When Tinder becomes the job board for young people in China
Who. The young people of the Asian giant have found in the well-known dating 'app' a useful instrument to access positions in the labor market.
That. Unemployment hits this sector of the population especially hard, with a record figure of 21.3% last June.
Because. The application has features that make it especially useful for connecting with people who work in large companies.
Red flags with five stars are everywhere. They hang from facades, street lamps and trees. In the sky, helicopters deploy a giant flag every day that flies over the skyline of Shanghai and the Great Wall of Beijing.. At street level, delivery people carry them on motorcycles and people walk with them in their hands.. There are many improvised street stalls with national flags. Many sellers have taken advantage of the patriotic explosion over China's National Day holidays, which coincide with the Mid-Autumn Festival.. At the end a long bridge comes together that gives millions of Chinese their longest vacation of the year. This is what is popularly known as Golden Week.. Eight holidays in total, with 900 million trips planned, ending on Friday.
“So that later in Europe you say that we Chinese don't have vacations,” jokes Sarah Fenglan, a twenty-something who works at an international consultancy in Shanghai.. In reality, she knows well that this national recess, like all long holidays, has a catch.. “Then they make us work several Saturdays and Sundays in a row to make up the days. It is normal in Chinese companies,” he acknowledges.
Sarah, trained in English philology, has been working in the consultancy for five months. He had been an accountant at a moving company that went bankrupt during the pandemic. Later, she opened a cosmetics store with a couple of friends in the center of Shanghai that never got off the ground.. Diving into the labor market again, he found work thanks to Tinder.
“I had never used the app before, not even to flirt. But several publications began to appear on social networks with testimonies of young people who had found work by connecting directly with employers who are on Tinder.. I started using the app and met a guy who worked in a consultancy. I told him I was looking for a job and he offered to help me.. He passed my resume to his boss and two weeks later they called me,” explains Sarah. That guy from Tinder, in addition to being a coworker, is now also her boyfriend.
Last month, Sixth Tone, a Shanghai magazine that dedicates many reports to the problems of Chinese youth, published an analysis on how many kids, faced with rising unemployment, are turning to the dating app to look for work.. Tinder is serving as a replacement for LinkedIn, which pulled out of the Chinese market this year.
“The app has several features that make it useful for job seekers: It allows users to connect with people outside their immediate social circle. Most users on China's Tinder are adults with a decent job, so there are higher chances of getting referrals at a big company. Many people also include the names of their employers and universities in their profiles, and it is possible to select users based on their gender, age and interests,” the article reads.
The historic youth unemployment is to blame for the fact that, for many Chinese, Tinder has become the most popular job board. Unemployment reached a record of 21.3% in June. One in five young people is unemployed. What is the first thing the Chinese government did in response to the contagious discouragement among recent graduates? Well, he decided to hide unemployment figures by age for the first time.. We have not known the data for three months. It is an old resource that they often resort to in Beijing when the waters are troubled: if you close your eyes, the problem disappears.