The Beijing municipal bureau of human resources and social security will hold 55 job fairs in the capital in the coming weeks, aimed at helping the 219,000 graduates who will flood onto the city's job market, Beijing Youth Daily reported on Thursday.

Graduates wait to pour into a job fair in the gym of Wuhan University in Wuhan, capital of central China's Hubei province, March 13, 2010. A total of 240 enterprises and institutions provided more than 10,000 jobs, attracting nearly 30,000 graduates to the fair.

The job fairs and a series of online recruitment activities are being held from now until April 16.

Recruitment companies are also being encouraged to offer services and activities to graduates, including career guidance, job assessments and the provision of information about studying abroad.

According to statistics released by Beijing Graduate Employment Service Center, more than 219,000 students will graduate and look for work this year. They will join those students who graduated last year and are still looking for work.

Among those about to join the job market are 63,000 postgraduate students, 109,000 graduate students and 47,000 professional school students.

"Last year, the rate of graduates' employment was 96.4 percent and it is estimated that the rate in 2010 will be about 95 percent, but that has not been confirmed yet," said Liu Shijun, an expert from the Beijing Graduate Employment Service Center.

"Even if many companies recover from the financial downturn, we still have 10,000 more graduates this year than we had last year."

Liu also said graduates are under more pressure today than they were in the past, when it was much easier for well-educated people to find work.

Cao Hongyan, a postgraduate student majoring in marketing at the Communication University of China, said she postponed her graduation last year because of the financial crisis. She is hoping the job market will be better in 2010.

"Last year, when I began job-hunting before I decided to postpone my graduation, many well-known companies were decreasing the scale of their graduate recruitment programs as a direct result of the global financial crisis," she said. "This year, I am expecting more opportunities."

Wang Xin, who was an advertising major at graduation time last year, said it had been a struggle to find work.

"I started working as an intern at an advertising company in July 2009 and I didn't find permanent employment until January."

A professor, surnamed Wang, from the Student Career Center at the Communication University of China, said graduates should have a better chance of snaring a job in 2010 and pointed out that many companies had already released recruitment information online.

But Wang advised graduates try to find a job before they start thinking about the perfect job or profession.

"Graduate job-seekers should lower their salary expectations and get fully prepared ahead of time for the future," Wang added.