The 39th "Yingcai Zhuhai" mid-to-senior level talent job fair was held yesterday, and information on site indicated that: the age limit has been relaxed to 60 years old, yet senior talents are still hard to find. If you are an engineer aged between 45 and 60, congratulations! You still have a place in the job market. The 39th "Yingcai Zhuhai" mid-to-senior level talent job fair held yesterday was the first large-scale job fair targeting mid-to-senior level talents after Zhuhai's Spring Festival. It initially showed signs of companies relaxing the upper age limit for positions, especially technical ones, to 60 years old. However, "no age limit" is only clearly stated as a "standard" by a very few companies in their recruitment brochures.
Sixty-year-old upper limit makes its debut
"It used to be amazing if companies could set their recruitment standards at 50 years old, but this year there are rare cases where even 60 years old is acceptable." commented Gan Yongfeng, director of the Zhuhai Human Resources Center. He analyzed that during Zhuhai's transformation and upgrading process, mid-to-senior level technical talents have always been in short supply, leading some companies to relax their age requirements for job seekers.
Data provided by the center showed that a total of 376 companies participated in this job fair, offering 4,433 positions and over 10,000 job openings. Among these, sales business, computer software, and production manufacturing positions ranked top three in demand. Positions with explicit technical grade requirements accounted for 50% of the total demand, and talents with associate degrees or above remained the main target of company recruitment.
Notably, although most companies did not specify age restrictions in their recruitment booth advertisements at the main venue of the Municipal Sports Center, in the "Recruitment Unit Information" booklet almost everyone had, more than 90% of companies clearly listed specific age requirements as the first condition in their recruitment criteria. Ages 20 to 45 became the preferred age range for companies. The range of 18 to 60 years old made its debut this year and was mostly concentrated in engineering and technical position demands, such as water and electricity engineers, plumbing engineers.
Actively marked "No Age Limit"
Some companies have proactively abandoned age requirements for job seekers, marking "No Age Limit."
"We feel that specifying age standards in advertisements looks bad, so we removed that line," said Mr. Wang, the human resources supervisor of Zhuhai Meizu Technology Company. He estimated that age might just be a reference for some companies, and in reality, it is rarely strictly adhered to.
Regarding the recruitment of senior technical personnel in development roles, he revealed that generally, they would select from cities concentrated with mobile phone manufacturing industries like Shenzhen. However, sometimes related talents believe that places like Guangzhou and Shenzhen offer more development opportunities, forcing the company to often offer higher salaries as "compensation."
Journalists found that in the "Recruitment Unit Information," only a very few companies like Manxiu Reedun (China) Pharmaceuticals and Zhuhai Ai Pujing Software explicitly stated "No Age Limit, No Gender Limit" across all recruitment positions. These positions ranged from HR specialists, JAVA engineers to formulators and equipment technicians.
Where are the Senior Talents?
Despite companies being "eager for talents" and accepting engineers up to 60 years old, the job fair was predominantly filled with young faces, mainly inexperienced university graduates. Some local university students about to graduate expressed that they didn't require high salaries, hoping to support themselves while valuing personal growth opportunities. Unfortunately, many companies required work experience.
This created a mismatch between job seekers and company needs.
Mr. Wu, an executive from Huashang Automotive Glass who has attended multiple "Yingcai Zhuhai" events, said that after participating in dozens of job fairs, he has never recruited a single high-end talent, and even mid-level talents were scarce. His analysis, similar to the opinions of local Taiping Life Insurance and Dongguan Securities executives at the venue, suggested that senior talents usually have a certain reputation within their industry and generally find positions through referrals or headhunters. Online recruitment is also an increasingly popular method. Thus, participating in traditional job fairs mainly serves to meet lower and middle-level position needs.
Human resource exchange service centers from surrounding cities such as Shenzhen, Zhongshan, and Jiangmen also participated in this job fair. Several headhunting positions brought by the Shenzhen Human Resource Exchange Service Center offered tempting salaries. For example, both the real estate project operation manager and civil engineering management positions had annual salaries of 400,000 yuan. However, according to on-site staff, neither of these positions attracted any interest by noon.
Huang, the head of the Headhunting Evaluation Department at the center, believed that high-end talents generally don't easily find jobs through such job fairs.