Hopefuls line up for the 2021 civil service exam at Huazhong University of Science and Technology in Wuhan, capital of Central China's Hubei Province. File Photo:IC

Multiple provinces across China have started recruiting civil servants for departments and institutions under the provincial governments in the 2023 intake with obvious expansions to be seen in the recruitment of fresh graduates this year, a latest move to cope with college graduates' unemployment in recent years, especially amid the COVID-19 pandemic.

Chinese college graduates in 2023 will amount to 11.58 million, a year-on-year increase of 820,000, according to statistics from China's Ministry of Education.

A notice on the employment and entrepreneurship of college graduates in 2023 released by the ministry on November 14 noted to give full play to the role of policy-based positions in stabilizing employment, and to ensure the number of recruited college graduates to be maintained and appropriately increased.

The policy-based positions refer to civil servants and employees of public institutions, as well as positions engaged in supporting agriculture, education, medical services and poverty alleviation in rural areas, which enjoy governmental preferential policies, and differentiate from market-driven jobs.

China plans to recruit a record number of 37,000 civil servants for departments and institutions directly under the central government in the 2023 intake with 25,000 vacancies available exclusively for fresh graduates, or 67.4 percent of the total number of positions, the highest share in recent years, the State Administration of Civil Service announced in October.

Applications to the civil servant recruitment has been wrapped up so far and the candidates will take a national written exam to be held on December 4 across the country.

Multiple provinces including East China's Jiangsu, Zhejiang and Shandong provinces and cities such as Shanghai and Beijing have also started their provincial-level civil servant recruitment procedures since November.

All these provinces and municipalities have shown their preferential supportive policies toward fresh graduates according to their announced recruitment plans, said a report from chinanews.com.

Among the 9,272 civil servant positions to be offered in Jiangsu, 1,070 positions are exclusively targeting fresh graduates in 2023, a year-on-year increase of 32.8 percent. Shandong set 1,921 positions exclusively for fresh graduates, 573 more than that in 2022.

The recruitment of civil servants in recent years has been inclined to fresh graduates and grass-roots positions. The major purpose is to create more opportunities of employment and career development for graduates, while also attracting college graduates to make contributions to the grass-roots construction and improve the overall quality of grass-roots civil servants, Xiong Bingqi, director of the 21st Century Education Research Institute, told the Global Times on Wednesday.

Xiong also noted that comprehensive policies are needed in a bid to recruit excellent college graduates such as relaxing entry requirements for certain positions including academic requirements and working experiences.

Some local governments have introduced specific policies and measures to ensure the match of the appropriate personnel and their posts, and vowed to stick to the principle of selecting talents in an eclectic way.

Shandong has made it clear to lift the restrictions on the graduation colleges, overseas education background and mode of study for the candidates and set reasonable qualifications according to the positions, providing a platform for all kinds of outstanding talents.

In terms of the origin of the candidates, Jiangsu continues to lift the restrictions on the candidates' household registration in its 2023 recruitment.

For the newly graduates, the best fit between the career prospects of public servants and their personal ideals has resulted in the great zeal of the occupation, according to several examination candidates reached by the Global Times on Monday.

A college student from a university in Shanghai told the Global Times that the satisfaction she gained through her volunteering work at campus has contributed to her willing to be a public servant after graduation.

"Being a member of the Communist Party of China and working at the student union, I hope my future career can be integrated with the ideals of the country," the candidate said.