With hundreds of students competing for that one job, one guy had no choice but to resort to this – the “negative salary”.

Source: Sichuan News

Recently, said the student, when a well-known company posted a job offer at his school, hundreds of his fellow schoolmates rushed to apply – for that one position. To boost their chances of being hired, many of the applicants offered to work for free. For this third-year college student, in order to stand out from the masses of applicants, he proposed not only to work without pay, but to pay his employer 1,000 yuan per month.

He also posted a picture of himself, carrying a sign reading, "I am about to graduate and will soon be faced with unemployment. I am willing to pay 1,000 a month, in exchange for work experience.” China’s netizens were quick to react: in a QQ poll, 1,490 voted "It's normal" while 3,324 readers voted "This is dumb".

In this kind of vicious cycle, a university student can only buy experience, before trying again to look for a job.

Thus commented Chinanews.com.cn on the incident:

For high school students, the month of June, dubbed "Black June", is a scary time. It's not an easy time for graduating university students, either. When June approaches, final-year students are all faced with the problem of finding a job, and in today's society, the popular saying "graduated and jobless" means the month of June can strike fear into the hearts of these graduating.

In June, on-campus job fairs are popular events crowded with job-seekers. But it goes without saying that the stress in today's work environments is great, and finding a job that one really likes is no easy task. Thus, bearing in mind the pressure of job-seeking, the phenomenon of the "negative salary" comes as no surprise.

We can empathise with the "negative salary" student because today's job offers always demand the following: "Priority given to those with experience." But if you haven't already had a job, how can you have experience? In this kind of vicious cycle, a graduating student can only buy experience, before trying again to look for a better job. But ultimately this is not a solution; it's merely a quick fix.

From another point of view, such behaviour cannot be accepted by everyone… If [the student in question] has this much money, why not just start his own business? If he's really capable of running a business, before he buys work experience, he would have already earned some money and become a boss. Besides, such "no salary" and "negative salary" jobs are illegal.