COLLEGE students might get depressed reading the work experience requirements of job ads. But don't despair. Compared with older workers, students do have an edge in some careers, especially in the Internet-related areas. This week, 21st Century lists several of these professions to keep in mind before and after graduation.
导读:每每看到招聘广告上关于工作经验的要求,大学生们总忍不住暗自沮丧。别气馁,和哪些资深职场人士相比,学生们在某些行业占有很大优势,尤其是互联网相关领域。本周,《21世纪英文报》列举了几大职业,无论你毕业与否,牢记这些都会让你获益匪浅。
For example, the popular Renren.com game "Happy Farm" was developed by a group of post-80s youngsters, including COO (chief operating officer) Xu Cheng.
Young people, including university students, have advantages in the gaming industry, especially in developing mini social games mainly based on Flash technology, explains Li Xu, the website's social game development manager. "They understand the technology more easily than those who're older."
In the Web 2.0 age, traditionalmedia like newspaper, radio and TV have established websites to communicate online with readers. The job of forum manager is another new career opportunity for young people.
Most college students are already familiar with their campus BBS (bulletin board system), Baidu post bar and other kinds of online forums. Some are active members, or even moderators .
Crafting eye-catching headlines requires witty wording skills and a good sense of slang. Young people are often more qualified than senior news reporters and editors that may not be proficientin online skills.
Can you imagine working in your pajamas? You can forget those dull meetings with clients and business talks. All you need do is comment on a hotel and share pictures and videos on your blog.
It's true. Travel search engine Qunar.com recently posted a job announcement for a "hotel-sleeper", with a monthly salary of 10,000 yuan. "College students from all majors are welcome. We think they all have the qualities for the job," says Zhang Ze, vice president for Qunar.
Traveling around and living in hotels means you need plenty of energy and enthusiasm, and young grads always have the passion to travel, says Zhang. "Students have the curiosityto explore strange places and their special angle can find ways to have fun that aren't found in travel guides."
To describe the experience, you need to write well. "Many grads have blogs where they share their experiences, so writing with humor and ease, and adding some pictures and interesting videos might not be so hard for them," Zhang observes.
This job is just like its name implies: gathering the experiences of users and potential users, and helping improve products to ensure that they're easy and pleasurable to use. For example, MSN has user experience specialists who help improve its popularmessenger's functions.
This might be a great place for grads, said Luo Wei, a user experience specialist at 55bbs.com, a Beijing-based website with information on shopping, food, and travel. The website has part-time and full-time positions in the user experience field for grads.
For example, when people browse through a long post on our forum, they can be interrupted by numerous comments, which is very annoying, Luo says. "User experience specialists find this and report it to our technical team, who can add a 'see author only' button to a post. A lot of users say this makes surfing our website much more convenient."
Students have a lot of Internet experience, he says. "They know the users' habits so well that they can spot mistakes, malfunctions and bad online product designs."