "touching things with both hands" can theoretical knowledge be thoroughly learned.
Excellent vocational undergraduates not only possess the technical skills cultivated under traditional vocational education, but also have theoretical knowledge and technological innovation ability.
In addition to looking for professionally matched jobs, and a few choose to take public exams, state-owned enterprises are still favored by students.
Zhang Han is also a graduate of electronic information engineering. There are a total of 49 students in the class, and he is the only one who took the exam.
After he failed the provincial exam interview last year, his family wanted him to have a stable job and support him to take the exam again this year.
However, my father's factory did not pay wages for several months due to the epidemic, and my mother's health was not very good.
He plans to find a job first, and then prepare for the joint entrance examination for public institutions in Jiangsu Province next month.
Tong Zhe, who majored in civil engineering at Zhejiang Guangsha Construction Vocational and Technical University, decided early on that he wanted to go to a construction unit of a state-owned enterprise.
After submitting my resume in December last year, I came to the construction project to start an internship after the New Year.
Tong Zhe's roommate Mao Huiqi has signed a contract with a company in Hangzhou.
During the interview, the interviewer told her that the job content was the direction of the budget she wanted to do.
During the internship, she found that this was not the case, but she was afraid of finding a better job and did not dare to resign easily. "I always have to live."
jump into the crowd
He Qing's defense has just ended, and she is waiting for her graduation ceremony.
He Qing is full of longing for future work.
In the beginning, she was only a structural design assistant and took on auxiliary work. When she became more and more proficient, she would become a structural designer and independently undertake the design and production of molds. Going up, the development will be very good.”
Postgraduate entrance examination was also arranged by her in the plan.
He Qing once worked as an intern in an engine R&D center. The meticulous work of the senior engineers inspired her to study the details of drawings, draw and design parts, and the assembly between parts. She hopes to "get closer" through the postgraduate entrance examination.
As for the further future, she said with a smile: "I want to support myself first, and I will definitely start a business later. The goal is a car remodeling shop." Her parents run a small shop, and since she was a child, she felt that working for others, Better to work for yourself.
Zhang Han is still in a state of confusion.
Getting a diploma with a bachelor's degree "is considered to have stepped into the threshold of modern recruitment." He doesn't like the electronic information engineering that he has studied for five years, but he doesn't hate it either.
On the one hand, there are job opportunities with professional counterparts, but the salary is not so satisfactory, and on the other hand, there are public institution exams with unknown results.
A student who returned to work in Xinjiang after graduating from a junior college has been promoted to a bank manager, and the feeling of "not doing well" has always accompanied him.
Wang Peng didn't struggle much, but his anxiety was similar.
Because he served as a soldier for two years when he was a junior college student, Wang Peng is older than his classmates who graduated in the same period.
And among his peers, all of them are married and have a second child. He said that he "achieved nothing".
He has decided not to work in this major and plans to return to his hometown to prepare for the civil service exam next year.
In school, Tan Jiahao thought he was always a bystander in society, and now he is about to step in and become a participant.
He also expects that he can go to graduate school, and with the technology he has accumulated, he can go to a higher research and development field.
Wang Chuanfu, chairman of BYD, is Tan Jiahao's idol. During the epidemic, BYD quickly transformed its existing equipment into a production line for mask production with its experience, "integrating its own knowledge, social needs and market needs well", He wished he could be like that too.
Whether they are ready or not, as the first batch of vocational undergraduate graduates in the history of our country, they are about to jump into the sea of people and go to the next life like a surging wave.
(He Qing and Wang Peng are pseudonyms in the text)
Beijing News reporter Li Cong