International Chinese Graduate Students in the U.S. Labor Market: Job Search Behaviors Investigated Through Online Forum Discussions

The current study investigates job search characteristics of recent Chinese graduates of U.S. colleges between 2017 and 2018. In comparison to traditional job search methods, the study focuses on understanding how recent Chinese graduates obtain and utilize online information and resources to find jobs in the U.S. job market. To accomplish the study’s objectives, I collected online posts published by 30 recent Chinese graduates of U.S. colleges between 2017 and 2018 from a Chinese public online discussion forum that, along with the posts’ comments, were analyzed through both qualitative and quantitative analysis. By employing open coding of content analysis, I coded 825 messages into 15 categories (e.g., academic background, work ability, job search methods, emotional expression, and interaction), and four major themes were generated: jobseeker, job search behavior, online information, and online social ties. I performed quantitative analysis to show observed patterns of job search behaviors. The results showed that among four job search methods used—career fairs, employee referrals, send out resumes widely, and job search websites, only the career fair was used without the aid of the Internet. Employee referral was the most used job search method (n = 27) and the most effective one for obtaining job offers (n = 14). Discussions of quantitative and qualitative results added to the knowledge on one important migrant channel used by Chinese international graduates into the United States and on the effects of strong versus weak ties on information dissemination in the era of the Internet